Jesus the Disciplemaker - Part One Building Relationships

I want you to play a little imagination game with me this morning. Imagine that you live in heaven and you have a very special relationship with God. But then one day God comes to you and tells you that He wants you to go to planet Earth on a special mission. Your mission is to communicate the truth about God, and how to have a relationship with God, to the whole human race.

Now that’s a pretty tough assignment because there are about 5 billion people living on planet earth. And hardly any of them know anything about God, let alone know that they can have a relationship with him.

But as an obedient servant, you accept this mission. Now you’ve got to figure out what method you’re going to use to get the job done.

Is there some way to accomplish it using technology? Perhaps you could set up a system of satellites that would blanket the earth 24 hours a day with TV and radio broadcasts proclaiming the truth about God. But then you’d have to make sure that everybody on earth had access to either a TV or a radio and would listen to it.

Maybe you could set up a Web site on the Internet. But then there’s still lots of people who don’t have computers.

Or maybe you could use mass marketing techniques. You could hire a Madison Ave. advertising agency to create a worldwide, multi-billion dollar ad campaign to promote God. You could design an attractive logo and come up with a catchy slogan and saturate the media with it. You could have t-shirts and jackets and other licensed merchandise that would tie into the campaign. Companies like Coca-Cola and Nike have already done some of this and had a certain amount of success with it.

But if that didn’t work, maybe you could take the political approach. Maybe you could arrange to take over the government of a major country. Then you could build up their armed forces and secret police to the point where you could simply impose your version of the truth on the people of your country and the other countries around it. This might not make you very popular, but the Communists proved that it could work, at least temporarily.

Or maybe it would be better to take the educational approach. If you could just get all the universities and colleges in the world to teach a course called God 101 to their students, then maybe that would work. But then again, how many of those 5 billion people on earth are ever going to have a shot at a university education?

So you see, it’s a pretty daunting assignment.

And I’ll tell you one method that you would probably never think of. That would be to come to earth and spend three years telling 12 average working men the truth about God and then go back to heaven and have them be responsible for spreading the news. I mean that would never work. Would it? Or would it?

That’s exactly the method Jesus Christ chose to get the job done. In order to change the world with the truth, he chose to make disciples—to pour his life and his teaching into individual people, one by one, so that they could out and do the same thing with others.

And when you boil Christianity down to its essence, it’s about making disciples. It isn’t about building stained-glass cathedrals or writing books about theology. It isn’t about music, or liturgy, or education, or social action, or politics. It is about making disciples.

Disciplemaking is important because it is what Jesus Christ came to do. It was the essence of his mission. Jesus’ priority while he was here on earth was to pour his life into that little group of men. He ministered to great crowds of people, but that wasn’t where his priority was. It was with his disciples.

Disciplemaking is important because it brings glory to God. In John 17, we find Jesus praying for his disciples at the Last Supper. It is the end of his earthly ministry. He is literally on the eve of going to the cross. But he prays there in v. 4…

I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do.

But what was that work? Was it dying on the cross? No, that couldn’t be what Jesus was talking about, because that hadn’t happened yet. The work that Jesus was referring to in his prayer is the work of making disciples. He says: “I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work of making these men into my disciples.”

And later on in that prayer, he says to his heavenly father “I have revealed you to those whom you gave me”. Jesus brought glory to God by revealing God to these men. And that is what made them into disciples. They had seen God in Jesus.

Disciplemaking is important because it is what Jesus wants us to do. In that same prayer, in verse 18, Jesus says “As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world.”

And in Matthew 28:19-20, Jesus explains to his disciples what that means. He tells them “I want you to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

This is what we call the Great Commission. And disciplemaking is at the heart of it.

So disciplemaking is important because it is what Jesus came to do; it is important because it brings glory to God in the doing of it, and it is important because it is what Jesus wants us to do.

But how do we do it? How can we as individuals, and we as a church, become disciplemakers?

Well, how did Jesus do it? After all, he said “Just as the father sent me, even so I am sending you.’ So there must be a clue in his ministry as to the process he used to get the job done.

And, sure enough, when you look at Jesus’ earthly ministry, you will find that there were four steps in his approach to making disciples. And we want to look at each of these steps over the next four weeks.

1. He built relationships with the lost.

Jesus spent almost the first half of his three-year public ministry on this part of the process. He just hung out with people. He built relationships with them. He got to know them and he let them get to know him.

It was at this stage of his ministry that he met the guys who would ultimately become his disciples. But they were only acquaintances at this point. They were certainly curious about who he was and what he was up to. But there was no full-fledged commitment on their part to following him yet. They just needed to get to know him better. And he needed to get to know them.

2. He trained believers for ministry.

Once Jesus had identified the men who were disciple material—the men who were hungry for more—he began to pour his life into them. He challenged them to a greater level of commitment. He said “Follow me and I will make you fishers of men.”

He began to prepare them to have a ministry in the lives of others.

3. He involved workers in ministry.

The next thing he did was to get them involved in ministry. It was at this stage that Jesus began to preach to big crowds of people and heal the sick and so on. And his disciples were there involved in the process. He had them doing things like trying to figure out how they were going to feed 5,000 people.

He sent them out on preaching tours of their own. He had them experience what it was like to face opposition from the Pharisees.

This was the stage at which Jesus’ disciples rolled up their sleeves and got busy in ministry. But during this time, Jesus would also take them away every now and then for a little retreat. They would get away from the crowds and go to a quiet place where they could sort of de-brief, and re-hash the things they were learning. And Jesus would teach them some more stuff about ministry.

4. Jesus developed leaders for future growth.

Jesus was always thinking about the day when he would no longer be with them. And he always was getting them ready to take over the ministry.

He spent a whole night in prayer and then he called the twelve to him and designated them “apostles”, which means “sent ones”. And these were the men, except for Judas, who become the leaders of the movement after Jesus had gone back to heaven.

So Jesus modeled four stages in the disciplemaking process:

1. Building relationships with the lost and winning them to Christ.

2. Training these raw, new believers for ministry

3. Involving them as workers in actual ministry—letting them get their feet wet.

4. Developing these workers into leaders who can take over and lead on their own.

Now we want to look closer at the first step—Building Relationships—to find out how we can follow Jesus’ lead in this part of the process.

I guess the first thing we need to admit is that, as Christians, it’s easy for us NOT to build relationships with the lost. We can get so wrapped up in church activities, and in doing things with our Christian friends, that we just don’t have the time or the desire to get involved with unbelievers.

The first key will help you to overcome this tendency. It is to…

1. Operate from a strong prayer base.

You will find that every aspect of Christ’s ministry was saturated with prayer. He prayed at the time of his baptism; he prayed at the beginning of his ministry; he prayed when he had important decisions to make; he prayed at times of tremendous stress and physical exhaustion; he prayed during times when he enjoyed great popularity and at times when there was great opposition to his ministry. Jesus was a man of prayer.

And we need to be people of prayer, too. Because prayer puts us in touch with the heart of God. And the heart of God is for people who are lost. We will find it very hard to ignore lost people if we are truly praying.

As we pray, God will begin to burden our hearts with what burdens his—the salvation of these people who are all around us. And he will begin to challenge us with how we might be the answer to our own prayers—how we might be able to reach out and get involved with these people who need Jesus Christ. And that gets us to the second key…

2. Pursue intentional relationships

In John 1, at the beginning of his ministry, Jesus intentionally got involved with lost people. First, he hooked up with Andrew and John. They were followers of John the Baptist, which means that they must have been somewhat spiritually-minded. (You’ll find lots of people out there whom God has already been working on.)

They asked Jesus where he was staying. Instead of just answering them, Jesus said “Come on along with me and you’ll see.” In other words, he invited them to spend time with him.

Later on, he strikes up a friendship with Peter, that big rugged fisherman, by giving him a nickname—Rocky. Then it says in verse 43 that he found Philip and he said “Follow me.” How did he find him? I don’t know, but he must have been out there where the people were. Philip went and got his buddy Nathanael and introduced him to Jesus.

So in two days, Jesus has already made friends with five people. He’s intentionally building relationships with lost people. And all five of these men ended up becoming his disciples.

We need to start looking for ways that we can strike up friendships with lost people for Jesus’ sake. Because we’ll never win people to Christ if we hold them out there at arm’s length. Howard Hendricks said “You can impress people at a distance, but you can only impact them up close. The closer the personal relationship—the greater the potential for impact.”

Is there somebody that you can intentionally start building a friendship with for Jesus’ sake?

3. Build an atmosphere of love.

I’ll tell you one thing that is true of every single person you will ever meet. They need love. They’re searching for it; they’re yearning for it; and they are deeply and profoundly touched by it when they find it.

Mark Mittleberg is the co-author of the book How to Become a Contagious Christian, which we have been studying on Sunday nights. He tells the story of how one day he was in a supermarket. He had purchased a bouquet of flowers for his wife’s birthday and he was standing in line at the check-out counter.

There was an elderly lady in front of him and she remarked how pretty the flowers were. They struck up a conversation, and in the course of it, Mark found out that her husband had just recently passed away after a long illness. He could see the tears forming in her eyes as she told him that.

But by then they had reached the check-out counter and the conversation ended. The woman checked out and left. Mark paid for the flowers and he was heading for his car in the parking lot when he saw the elderly lady in the distance about to get into her car.

Something inside him urged him to go over and speak to her again. So he hurried over to her car and he said “Ma’am, I’m deeply sorry that you have lost your husband. Since he’s no longer around to give you flowers, I’d like you to have these.” And he handed her the bouquet.

That woman was so touched by that simple act of love from a total stranger that she became a good friend of the Mark and his family. She later moved to Florida, but she always kept in touch. And she always mentioned how much that simple gift had meant to her.

When we reach out in love to lost people in the name of Jesus, we are tapping into the most profound power in the universe—the love of God. And lives will be changed as a result.

4. Keep your focus on Christ

In the course of his ministry, Jesus sometimes had great crowds following him. But most of them were following him for all the wrong reasons. Some were following him just to see the miracles that he did. Others were following him just to be fed. Their motivation was totally selfish. Still others were following him to see if he would break the Jewish law, or run afoul of the religious authorities. Still others were following him because they thought that the Messiah was going to overthrow the Romans.

They all had a wrong concept of who He was. And Jesus knew that only as people began to understand who He was and why He came would they begin to have the right motivation for following Him.

And that is why we need to keep our focus on Christ. Because it is very difficult to yield your life to someone you don’t know properly. Your motivation becomes skewed. If your focus is wrong, your following is wrong. And if your following is wrong, you won’t be able to lead anyone else to the true Christ.

5. Be enthusiastic about your church

The early Christians in the book of Acts were excited about the fact that Jesus Christ had risen from the dead. And they were excited about the church, because they sensed that Christ was present among them. The church became the focal point of their lives.

In Acts 2 we read:

Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need.

Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

The church had a very positive and healthy self-image. And that attracted non-Christians.

Are you excited about this church? Is it a place where you would want to bring your unsaved friends? Is there a sense of expectancy and vision and purpose here? Is there a loving atmosphere here? Is it obvious that God is here?

I trust that you will be committed to making these things happen so that our fellowship will be like a magnet that will draw people to Christ.

6. Keep the Word central in your life.

Jesus proclaimed the basic truths of Scripture with power and authority. And he lived the Word, he not only taught it. The result was that his disciples lives were transformed.

Is the Word of God central in your life? Do people sense that you really practice what you preach, or what you say you believe? Nothing turns an unbeliever off Christianity faster than a Christian who is living an inconsistent life.

We’ve learned six keys, then, to building relationships with the lost:

1. Operate from a strong prayer base.

2. Pursue intentional relationships.

3. Build an atmosphere of love into those relationships.

4. Keep your focus on Christ.

5. Be enthusiastic about your church.

6. Keep the Word of God central in your life.

There’s one last thing about building relationships that we need to remember: you can’t take short-cuts.

In our kitchen at home we have two appliances. One is a crock-pot, the other is a microwave. We use the microwave to heat up dishes quickly to eat on the run. But you know what sometimes happens. You heat up a plate of leftovers, only to find that the center of the mashed potatoes are still cold. Yukk! It’s fast, but it’s not very satisfying.

But then there’s the crock-pot. Carolyn uses our crock-pot to make one of my favorite treats—chili con queso. It’s a rich blend of chili, cheese, tomatoes, jalapeno peppers, and onions. It’s the best thing in the universe to put on a tortilla chip.

But the secret is time. You put all the ingredients in the crock pot and you simmer it all day long. The ingredients need time to blend. You just can’t short-circuit that process. There’s no such thing as “good” five-minute chile con queso.

The same thing is true in relationships. It takes time for all the ingredients to blend. It’s not going to happen overnight. There’s no quick, fast-acting program that’s going to help you build authentic relationships with people.

Disciplemaking is long-term work. But it’s the most important work in the world. Will you get involved in it?