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
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.
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.
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.
Stats shows that 80% of young people who dropped out of church said they did not plan to do so during high school.
In this fallen world even people in a very complex, postmodern world are desperately hungry to hear the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. We need to step it up. We need to toughen up and take this job seriously. We need to be ready to suffer for the gospel. We need to be motivated by this stewardship that we have been entrusted. We are to run this race well.
Churches have become preoccupied with existing to meet people’s felt needs and satisfy their wants. They are no longer fellowship of those who are sacrificial, those who want to give their lives away.
So which one are you? There’s only two categories. Spurgeon said it well, “Every Christian is either an imposter or a missionary.”
Biblical manhood involves cultivating, embracing, and exercising leadership initiative, especially spiritual leadership initiative. If we don’t do it, who is going to do it?
We see a huge collision in Evangelism vs. Missions distinction all together. This is crucial for our churches to understand in order to advance the kingdom ministry through mission work.
One of the lessons we can learn from the evangelical movement is that its central weakness was not epistemological. Its central weakness was not its commitment to the core doctrines of the Christian faith. It’s central weakness was ecclesiological – an undervaluing of the local church in particular. – Albert Mohler