Have you ever been lost or in a place that you never expected to be and wondered, “What in the world? How did I get here?” Sometimes, we feel that way as Christians and as congregations as well. We’re not really clear what our faith is all about or what the church should be doing. At other times, we have many different notions of what Christians are and what churches are supposed to be, but we don’t know how to make it all fit together. Or we try to take everything we believe about Christianity and church and force it into the life of every Christian and every congregation. That sounds like a recipe for confusion and frustration!

Have you ever wished that there was a simpler way? Your staff at Bethel believe that there is and we’d like to lead our congregation toward not only discovering it, but living it. So, everyone take a deep breath and say, “Ahhhhh!” Plop, plop, fizz, fizz, oh what a relief it is!

Or what a relief it will be – once we get there. But we’re not there yet. I think we’re a lot closer than people might think. But we just haven’t been able to spell out exactly what this church is about, how we go about doing our work nor making everything that we do fit into this simple plan and purpose.

Over the next couple of weeks, I’d like to invite you to join us (the staff) on a journey of discovery. In this journey, we’ll be looking for the answers to the following questions:

• What does a disciple of Jesus look and/or act like? What do they believe? How do they think?
• How do we at Bethel make disciples of Jesus? That is, what process do we lead people through to give them the best chance of becoming a fully devoted follower of Jesus Christ?
• Is our process working very well? If you take the children who are born to this congregation and the people who join as adults, are they all becoming disciples? If not, why not?
• If you were to speak to a new Christian, could you explain to them what disciples look like and how they can become one through the ministry of Bethel Church?

If you’ve been around the church block a while, you doubtless have gone through a process one, two or more times in which you were challenged to write vision statements, mission statements, purpose statements, core values and…well, you were asked to make a lot of statements and write a lot. We’re not going to ask you to do that.

If you’ve been around churches and understand how they normally work, you know that the first thing we do when we want to change is we…form a committee. We’re not going to ask you to serve on any committees.

If you’ve been an active member of any congregation, you know that new directions and new visions almost inevitably mean more work…for you. But you told us at the Pivotal Pentecostal Potluck (can we just agree to call that the P3 Summit?) that you don’t want us to start more programs or change what we’re doing. We don’t plan to add any more programs or to make you (or ourselves!) any busier. In fact, we’d like to see it work the other way around.

“Aha!” you say. “I knew that fast wouldn’t be good for him! Not only did he lose weight – he lost his mind!” Bad news, good news. Most of the weight is back and I think I’m closer to a clearer mind.

Let’s start at the very beginning then and work toward some clear thinking. I’m looking to start a discussion on the web about discipleship. So, go to this link:

http://www.pastorcal.com/newsletter/the-power-of-one/

and read other answers to this question as well as offering your own.

What is a disciple of Jesus Christ? What beliefs do they hold in common? What can you see when you look at how they live their life that clearly shows them to be His followers? What do they do? How do they talk?

Jason, Bonnie and myself – as your ministry staff – look forward to entering into this journey of discovery with you.