I am just about to leave for Poland where I will be speaking at a Youth Congress in Gdansk. As some of you might recall, last week I had the privilege of accompanying a group of young people to a Youth Congress in the city of Mannheim Germany.
During this the 5th Youth in Mission Congress more than 1800 young people gathered together with the sole purpose of growing closer to Christ and sharing ways of reaching out with the eternal gospel in our communities and respective countries. With us in the car we also had three relatively new enthusiastic converts to the Christian faith. Their energy and faith was truly contagious.
I truly believe that a church that does not have a constant flow of new believers coming in, will in time stagnate and eventually die. A reading of the New Testament reveals that the first-century church was an evangelistic church, and I believe that every church that is functioning in the way God wants it to will have a constant flow of new believers coming in.
The point is new believers bring much-needed life needed to sustain and grow the church, while older believers bring much-needed stability and maturity. We have a choice before us, which is to either evangelize and win new people for Christ or stagnate and die.
I have noticed that we who have been believers for awhile can start taking things for granted. But when you have a new believer (as we had with us on our journey) who is hearing things for the first time and his or her life is literally being changed, it can revive you and revive the church. In Acts 2:47 we read: “And the Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved”. No wonder the church grew so quickly.
I have said this countless times but will repeat it again. The Great Commission is not to make converts; it is to bring people to Christ. It is to teach them God's Word and get them on their feet spiritually. And then we do it again . . . and again . . . and again.
In other words we first invite people to come forward and make a decision for Christ (we call this conversion), but God wants more than that, God wants us to disciple them, He wants them to mature in their faith so that they in turn can disciple others. The beauty of this is that it benefits us as much as them.
Who has God called you to disciple? What are you doing about it?
God bless
Berny