The personal site of Jonathan Hayashi
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, …
Gossip is one sin that seems to fall in the spiritual “No-Man’s Land” like the awkward uncle around that Thanksgiving table that nobody wants to talk to or deal with; a passivity that many tolerate that widespread and eats us up like a cancer. It seems impossible to deal with it so instead we just kind of shove it under the carpet and pretend the big elephant is not in the room.
Discipleship happens in critical levels, not only in the top level of it but all throughout the culture of a ministry. If we don’t disciple, then we are not really stewarding our roles very well if we don’t creates leaders for our role.
Gathering of the saints needs to be one of the top priority of Christ followers, in fact it is crucial and essential to the faith! For the good of their own soul, for the mission of Christ, and for the health of local congregation.
Discipleship doesn’t happen apart from the context of local church. There is no such thing as a solo-discipleship as it’s a foreign idea. We can’t become the Christian we are meant to be by being alone with God.
“I love Jesus but I don’t like the church. I will never leave Jesus but I’m done with the church” people who make such a statement are walking away from Jesus.
“Men will never be great in theology until they are great in suffering.” – Charles H. Spurgeon