LFF Blog
The best thing you can do with true rejectors is to leave them in your dust and focus your obedience upon those who are glad to hear. Don’t allow yourself to be distracted with vain questions and rejections or to be derailed by harsh words and hurt feelings. All you can do is leave them behind and aim your interest at those who are interested.
As a newbie to Mission Focus, I wasn’t sure what to expect. The reality is that it was exactly what I needed as a pastor to bring the totality of the Mission into clear Focus. I was able to witness firsthand the culmination of evangelism, discipleship, ministry training, and church planting. I heard personal testimonies of people who were won to Christ through evangelistic Bible studies. People were open and excited about being involved in discipleship. We celebrated those graduating from LFBI. Andew Ong was ordained into the pastoral ministry. Missionaries from all over the world were prayed over and supported. And many surrendered their lives completely to the Mission.
Whether your church implements an explicit directory of members or not, God calls you to the highest devotion to your local church body and its individual members. Implementing a definitive church membership appears to be both biblically sound in light of scripture’s teachings for the church and practically effective to the needs of our people.
studying the Bible with others is one of the greatest gifts we have as believers. It is a privilege that we get to open God’s Word together, speak and cry out to the Father together, grow in love together, and look for ways to seek out the lost together. But we can only do this rightly if our groups are biblically healthy and mature.
Early on in my discipling, I found it very sobering that counseling scenarios were landing on my desk instead of the pastor’s! As comforting as it would have been for me to have them go the pastor at that time, I realized that, as the teacher in the discipleship relationship, I had to trust God for wisdom in the moment to properly minister to the disciple.
