Jesus the Disciplemaker - Part Two Ministry Training

Whenever you walk into a McDonalds restaurant, you are walking into a very unique place. Even though that familiar sign outside the restaurant says “Billions and billions” served, the purpose of McDonalds is not just to make hamburgers. It is to make hamburger-makers.

You see, the secret of McDonalds’ success is that they have become one of the most effective training organizations in the world. Just outside of Chicago, McDonalds has a management training center that they call Hamburger University. All the franchise owners and store managers go there to learn how to make hamburgers the McDonalds way.

But they learn something even more important at Hamburger U.: they learn how to teach others how to make hamburgers the McDonalds way.

And that’s why McDonalds can take a teenager who has never had a job before, or a retiree who is looking for something to do, and in a matter of days make that person into a professional hamburger maker. Training is the key.

And training is the key to a healthy church. Because training is at the heart of disciplemaking. Let’s look at Jesus’ ministry. Turn to Mark 1.

Jesus spent the first year and a half of his ministry just hanging out with people—getting to know them and letting them get to know him. And in the course of that time, he was building relationships. He met several significant people who were particularly drawn to him: guys like Simon Peter, Andrew, John, Philip, and Nathanael.

These people were not yet his disciples, but they were his friends. If you want to have an impact on other people, you have to start by building friendships.

Now one day, Jesus was at the beach. Let’s read what happened there in Mark 1:16…

As Jesus walked beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will make you fishers of men.” At once they left their nets and followed him.

When he had gone a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John in a boat, preparing their nets. Without delay he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men and followed him.

Now something extraordinary is happening here. You’ve got four professional fishermen—Simon and Andrew; James and John—and they’re doing what they’ve been doing for years. They’re fishing. Or, they’re working on their boats, mending their nets.

And Jesus comes along and he gives them an invitation: he says “Come follow me.” And there’s an urgency about that invitation. It was something they needed to respond to right then and there. Jesus didn’t say “Meet me in Capernaum next Tuesday and we’ll start a Bible study.”

He said “Drop everything. Come and follow me now. There’s nothing more important in your life than that you follow me. Your boats, your nets, your fish, even your father and your family are not as important as following me.”

Is that something that you’ve heard Jesus say to you?

You know, people have a lot of funny ideas about what a Christian is. They think that you’re a Christian if you were born in America and aren’t a Jew or a Muslim. They think that you’re a Christian because some priest or pastor sprinkled you with water when you were a baby. They think that you’re a Christian because you go to a church that has a cross on the steeple.

But that isn’t what makes a Christian. Jesus said “Come, follow me.” And if you don’t come and follow Him—if He isn’t the one you’re walking with through life—then you’re not a Christian.

Now Jesus said “Follow me and I will make you fishers of men.” He gave them an invitation to an education. He said “If you follow me, I’m going to turn you into something. I’m going to teach you something that you don’t know how to do now.”

“Right now, you guys are fishermen. And you’re pretty good at it. You know how to catch fish. But I’m going to show you how to do something far more important than catching fish. I’m going to show you how to catch men—how to have an impact on people for My sake, and for my heavenly Father’s sake. I’m going to make you fishers of men.”

Notice where the responsibility lays. Jesus said “I’m going to do this. I’m responsible for it. Your responsibility is to follow me; my responsibility is to make you fishers of men.” He has to make us before he can use us.

If you follow Jesus, He will make you into something you are not now. He will make you into an impacter of people. He will make you into someone who ministers to, and brings blessing to, others. You see, being a Christian is not a solo routine.

There are many benefits and blessings to being a follower of Christ, but being a disciple is not just for your benefit. It’s for the benefit of others, too, through you. True followers of Christ are called to minister to others.

Now you might be saying “Oh man, I can’t be a minister to others. I can’t get up in front of people and speak and do all that stuff.” But wait a minute! That’s not what’s involved in being a minister to others. The Bible says that when you give a cup of cold water in the name of Jesus to someone who’s thirsty, you’re having a ministry.

There’s a woman in our church who is homebound in a wheelchair. There’s a lot of things she can’t do. But every time I see her, she asks me “What can I do to help? Is there somebody who needs some encouragement? Is there someone I can call and try to cheer up?” That’s what ministry is. And that kind of stuff has an impact on people. It draws them to Christ.

And that’s the kind of person Jesus will make you if you just follow Him.

He gave them an invitation to an education for an occupation. These guys were fishermen. But Jesus was going to give them a new occupation—he was going to turn them into fishers of men.

Does that mean that if I follow Jesus, he’s going to ask me to quit my job? Well, maybe he will and maybe he won’t. But I’ll tell you one thing—if you start following Jesus, you’re going to start seeing your occupation in different terms.

You’re going to understand that there’s a deeper reason for why you are here. I’m sure that if you asked most people why they are alive today—what’s the reason for their existence—they couldn’t give you a very good answer.

Are they alive just to earn a paycheck? Are they alive just to work 40 hours a week for PP&L, or Air Products, or AT&T? What’s the real reason they do what they do every day? And when life is over, what will it all amount to? What difference will it have made?

I’ll tell you something: when I was 18 years old, I found myself asking those questions. I graduated from high school when I was just 16, and since I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, I decided to work for a few years before going to college. I managed to pick up a job with Air Canada at their headquarters in Montreal.

That was like a dream come true for me, because as you know, I’m very interested in aviation. In fact, that’s how I got the job. I told them how, as a boy, I used to ride my bike out to the airport and just sit at the end of the runway watching the airplanes. And they said “Wow, this is the kind of guy we want working for us.”

So there I was working for Air Canada in their computer center. And that was great, because I really like computers a lot, and that whole field was just mushrooming, so the prospects of advancement were very good.

And I loved all the fringe benefits of working for an airline, like the free travel privileges, and the vacations to exotic places, and so on. So I felt like I had the world by the tail and had a very bright future.

So why was I not very happy inside? I really liked my job, but I began to think, as I looked at that big room full of computers “Am I going to do this for the rest of my life? And what will it matter if I do?”

And that was when I began to hear Jesus saying “Come and follow me. There’s so much more to life than just earning a paycheck, or building a career. You can have an impact on people that will last for eternity. Come and I will make you a fisher of men.”

And that became my primary occupation in life. Now you don’t have to leave your job, or go into the ministry like I did in order to be able to minister to other people. But if you follow Jesus, he’ll change your perspective on your job. You’ll start seeing it, not as the be-all and end-all of your existence, but as the lake in which he wants you to fish.

There are people in your workplace who need Jesus Christ. And that’s why he’s placed you there.

So Jesus gives us an invitation to an education for an occupation. And when we follow him, like the Peter, Andrew, James, and John did, that brings transformation.

In order to follow Jesus, they had to leave some things behind. There was a re-ordering of their priorities. They left their nets. They left their boats. In James and John’s case, they left their father, and their hired men, and their family business. They put aside the things that had formerly been important to them in order to follow someone who was even more important.

They say that your checkbook and your datebook reveal your true priorities. And this is where you find out if you really have a heart for ministry—am I willing to lay aside some things and make some sacrifices in order to follow Jesus more closely, in order to be more useable to Him?

Jesus trains us for ministry as we follow Him. Show me a Christian who doesn’t have a ministry, and I’ll show you a Christian who is not following Jesus.

Now in order to be a church that is healthy, we want to be involved in the process of training you, and equipping you, for ministry. We want you not only to be a disciple, but to be a disciplemaker—one who is having an impact on others for Jesus’ sake.

You know, there is a very simple way that you can begin to have a ministry to others. Just take one hour a week. That’s not very much is it? Do you think you could spare one hour a week?

Divide that hour into three 20 minute segments. Calling, Card-writing, and Contacting.

Spend 20 minutes per week calling people. Just making encouraging phone calls. Ask God to lay somebody’s name on your heart. And then just call and try to be an encouragement to that person. You might ask them if there’s anything that you could pray for.

Then 20 minutes of card-writing. People love to get real mail, not junk mail. How would you feel if somebody cared enough about you to just send you an encouraging note in the mail? You’d feel pretty good, wouldn’t you? Well that’s how others will feel if you do it for them. 20 minutes is all it takes.

Then 20 minutes of contacting. Just taking time out of your day to talk to someone in person, building a friendship. You know, so often we’re like ships passing in the night and we don’t take time to pause and really get to know each other. 20 minutes a week.