Intentional or Not…
On Sunday, our fall “Step Up” discipleship series began, and this week, our Step Groups are kicking off. It’s an exciting week around here! (By the way, if you didn’t get your book – we have them at the building now!)
As I was going through the material in “Discipleship Essentials,” the book that is guiding our Step Groups, I was continually struck by one word:
intentional.
He uses the word in the “Core Truth” for the week:
Discipling is an intentional relationship in which we walk alongside other disciples in order to encourage, equip, and challenge one another in love to grow towards maturity in Christ.
An intentional relationship.
One of the realities I’ve noticed in my time as a pastor is how much ‘discipling’ (by ‘discipling’, he means how we grow one another in faith) is done unintentionally. To some degree, we need this. We see how an older, more experienced Christian responds to adversity – and we learn and grow from it. Or we hear a story of God’s faithfulness from someone else sharing and we glean wisdom from it. Or we listen to someone else pray and from them, we learn how to pray. We all unintentionally disciple others all of the time. In many ways, all good. We need this.
But the problem with it is that it’s a kind of discipleship that is “caught rather than taught,” and if only done this way, it leaves some “unexposed” and thus, they don’t “catch” it. It leaves too much to chance, randomness, perception. Don’t get me wrong, we need unintentional discipling too; but what we need more – and what we need to work on – is what this chapter is about: intentional discipling.
As you’ll read (or read already) this week, Jesus modelled it and Paul practiced it. They selected a handful of disciples who weren’t as far along as they were, and with all humility, they intentionally modelled how to do the faith, they gave them chances to serve, they had times together to reflect on it, they taught them what they needed to know, and so on. All so that they can go and do it for others (making disciple-making disciples!).
They “poured into” others, so that they could learn, grow, and be filled.
We too, are called to be intentional about it. One of the reasons I’m excited about Step Groups is that for many of us, we’ve only practiced the unintentional kind of discipling. The Step Groups will help us practice a more intentional discipling with one another. We’ll get a taste of what we can do to “encourage, equip, and challenge one another in love to grow towards maturity in Christ.” Once we get that taste, that practice, we will see that we can intentionally do this discipling with others – and on top of it – should seek it out from others, knowing that we never ‘arrive’, we never have it all figured out.
But as Paul tells us in Ephesians 4:13, we shouldn’t stop “until all of us come…to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ.”