Creating Ineptitude in the Home is Easy

One morning not so long ago I opened the dishwasher and in an instant knew that my wife was right. She had warned me, throughout our parenting years, that if I don’t get the kids to do simple chores, if I insist on taking over when they’re being irritatingly slow, I’ll be responsible for raising 3 clueless kids that no one will ever want to marry.

When I opened the dishwasher on this particular morning, that reality hit me hard. My son had stacked it the night before, and as I stood there looking at the contents, I felt quite dejected.

The first thing I saw were bowls, upright, and filled with a manky, lasagna flavored water. The second thing I saw was the haphazard arrangement of the dishes. Now, intelligent people have designed different parts of the dishwasher to accommodate different dishes and cutlery. Where each item should go is obvious even to the most careless of stackers. Not to my boy. How had this happened?

My wife told me. It was my fault. I hadn’t shown them how. I hadn’t impressed upon them the responsibility of having to do it. Out of what seemed like a harmless desire to do things right, I stopped them from doing what they should be doing. Out of a desire to do things quickly, I created ineptitude. Worse than that, I’d actually instilled in them the notion that they didn’t need to serve, but be served. That’s the wrong way round!

CREATING INEPTITUDE IN THE HOUSEHOLD OF FAITH IS JUST AS EASY

Creating ineptitude in the home is easy, and the home will end up a mess. The same is true for the household of faith in regard to basic tasks like evangelizing and discipling. The Bible is clear that evangelizing and discipling, the most basic of tasks in the household of God, are for every member.

It’s the pastor’s job to exercise the kind of parental pastoral ministry Paul talks about in 1 Thessalonians 2, making conscious effort to teach and demonstrate how to engage the lost, evangelize the engaged, establish the saved, and equip the saints. This is what we must do to cultivate a serving mentality in our members and avoid becoming spiritual parents of clueless children of God, useless in the elementary tasks he’s given to them by professionalizing gospel ministry and doing it all for them.

But how? It’s quite simple really. In each of the categories, we preach, pray and prep.

EQUIPPING THE SAINTS FOR WORKS OF MINISTRY

In Ephesians 4 we find clear biblical instruction for equipping our members to do the gospel ministry. In it we find the risen and ascended Christ depicted at the head of a victory parade, and he’s throwing gifts to the people. What gifts? Verse 11 tells us, word gifts. Speaking gifts.

11 And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers.

The apostles and prophets are the foundational gifts to the church and to the world. They are the ones to whom the message was authoritatively given. Ephesians 2:20 calls them the foundation of the truth.

The evangelists and pastor-teachers are the present ongoing gifts to the church and the world, making new disciples by speaking the good news to people who don’t know Jesus and maturing disciples by speaking the good news into the lives of people who come to know Jesus. By their teaching and example, they do the work of the evangelist, they make and mature disciples. They stack the dishwasher, so to speak, and do it well.

But that’s not where it stops. Verse 12 states explicitly that these word gifts are given:

12  to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, 13  until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.

Meaning, God lays responsibility for making disciples at the feet of all believers.

So, our responsibility is clear. Teach, train and model disciple-making that equips the church family, the entire body of believers, to make disciples. And see what our speaking produces. Alongside unity and ability (v13), we find more word-speakers (v15), speaking the word of God to each other for their building up.

Preaching, praying and prepping (preparing/equipping) are the ordinary means by which we help our church members in their evangelizing (engaging and evangelizing) and discipling (establishing and equipping).

WE PREACH

Preaching fuels a church’s evangelistic fervor. It makes us want to engage with the lost and help them meet Jesus. Who does not, having been reminded of their own pre-converted sinful state, want others to know about his salvation? Preach Christ and His gospel in every sermon.

Preaching also helps our members know what to say when they evangelize. Rehearse the gospel in every sermon. Making preaching memorable serves the evangelistic speaking of our members. Address the unbeliever too, whether they’re in the room or not. By doing so, we’re informing the conversations of our members, giving them words to say.

Preaching the gospel isn’t just vital in our evangelizing but discipling too. Preaching is the primary means by which disciples grow. In Colossians 1:28 Paul explains that his job is to make the word of God fully known so that he can present the people of God fully grown. The two are vitally connected.

Preaching is also the primary means by which we equip the saints and train leaders. Preaching creates and cements conviction. It creates aspiration for deeper knowledge, increased service, pursuit of leadership. Preach in ways that make maturity and even leadership aspirations worthy of pursuit.

When we faithfully preach God’s word, trusting his Word to do the work, he sheds light and informs steps. He engages everyone in these simple household tasks through preaching. But not just preaching, praying too.

WE PRAY

In evangelism, praying (and especially praying together as a church family) together puts much needed steel into a church’s outreach. Most members are unsure of what to do because, by our own programmatic church cultures, we’ve made them so disengaged that re-engagement feels so foreign to them. So in addition to exhortational preaching, pray on Sundays and midweek, acknowledging that God wants us to spend time with tax collectors and sinners, just like Jesus did. Pray that God would help each one engage with unbelievers in contexts in which some Christians just find hard, like the home, the neighborhood, wherever. Shape corporate prayer times in ways that keep engagement with the lost in the frame.

Praying together puts much needed power into a church’s evangelism of the engaged too. Paul helped the Colossian church know how to make the most of opportunities to proclaim the gospel when in Colossians 4:3-4 he asked them to pray for open doors and boldness to speak. Help our own churches to pray for the same.

Praying for and with church members is similarly the means by which we help them disciple one another, establishing the saved. In doing so, we underline biblical values and biblical priorities. We pray that we would be the kind of disciples Christ wants, those who love him, grow to be like him, serve him and tell others about him. The question often is, are the prayers we pray for our members, and without members, biblical? Often praying for power to grasp Christ’s transforming presence (Eph 3:16-17) is replaced by prayers for Jeannie’s hip replacement operation. Or worse! When we pray, and pray biblically for and with the church, God is pleased to hear us, answer us, and establish those who become disciples.

The same is true of equipping the saints and equipping leaders. Praying together for mature believers who will participate not just in the evangelizing work of ministry but the discipling work is vital to a church’s ongoing health. But do we pray like this, for and with our members? We must preach and not neglect to pray. Nor neglect to train.

WE PREP

Preparing the church to engage with unbelievers stimulates a church’s outreach. Do we train our members to engage and evangelize the lost, to make the most of natural engagements with the people they live with or work beside? Train them to go to where unbelievers are. Teach them to be friendly. It’s not that hard. It’s as simple as inviting people round for dinner. Are we modelling such engagement? Our example matters. Is there anything you’re doing as a church that’s hindering the members’ engagement with unbelievers? If the church calendar is too busy, simplify it. God forbid that church events get in the way of the church’s outreach.

Preparing the church to evangelize the engaged maximizes the opportunity when it comes. Train them to share the gospel. Help people go through the conversational gears, getting from the mundane to the gospel in gentle ways. Help them know how to share the gospel clearly using Two Ways to Live or Packer’s God-Man-Christ-Response pattern. Above all, equip members to open God’s Word. Make reading the Bible one-to-one with an unbeliever a natural part of the evangelism done by your members. Train them to do it as a team. Invite fellow members to dinner together with unbelievers. Making disciples is a team sport, as is maturing disciples.

Preparing the church to establish the saved is vital to a church’s health and mission. But what kind of training do our members need? Again, we need to equip them to be good handlers of the Word and to make that practice normal in church life. For, God’s Spirit-inspired word, read and studied by God’s Spirit-filled people is crucial to every member’s growth. So help them know how to approach it, understand it and apply it together.

Preparing the church, and especially mature men and women to lead in their respective contexts is vital to the church’s maturity and mission. Christ gave us this very example. Jesus didn’t spend all his time teaching the larger group of disciples. Indeed, Jesus spent more time with the 70, the 12 and even the 3 than he did anyone else. That wasn’t to the neglect of the “all” who followed him. But you can’t tell me he discipled everyone the way he discipled them. In short, Jesus prioritized relationships, and made community the context for discipleship and training. We must make time to equip others to do the same, for the example Jesus set became the pattern the church employed.

In our own ministry, do we make time to equip saints and train leaders? Our In-reach and Out-reach will flourish if we do.

LET ME CLOSE WITH THIS…

If you recall, from my introduction, the picture of dejection as I stood in front of a poorly stacked dishwasher? Well, on another morning more recently, I walked into the kitchen again and approached the dishwasher already pre-experiencing dejection, for my son had stacked it the night before.

But when I opened it, the bowls were in the right slots, minus manky water. The cutlery was in the cutlery section. The dishes were clean. Why? We’d taken the time to talk to him. We’d taken the time to show him. We’d taken the time to encourage him. He’s serving, not expecting to be served, And now he has a chance at marriage!

In the same way, if we take time not to do all the work ourselves, but to help others do it with us, our church’s Outreach (engaging and evangelizing) and our Inreach (establishing and equipping) will look a lot more biblical and Lord willing be a lot more fruitful. How do we do it? Through the ordinary means God has given us. We preach, we pray, we prep.