The Timeless Impact of Disciple-Making

Can the essence of your faith be captured in six core values? Join us for a special episode as we revisit the fundamental beliefs that have shaped our journey. Drawing inspiration from Alan Hirsch's "The Forgotten Ways," we dissect our missional DNA, emphasizing that "Jesus is Lord," and the critical roles of Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, Shepherds, and Teachers in our community. As we reflect on a decade of growth and challenges, we also look ahead, aiming to sustain and expand our mission in Madison.

What makes a faith movement endure the test of time? In our discussion, we explore the historical and contemporary impacts of effective disciple-making, from the early church to the explosive growth of Christianity in China, and the rise and fall of the Methodist movement. By examining these examples, we highlight the importance of fostering a disciple-making culture at Madison Church. Our goal is to equip every member to become a disciple-maker, ensuring the longevity and transformative power of our community.

Are you ready to move beyond passive faith? We challenge the prevalent "feed me" mentality by emphasizing action and transformation as the true essence of discipleship. Drawing on the teachings of Jesus and Paul, we encourage a community of high challenge and high invitation, where every believer is called to actively live out their faith. Reflect on your own journey and the importance of mutual sacrifice, community support, and openly sharing your faith, as we strive to turn Madison Church into a thriving missional movement.

Chapters

• 0:01 Rediscovering Our Forgotten Ways
• 6:22 The Impact of Discipleship on Christianity
• 20:29 Embracing Discipleship Through Action
• 30:01 Disciple Making at Madison Church

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Well welcome to Madison Church Online. I'm Stephen Feith, lead pastor. I would like to invite you to join us at our service on Sunday, september 8th, as we are celebrating 10 years since starting Madison Church. It'll be a fun event with a free lunch afterwards and lots of activities for your kids and family. That's also an announcement to the rest of you in the room. We've got some great things planned and, as I mentioned, we're coming up on 10 years.

Speaker 1: 0:25

And, as I mentioned, we're coming up on 10 years and, as I do every summer at Madison Church, before we come up to this big anniversary, I reflect on where we've been. The first year that was easy, because I only needed to look at back the last 10 months, but now we've been here for 10 years. There's a lot to look back to ups and downs and new locations and then pandemic and closing everything up, and then coming back after the pandemic and moving in here and all those things that we're trying to accomplish now. I just reflect on all the great ways that God has provided for us and given us vision and I look back and I just really love the resiliency of the people who do make up Madison Church. For those of you who have been on our website, you know that we have a vision map and a lot of churches have that nowadays. That's not unique to us. But one thing I wanna point out today, throughout this entire series, is that our vision map isn't about branding, it isn't about gaining fame, it's not about my platform, but really it is about a missional church movement throughout the city of Madison. We didn't come to Madison because we felt like they needed another church. We came to Madison because we felt like there needed to be a kingdom minded missional church movement in the city and that meant inherently we would have to do things differently, because if the way that we were doing things already would give that missional church movement were happening in Madison, then the city would already have had that movement and Megan and I would have been looking for a different city to move to to start a church.

Speaker 1: 1:57

But we came here and what we want to do then at Madison Church through our values, which are dictating everything from the vision and the mission, our values come from a book called the Forgotten Ways. I have it here on the table. It's written by missiologist Alan Hirsch from Melbourne, australia, and in his book he does a little study. He says what happens when there are missional church movements throughout history. What elements are there? And he came up with six. He said I think you can boil it down to six things that every missional church movement or Christian Jesus-centered movement has had. He calls it the missional DNA. He says this needs to be not just something like goals. They need to be the DNA of who you are, of the people who make up your community. And that is what we're going to be talking about throughout this whole series rediscovering our forgotten ways, because in 10 years here we've not done a series on our values. We talk about it at membership and we talk about it on the website, but let's really dive in as we consider the next decade together and what we want to try to accomplish with one another.

Speaker 1: 3:01

Let's consider our own missional DNA, and those six factors are, and what we're going to be talking about is one of them is Jesus is Lord. That's what we talked about last week and we just talked about how this is the cornerstone of our faith. So for every Jesus-centered movement, there's a deep conviction that Jesus is precisely who we claim to be. He's the sinless son of God. He lived the life we should have lived, died the death we all deserve. But it wasn't just that. He rose from the dead, and because of that that changes everything. And for early Christians, those first followers of Jesus, declaring Jesus as Lord wasn't like stating something you believe in. It was that, but it was a commitment. It was a commitment to Jesus's lordship over their life and as such, they aim to submit every part of their lives to the lordship of Jesus. It wasn't a check the box, if you believe, but it was a complete surrendering of their minds, their bodies, their spirits.

Speaker 1: 4:01

Alan Hirsch goes on to explain there's a missional, incarnational impulse. That's what we're gonna talk about next week. A lot of big churchy words in that that we'll unpack, but essentially it's how do we represent Jesus on our streets, at home, in our neighborhood, in our houses where we go to work, the places that we play and hang out? How do we represent Jesus in those areas? Community is a big thing because Jesus's mission is so much bigger than you and it's so much bigger than me. I by myself cannot accomplish it, and neither can you. There's nobody who can. For there to be a missional movement, it takes all of us coming together as a community. Hirsch talks about an APEST culture and what APEST stands for is Apostles, prophets, evangelists, Shepherds and Teachers, and Hirsch makes the argument that what we need in a missional church movement are these different functions. They're not just gifts, but they're functions within the church. If we're going to have a missional church movement, we have to have more than just what we've become accustomed to, which are shepherds, pastors and teachers and oftentimes the pastor is the teacher but we also need apostles, prophets and evangelists.

Speaker 1: 5:11

We're going to talk about organic systems. For some of you who come in a high church background, very liturgical, lots that's organized, lots of committees, lots of policies, lots of paperwork. We don't really have that. I think we have three policies at Madison Church and I can't remember the last time that somebody's read any of them, including myself, and so we're very organic in that sense. We kind of just roll by the seat of our pants here, and that is how it happens. Just like a living organism, we have to be able to pivot and adjust, to thrive in an ever-changing environment, because the Madison I moved to in 2014 is not the Madison I live in in 2024. We have to be able to adapt.

Speaker 1: 5:49

And finally, disciple-making, which is becoming like Jesus, embodying his daily teachings and his practices, and that's what we're going to talk about this week. So last week we talked about Jesus is Lord and we need to submit every part of our lives to him, and today I want to get practical about that. What we're talking about is disciple making. Yes, on the one hand, declaring Jesus is Lord is declaring what we believe. It's declaring our commitment. And now let's put hands and feet to that as we talk about disciple making.

Speaker 1: 6:22

Discipleship is the task on which Jesus focused his efforts and invested most of his time on earth with other people. If Jesus failed to make disciples out of the people he spent the most time with, you would not be at Madison Church today. I wouldn't be here either. There would be no Christian movement. If Jesus failed at making disciples, there'd be no mission beyond his life, death and resurrection. But here we are today in a community, a Christian community, talking about this because Jesus didn't fail. He succeeded in a wild way 2,000 years ago.

Speaker 1: 6:58

Disciple-making is critical for creating that reproducing movement that we're talking about at Madison Church. Critical for creating that reproducing movement that we're talking about at Madison Church. Remember, the first century. Christianity had about 25,000 followers, 25,000 people would say we believe that Jesus is Lord, and by the end of the third century there were 20 million. It is the greatest movement we've ever seen, not just including religion, but sociologically, the greatest movement of people going from I don't believe in Jesus to I do believe in Jesus and committing to his ways.

Speaker 1: 7:28

And I want to remind you, people were being tortured and killed for this and imprisoned. You came out and said Jesus is Lord. They said all right, in the jail with you, do you renounce him? Yet Nope, okay, let's torture him. Renounce him? Yet? Nope, all right, we'll kill him. And then eventually, maybe the other people will catch on. They did catch on, and yet it didn't change the wavelength. People were still dying for their faith. Well, how did they do that? Well, they were disciples of Jesus. The disciple making process was working well. Similarly, despite facing severe persecution, the number of Christians in China has grown remarkably in the last 70 years. When Christianity became illegal, there was around 1 million followers of Jesus in China. It becomes illegal and nowadays that number is estimated to be 100 million 100 million estimated.

Speaker 1: 8:14

That's the thing about Christian missional church movements is you can't really count the number of people who are here. You can't pass a clipboard around. That's not a movement, that's a church, but when you have so many people you can't count them. Now we've reached movement, and disciple making was a critical aspect in that as well. Now I want to contrast. I mentioned the early church and the Chinese church. Now I want to contrast that with a movement that grew really fast, had the wheels of a missional church movement, but it fell off because disciple-making fell off.

Speaker 1: 8:48

The Methodist movement provides a clear example of this and if your background is Methodism I'm not trying to pick on you today You're watching or listening online. Don't hit the red X yet. But let's look at this. Historically speaking, methodism was founded in the 18th century by John Wesley and it grew exponentially. This was a missional church movement and the reason that it grew so rapidly was because they had a disciple-making practice established.

Speaker 1: 9:20

Early Methodists emphasized personal holiness, accountability and community through small groups, which they called classes and bands. I know there's a lot of history and you're like why does this matter? Here's why it matters. These groups were central to their strategy of making disciples. They ensured that every person there whether it was your first day believing or your 100th day believing or your fifth year, believing that you were being discipled, and they pushed people to make other disciples. You didn't just join a small group and you four, no more, and that was it. They pushed you out. You have to make more disciples and, as a result, methodism grew exponentially, particularly in the United States, where 35% of the population would have identified as Methodist in the 19th century One out of three people. That's a missional church movement.

Speaker 1: 10:12

However and you knew where I was going with this something happened in 1850, when the Methodism started requiring all of their circuit riders and local ministers to complete four years of ordination studies. They made them go to seminary and, all of a sudden, it killed the movement. And the reason they made them go to seminary is because the Lutherans and the Episcopals were talking about how dumb these Methodists were and unlearned and uneducated. They didn't know about the New Testament and Greek and Hebrew. They didn't know about church history. What did they know about making disciples? Well, who cares about that? Wait a second. That seems like a pretty freaking important thing to be good at, and they were good at it. Well, so then, after about 10 years of forcing people to go to seminary, the movement's dying. It has come to a complete stop and now it's dying. They overcorrect and they disband the classes, the small groups, the bands, the disciple-making tool that made this thing.

Speaker 1: 11:12

This go from John Wesley to a Christian movement in which one out of every three Americans would have said I go to a Methodist church. They disbanded, they went from oh gosh, we went too far. We're pushing people too far to, we're just going to not do anything anymore. They had the right mix. But then they went too far in one direction and then too far in the next.

Speaker 1: 11:33

And since then, since then, methodism in the United States has been declining by the percentage of the population, ever since. Ever since they know they have vernacular within the Methodist church. They talk about waking the sleeping giant, because they know that's what they are. But how do we wake the sleeping giant? This decline highlights the critical importance of making disciples, and when we focus on making disciples at Madison Church, we will ensure the growth and sustainability of a Christian movement here in Madison. However, our task at Madison Church is not just to create disciples, but to create disciples who make disciples, as Jesus intended and as the early church practiced. That is how we fuel a movement that transforms lives, impacts the city and has the potential to reach beyond the city of Madison. So today I want to talk to reach beyond the city of Madison.

Speaker 1: 12:30

So today I want to talk about a couple things about discipleship, and one of the things that hurts discipleship is this word consumerism. And that's where I want to begin my talk with discipleship first. Consumerism in our society poses an urgent and significant challenge to making disciples. You are told and sold everywhere, whether you're on Facebook, you're watching TV, listening to the radio, all of those ads are coming through right, you need this, you don't have this. And they're good at their job. They're so good. It's just a part of our culture. Consumerism and all of us, we kind of have a heightened sense of when someone's trying to sell us something or we're trying to get to the core, what is it that you're trying to push on me, to get me to buy? And unfortunately, in that way our society has a bigger impact on us than Jesus does.

Speaker 1: 13:18

When it comes to discipleship and here's what I mean we often approach church or picking a church community like picking food at a buffet bar. We look over all of our options first. We have our plate in our hand, we're ready, we're eager, we look it over and what looks good and what doesn't look good, and what do I like and what don't I like, and then we take our fill and we try to get as much as we can until we're full. Then we go home until we come back, and that's how many of us treat church. I'm not trying to pick on anyone. You're watching or listening online and you're trying to pick a church. I'm not trying to pick on you either.

Speaker 1: 13:55

But I am trying to say that this mindset contributes significantly to the discipleship crisis that we have in the United States, and we do have a crisis of discipleship in the United States. Many of our problems within the big C capital Christian church can be solved with discipleship. Not new programs, not new software, not bigger and better messaging, but discipleship. It's a crisis that demands our immediate attention and Alan Hirsch echoes the sentiment about consumerism just really destroying things for us. He says I have come to the conclusion that for Christians who live in the Western world, the major challenge to the viability of Christianity is not Buddhism with all its philosophical appeal to the Western mind, nor is it Islam with all the challenge that it poses to Western culture. But I've come to believe that the major threat to the viability of our faith is that of consumerism. So he's saying don't worry about Buddhism, don't worry about philosophy, don't worry about Islam, don't worry about the threats, don't worry about all of these things. That's not actually the issue. The issue is consumerism. That is the biggest issue that we face and I tend to agree with him.

Speaker 1: 15:05

For a long time in the United States, we have turned into a vendor of religious goods and services. People choose their church based on individual preferences and consume spiritual goods and services offered by the latest and best vendor and professionals. We ask questions when choosing a church, like who has the most excellent facilities? Who doesn't meet in a basement with patio lights lighting things up? Where do my children have the most fun? Versus? Which church is sending them to Niagara Falls to work in 95 degree heat for a week? How is the music here? It's excellent.

Speaker 1: 15:44

Do I like the pastor's personality? Nobody, nod your head. Okay, it's either going to feed my ego or destroy it, but these are the ways that we pick our churches. That's the criteria and other criteria that we use and we say, if these check all of my boxes, I'll go to this church and then, fingers crossed, I will become a disciple of Christ. We got it backwards, people. We got it backwards.

Speaker 1: 16:08

What if, instead, we started picking the church based on who can make a disciple and we started engaging there, going there fully, committing there, and then we worked out these other things, which I'm not saying aren't important. It's not like I like bad music, okay. It's not like I like bad children's ministries I love all those things. But what if we pick based on discipleship? But because we haven't and because we all contribute to this, we all contribute to this. This is a shared responsibility.

Speaker 1: 16:40

True discipleship isn't happening and, as a result, the professionals happening and, as a result, the professionals, people in my job we focus more on doing church well than making disciples, because we know that's what makes people come. We know that's how we can get you in the door is if we do church well. But let me tell you this you cannot consume your way into discipleship. You can try, but it will not work. What people like me and people in my job should have done? Church leaders and pastors, people who are elders, now coordinators, as we just announced we need to push back and challenge consumerism, not cater to it. As a result, if we do this well at Madison Church, we'll never be the biggest or fastest growing church in Madison. Hate to break it to you, but when you push against consumerism, those are the things you're going to sacrifice being the fastest and biggest. If you want to become the fastest and biggest, you learn how to do church better than everyone else who's doing church in your area and this might sound like I'm picking on other churches, and that's not my intent. My intent, rather, is to shift focus and to say that this isn't working.

Speaker 1: 17:50

Look at the 50 years or more of trends of how Christianity is in correlation with the population, all of the people nowadays who are deconstructing their faith and absolutely abandoning it. They're not just deconstructing it to rebuild something in its place. They're deconstructing it and there's an empty plot there. Think of your kids, or your kids' kids, or the kids of your friends, and you know that they graduated and once they moved out of the house, they stopped going to church, and I know that's pain. I'm not trying to make light of that, but that's what's at stake.

Speaker 1: 18:20

When we give into consumerism, that's what we're sacrificing at the altar. We give into consumerism that's what we're sacrificing at the altar. It's people's faith, it's the next generation's faith, and so we, as Christian leaders, if that's how you identify today, we have to push back. We have a shared responsibility in that. So that's the first thing I want to say about discipleship you can't consume your way into it. The next thing that we got to talk about doing is being challenged, because discipleship is challenging, and that's how I think we practically can accomplish this at our church. First, let's state that what we all know, which is that our job is to make disciples, not build a church. So, backing up to that last point where it's like do we want to be the fastest church, fastest growing church? Do we want to be the biggest church, fastest growing church? Do we want to be the biggest church? I don't think that's going to happen the way that we do it, but if it does, it would be because of Jesus's blessing over us.

Speaker 1: 19:13

He makes this abundantly clear in Matthew 16. You are blessed talking to Peter, simon, son of John, because my father in heaven has revealed this to you. You did not learn this from any human being. I want to say to you that you are Peter, which means rock, and upon this rock I will build my church and all the powers of hell will not conquer it. He's not saying, peter, build my church. Really, need you to do this and figure it out for me? Rather, he says I want to start with you because, don't forget, the church is a community and you are people, and when we come together, we are that community. That is the church. And so Jesus is saying I'm going to build my church, I'm going to build my community, I'm starting with you, peter, I'm starting with you, but don't get it twisted, it's not your responsibility to build my church, I will do it. To put it another way, mike Breen in his book on discipleship. He says if you want to make disciples, you will always get the church, but if you make a church, you rarely get disciples. That's putting it a different way. So our focus is on discipleship and then Jesus will build his church. At Madison Church, we focus on discipleship and we just trust that God will build his own church.

Speaker 1: 20:29

Discipleship is about doing. Discipleship is not the transfer of information. As the Methodist denomination proved, information was not the issue. Discipleship is about profound transformation through action. It's about becoming more like Jesus, not knowing a whole bunch of stuff about Jesus, and this is a journey that cannot be achieved by just learning or thinking more. We cannot think our ways into new ways of acting. We cannot think our way into new ways of acting. Instead, we need to act our way into new ways of acting. We cannot think our way into new ways of acting. Instead, we need to act our way into new ways of thinking. Behavior comes first. There's a process that's both challenging and deeply rewarding.

Speaker 1: 21:17

We live in a culture in which you can hear any church just about anywhere in the world. We get people listening to our podcast in China. I don't know who's listening to us in China, or if it's the government or what's going on, but we have people listening. I don't know how that, but you know what. You put it on the internet and it's out there. What I'm saying is like what do you want to know? What do you want to know about the culture of the Greeks in which Jesus lived? What do you want to know about the early church? What do you want to know about the Hebrew language? What do you want to know about Old Testament theology, new Testament, history? The answers are out there. For most of you, the answers are sitting in your pocket on a smartphone.

Speaker 1: 21:54

However, as Dallas Willard, a great theologian, quips, we are educated beyond our capacity to obey. He says you already know enough. Is what Dallas is saying In his experience. You already know enough. Most of you in the room you already know enough. It's not more knowledge that's keeping you from having a better relationship with Jesus. It's you doing something with the knowledge that you already possess.

Speaker 1: 22:20

And this we got to push it back then against the feed me culture. I use the analogy of how we choose churches, like a buffet bar Ooh, that looks good, I'll take some of that. Ooh, that looks good, I'll take some of that. That could be kind of like listening to podcasts and YouTube. I'm not against knowledge. For the record, I think you got to start somewhere, but at some point you got to push back against the feed me culture. We've had people at this church Madison church who have said we're going to go to a different church. We just don't feel like we're being fed anymore. That's okay. I don't think we're what you're looking for. If you're watching or listening online and you're looking for a church that feeds you, this isn't it. That is not our culture.

Speaker 1: 22:54

This next part Paul calls that out. Paul says hey, some of you are still like babies and you're still nursing and the only thing you can consume is milk. He's calling out the immaturity and so sometimes you get the people and they puff out the chest. Well, I'm just not being fed anymore. Well, paul just called you a baby, the Apostle Paul. And if you really were that big, you know, mature Christian, you probably would have read that by now already. But let me point it out. Okay, he says that mature Christians feed themselves. And he says that mature Christians feed themselves.

Speaker 1: 23:28

And it's not just about knowledge, it's about doing something. Listen to what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11. Follow my example as I follow the example of Christ. He doesn't say listen to my teachings, because at the end of your life there's going to be a theology test. He says follow my example, look at what I do, and do that because I'm looking at Christ and trying to do what Christ did. This is discipleship. It's about doing something and discipleship in the New Testament that's how it was it was follow me as I follow Jesus.

Speaker 1: 24:02

And somewhere along the way we exchanged doing probably because it's hard and it's challenging for learning, which is a little bit easier and again, I'm not against learning. We offer all sorts of cool courses at Madison Church to help people understand why we believe what we believe. Every Sunday morning I do a book report on the same book. You guys ever think about my job that way? Okay, every Sunday I get together, I got to write a paper on a book that I've been reading my whole well for the last 20 years. We're not against learning. We need it.

Speaker 1: 24:29

But the problem is we often talk about discipleship while our actions differ from our words. We need to align the two. We need to close that gap. And finally, so discipleship is about doing. Consumerism kills it. We need to be a high-challenge, high-invitation culture. Finally, discipleship is required. It's something that we all have to do, not just me, not just your small group leader, not just the elders at Madison Church.

Speaker 1: 24:57

Discipleship is something that every single one of you, as I'm making eye contact with all I want you to know. I'm talking to you, okay, discipleship is something for all of us. Listen to Jesus' words. Before his ascension, he comes to his disciples and says I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth. Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, all of you. If you are my disciple. Go and make disciples, baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. This is why we let other people baptize at Madison Church. In case you were curious about that If you help lead someone to the faith, we let you baptize them. Why? Because that seems to be Jesus' mandate here. Okay, so I'm not going to argue with him when I get to the other side about who should baptize who. He says. And be sure of this I'm with you always, even until the end of the age.

Speaker 1: 25:46

The Great Commission is not a director for seminary grads, for pastors, for church leaders alone. It is a call and a mandate for each of us, no matter your role, where you're going to work tomorrow or later today, or where you're coming from yesterday, or if you work from home or you parent at home, you're a stay-at-home mom or dad. Regardless of where you vocationally find yourself, your call as a follower of Jesus is to make disciples. It's not just about becoming a disciple ourselves. I think many of us we get hung up on that. I think about my journey, my personal salvation. How am I becoming more Christ-like? And we forget that part of becoming more Christ-like and part of becoming a disciple is turning around, looking behind us and seeing who's around us and helping them along. You cannot be a disciple of Jesus without making disciples for Jesus. I know that's challenging, but that's part of what I said I wanted to work on at our church anyway. But Jesus does not make a distinction. The New Testament does not make a distinction. The early church does not make a distinction. If you weren't making a disciple, you weren't a disciple. The two were one of the same in the first 400 years of Christianity. And then eventually we started outsourcing it to professionals where, all of a sudden, your job was just to bring your friends and family here on Sunday mornings and then let me the professional disciple them. But that's not how Jesus intended it and that's not how the early church practiced it.

Speaker 1: 27:14

And so, as we wrap this up, we need to help other people. When we tend to think of, like I need to be fed more, which I think a lot of us we tend to feel like there's something else we're missing, or so we think, well, I just need to be fed more. I think actually, what that is is a misunderstanding of what God's spirit actually is telling you. He's saying there is more. There is more. And we say there must be more to learn, because for many of us, when we're getting started in our faith, that's what it is it is learning and it's knowledge and it's getting that foundational stuff. And so then, when we have this inclination that there must be more, we think more knowledge. But no, no, no, no, no. The Spirit is saying there is more. Look around you, look behind you. Who's there? Extend a hand? That is more. You know enough already.

Speaker 1: 28:04

Now, help them, because what you're going to discover is, as you're helping other people, you're going to need to learn, you're going to need to educate yourself, because you're going to meet people and they're going to be messed up. Okay, so they're going to be messed up. You're going to be like, oh my gosh, I was never that bad. You were, trust me, I knew a lot of you. Okay, you were at one point we got high invitation, we got to support and accept everyone, but we got to help them. And then that means you go and you find like people like Lindsay and Dick, who have been following Jesus well for a long time, and you say, hey, I'm going through this situation, what do I do? And in that way they're also being discipled because they're like thinking through it. How do I teach someone else to do this? And then they do it and we keep feeding it forward.

Speaker 1: 28:46

You will need more knowledge, but I think that that's what for some of us in the room, when we feel like, why am I not growing in my faith? It's because we're not helping someone grow in their faith, and so I want to end with the application, which is a challenge and a series of questions that I have for you. Where can you stand to grow in your own discipleship today, in the season of life in which you find yourself in Madison, wisconsin, in 2024, on this Sunday morning, where can you stand to grow in your discipleship? Are you someone who is highly invitational, but you can grow in the way that you challenge yourself and others? How might you better reflect Jesus in your own life? By challenging yourself and others to step up more fully into what God has called you to do? Jesus was not afraid of challenging other people. Jesus loves us enough to meet us where we're at, and he loves us enough to not leave us there. He challenges us to step forward to what he has called us to. Are you someone who. This morning, you find yourself highly challenging, but you need to grow in the way that you invite others into your life. How might you better show Jesus to the world around you? By loving the world around you like Jesus loves them.

Speaker 1: 30:01

When it comes to your relationship with God, is it thriving or is it surviving, or somewhere in between? How are your relationships with the church and other Christians? Are you connected with believers outside of Sunday mornings? Why? Why not Remember true discipleship is not a solitary journey. Is there a part of you that you could engage the world around you better? Maybe you got the God thing figured out, you and God, you're thriving and you're connected to the church. But man, your neighbors, they don't know anything about your faith and what you believe or why you believe it, or the people you work with, and maybe you're trying to keep that a secret. Let me challenge you on that. Why? Why is it a secret, trying to keep that a secret? Let me challenge you on that. Why? Why is it a secret At Madison Church?

Speaker 1: 30:49

Our goal is clear.

Speaker 1: 30:49

We aim to equip every member to be a disciple maker.

Speaker 1: 30:52

Madison Church is not just about knowledge.

Speaker 1: 30:54

We've tried to set the whole thing up to be in a culture of empowerment in which we say you check us out on the website first, you start visiting, you get connected, you become a member, you become a coordinator, and then the list of jobs and things that you can do and actually immerse yourself in at Madison Church is wild, and we haven't even begun to scratch the surface yet. But it's out there and so we want to equip you. We don't just want to talk to you, but this will require your commitment, will require mutual sacrifice, and it requires a devoted willingness to be shaped and molded by Jesus. It's about moving beyond our consumeristic mindsets and embracing a life dedicated to following Jesus, and this means being part of a community that not only supports us but challenges us. Being a part of a community that not only supports us but challenges us holds us accountable to help us grow in our faith, and it's our commitment and dedication to this, to disciple making, which will determine whether or not Madison Church can become a missional movement in Madison.