Login to The City

Sacred Journey Church is located in Providence, Rhode Island

People learn by example because that is how they are designed as humans.  The family is the fundamental discipling community.  The Church and all missional communities are patterned after the family.  Everything we learn as people started and had its foundation in our family.  The Church is the family of God, and because of this, it adopts the pattern of the family which is an unconditionally loving context for shaping us, as children of God.  This is what makes it so intuitive, and nurturing.  As the family is meant to nurture children into adulthood, so the discipling community is meant to nurture Christians into mature children of God.  This brings us to Acts 2:42.  These four things are.

 

The apostle’s doctrine

The life together

The breaking of bread (the sacrament of the Lord’s supper)

The prayers 

 

What is critically important is that Luke says that they “devoted themselves continually” to these things.  This brings us to the our third point, which is repetition.  The early disciples where not waiting impatiently for the next trendy “how to book” on “church growth” and “missional thinking” to roll off the presses of their favorite evangelical publishing house.  Rather they were consumed with the repetitious practice of the these four rhythms of discipleship that are the foundation of spiritual nurture and growth.

Think about it, when we are raising our children, what are the things that are most important in their human development?  Are they the hand full of random single experiences in their years of growing up or are they the little things we repeat with them ad nauseum?  Yeah it is the repetitious things that make the difference.  It is the changing the diapers, brushing teach, correcting incorrect speech, disciplining incorrect behavior, and praising and affirming successes and good behavior that make a child into a mature adult.  Just transfer this familial pattern of nurturing repetition to missional communities of discipleship and you begin to understand what you are supposed to be thinking and doing.

You begin by seeing each other as members of the human family and God’s family and that leads to mutual love, respect and submission to one another in the Lord.  And then you love, serve encourage, and when necessary, gently correct one another.  This is what a family does, and that is exactly what the Family of God does.  We nurture spiritual children of God.  Lets talk about each of these rhythms separately.

 

Apostle’s Teaching:  The “Apostle’s Teaching” implies the content of the Gospel.  This is the message of salvation and hope that is found in Jesus Christ.  However we need to understand that this in no way was limited to the simple message of salvation, but also included a constant instruction in how to live out the Christian life.  This is the kind of very practical and hands-on instruction that we see in the New Testament epistles.  These, though consumed through and through with the Gospel, do not present it in an over-simplified “plan of salvation” but rather portray the pursuit and struggle of the disciples in this present world.  

A major, and yet often overlooked aspect of this is the practical guidance in keeping Christ’s commandments.  When Christ gives the great commission in in Matt 28:19-20, the content of making disciples of all nations is actually “teaching them all that I have commanded.”  Living the Christian life is not laze faire, but a proactive pursuit of the teaching of Jesus Christ.  As we saw here in acts 2:42, they earnestly “devoted themselves” to the Apostle’s teachings.

This is precisely the goal behind our discipling communities--the continual devotion of ourselves to the apostolic doctrine contained in the bible and the rest of these other rhythms.  Today the church is under the false impression that “discipleship” can happen in two hours on Sunday morning.  We have become a church of the monologue where Christians sit passively and receive doctrine and exhortation, but do not do it themselves.  We cannot minimize the role of good preaching and teaching by skilled teachers of the word.  It would be wrong to abandon the Gospel monologue.  But to lean on it alone is a mistake all its own because it makes Christians passive.  In 2 Timothy 4:2 and titus 2:15, both are called to “exhort” those they are charged over.  But Hebrews 3:13 is equally important in that all Christians are called to “exhort one another every day.”  

Good discipleship and spiritual nurture includes a dialogue too.  We need only look at the ministry of Jesus who was constantly preaching the good news (and living among his disciples), and yet there was constant opportunity for questions.  In fact, the pattern of Jesus preaching to the crowds and then his disciples coming together in private to ask questions and have him clarify, is the backbone of our model for SJC’s discipling communities.  Like Rabbinic methods that Jesus used of his day and age, dialogue is the most effective way to comprehension because it is the questions and answers that allow us to assimilate the ideas we are being challenged with.  

We need to also be aware that our approach is a balanced use of monologue by skilled teachers of the word of God followed by open dialogue in a context where people can explore faith safely and without condemnation.  We need to understand that some in our time, especially those of the emergent church movement have reacted so violently to monologue, that everything is dialogue and so biblical truth has suffered.  One hundred percent dialogue where every idea and every opinion is viable is as dangerous as the one hundred percent monologue which leaves all truth in the hand of an elitist few.  The emergent church movement has slipped into many doctrinal errors because of this.  

We want balance in everything we do.  Our goal is a biblically focused, doctrinally sound, and theologically principled teaching ministry where people can not only hear the truth, but also respond to it thoughtfully.  People need to be able to embrace their doubts and fears.  As my friend and brother in the ministry Scott Gunn says, “doubt is the companion of faith.”  This is precisely why we named our faith community “Sacred Journey” because we are a people pursuing Gospel truth.  We do not pretend to understand it all, but we are a people on the way, a people who are pursuing Jesus in our brokenness, doubt, sin and imperfection, yet with an every growing realization of the great and glorious love that God has for us as his children. | 

• Recent Posts
• Popular Posts
• Topics