The personal site of Jonathan Hayashi
As we even celebrate the 500th year of Protestant Reformation with Martin Luther, which has influenced Protestants since the 16th-century hated the New Testament book of James so much that he wanted it completely OUT of the Bible as it seemed to contradict the doctrine of Sola Fide (Latin: by faith alone).
“Making disciples of Jesus is the overflow of the delight in being disciples of Jesus.” ― David Platt, Follow Me: A Call to Die. A Call to Live.
God is unimpressed by human speed. Go deep, not just wide. Grow members, not just numbers. Serve your successor, not just yourself.
This has changed my life and I hope with my whole heart that it will change yours.
In the book of James, the solution to interpersonal conflict is shockingly vertical.
Their whole mission was nearly useless if they didn’t spread it and multiply it.
Today living in the 21st century, we live in a culture where it is no surprise that all entertainment platform is encouraged and empower their users to allow any filthy language, nudity, violence, and other mature content from movies and TV series.
The word “toxic” comes from the German “toxikon” which means “arrow poison”. In a literal sense, the term in its original form thus means to kill (poison) in a targeted way (arrow).
Discipleship is simply this; Disciples are called to know Christ, grow with Christ, and go for Christ.
This is absolutely a counter-cultural model. This radically changes everything of how we think and howe we function as a church.
Huffington Post writes, “Porn sites has more regular traffics compared to Netflix, Amazon and Twitter combined all together each month.”
This is a shocking reality. These are not angry fundamentalist conservative Christians but secular culture coming up with these statistics.
The leaders of the first century church did NOT ask each other, “how many came to church last week?” That’s not how God measures success.
My time in seminary was perhaps one of my sweetest moments yet a hardest time of my life. But seminary didn’t teach me everything. It certainly didn’t fully prepare me for ministry.
What if we brought this 1st century principle into the 21st century of living in honest transparent lifestyle as Jesus did?
Jesus envisioned that the victory would be won through witnessing and he depended on the faithfulness of his chosen disciples to this task. That was his only plan. His concern was not with programs to reach the multitudes, but men were to be His method of winning the world.
The Contemporary gospel is an American cultural artifact, namely, you can become a Christian and not follow Jesus, discipleship is optional.
“Just because a church is large doesn’t mean it’s healthy. It could be swollen.” – Charles. H. Spurgeon
The ordinary Christian will always fight the status quo of lukewarm Christianity. The ordinary Christian will always fight nominal, passionless Christianity.
What if the church was a city of refuge and beacon of hope that people run to rather than run from for fear of criticism?
If your ministry has a leadership problem it has a discipleship problem. You can’t make disciples and not develop leaders.
We want to do church, but we don’t want to live Christ. We can only change when the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of changing.
Does your church have an intentional development plan to disciple and deploy believers to live out the Great Commission?
Normally we think of Salvation as that which is most significant. Truth of the matter is, the Bible’s view of salvation makes no sense, in fact, it is built on previous grounding ultimately on the doctrine of creation. Without creation, the planet of God with salvation doesn’t make sense at all.
I was recently looking back at some of my journals, and to be honest, there are/were times in my life’s journey I have struggled to know if God was calling me to pastoral ministry. Every follower of Jesus is called to be a minister. Not a single disciple of Jesus is exempt from the task of disciple making (Discipleship.) However,