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Baptism and Discipleship at Mount Gilead · Real Life Theology Podcast

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Welcome back to the Real Life Theology podcast.
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Today we continue our amazing baptism series with a message from
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Jeff Fall, a longtime minister at Mount Gilead Church in
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Mooresville, Indiana. Jeff shares how aligning the church's
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culture around disciple-making through intentional decision-focused
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sermon series and a baptism class has contributed
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to significant growth in the church.
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I heard a preacher introduced one time, and the person who
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introduced him said lots of nice things about him. And when he finally got up
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to the podium after all those nice things were said, he intended
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to say, I appreciate that introduction,
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but I don't deserve it. But he got his words turned
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around and he said, I deserve that introduction, but I don't appreciate
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it. Well, Well, I appreciate that introduction,
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but I don't deserve it. I don't think I deserve to be standing here
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today, but I'm thankful that I am. My name is Jeff Fall. I currently serve
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as the lead minister at the Mount Gilead Church in Mooresville, Indiana.
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The church is somewhat rural, several miles outside
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the town of Mooresville, which is a town of about 10,000 people. We're 20
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miles southwest of Indianapolis, and this year I
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began my 38th year as their preacher. I served as
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a student preaching intern way back in 1983
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at that church and then returned to be the lead minister in 1988.
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Interesting thing about Mount Gilead. Mount Gilead was established as
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the Mount Gilead Church of Christ 191
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years ago in 1835. So for context, Andrew Jackson
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was president. This church has seen the
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Spanish-American War, the Civil War, World War I,
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World War II, Afghanistan, the Korean
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War, on and on it goes. They've seen a lot in 190 years,
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but by the grace of God, right now as I'm
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exiting, we're seeing some of the greatest things that God
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has ever done there. I'm a 4th generation preacher.
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My son preaches in Massachusetts, and that makes 5
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generations. And recently I watched my 10-year-old grandson in
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Louisville speak to my son-in-law's church there, and He could be
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sort of a 6th generation, uh, preacher in our family.
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But what I want you to know, I want to say this to my Church
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of Christ brothers here today, is that I grew up being
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taught a great respect for the a cappella Churches of
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Christ. We would go on vacation, and my dad, who was a preacher, would insist
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that we would go to a Church of Christ on vacation because he said they
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sang better and they preached better. And, uh, he was
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a, he was a preacher, he was a preacher in Michigan City, Indiana,
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And I don't know how this happened because I don't know how either one of
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them let it happen, but there was a black Church of Christ preacher named Brother
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Williams in town in Michigan City. And my dad and Brother Williams would exchange
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pulpits from time to time. I was raised listening
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to preachers like Richard Rogers and Jim McQuiggan and Marvin
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Phillips and Reuben Shelley and Joe Beam. And 25 years
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ago, I had opportunity to get acquainted with some people like
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Rick Atchley and Jeff Walling and others. And so, as you can imagine,
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I'm thrilled to be here in this gathering. I remember gathering for
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the North American Christian Convention, and our churches came together in
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2006 on the 100th anniversary of our division.
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And I had the privilege to tag team preach with a man that I didn't
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even know. His name was Prentice Medder. And so I've always appreciated
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any effort at collaboration between our churches.
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And just so you know, there are some other people who value the Restoration
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movement out there. My son who preaches in Boston has
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2 sons. His first son's name is Griffith Alexander,
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and his second son is Shepherd Stone.
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So it's still going on there in, in, in Boston.
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I'm married to Valerie, my wife of 41 years. I have 3 children, 10 grandchildren.
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I'm in the midst of succession, will be handing off the baton this April.
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Uh, not counting down or anything, but it's 102 days from now,
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and, um, I am not retiring.
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I'm continuing ministry, traveling and preaching, coaching churches in leadership
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and disciple-making. And that's part of why I'm
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so grateful that God is allowing me this season
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of ministry. All my life I've been taught that
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the church needs to be modeled after the church in the New Testament,
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that the goal is to restore the New Testament church, its beliefs, its practices,
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its ordinances, and its results. And so often in my life
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I've heard about the early church or the primitive church or the New Testament church,
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and I've heard all about the Bible pattern for the church and that we should
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spend a lot of time in the book of Acts. And I still believe that,
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but honestly, I, I struggle with what some of that means
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and doesn't mean. And I struggle with whether or
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not the church that I serve at Mount Gilead is an authentic New
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Testament church. One of the heroes in our churches
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was a guy named Ben Merrill, and I, I heard him preaching one day,
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and he said, we think that we
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have restored the New Testament church because
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we've restored baptism and the Lord's Supper, and so we've restored the church.
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But there's so much more than that. Nearly 25
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years ago, I was reflecting on that, and I wrote something down in my personal
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journal that I've revisited many times. In fact, I read it in my
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sermon last Sunday. This is what I wrote.
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I said, I'm continually plagued by what the New Testament church is supposed to look
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like. I know it doesn't look like some of the
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anemic, legalistic, rule-based churches I've observed and been involved in.
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But neither does it look like the consumer-driven megachurches that are a mile wide and
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an inch deep. I know true spirituality is not found in a shibboleth-pronouncing
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bigotry of self-righteousness, nor is it found in
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the fad-driven pragmatism of pop spirituality.
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God, would you lead me to real spirituality,
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and would you allow me to help lead a real New Testament church?
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Truthfully, I'm 63 years old. I still struggle with these
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issues. I don't want to feel double-minded and unstable in all
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my ways. I don't want to be tossed to and fro by every wind of
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doctrine. So God, help me live with the right level
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of ambiguity and certainty. And one of the reasons I've been so grateful
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for my association with Renew is I love Renew's attempt
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to avoid the twin ditches of toxic legalism
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on one side and dangerous progressivism on
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the other. And I think that balance, with an emphasis
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on disciple-making as the core mission of the church,
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is a huge factor in what I'm being allowed to witness
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right now at this point in my ministry. You know, sometimes you look at something,
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or better yet, you look at someone, and rather than describing them with
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multiple adjectives, you say something like, well, he's the real deal.
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Or she's the real deal, or this is the real deal. And that
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phrase, the real deal, it's slang for someone or something that's genuinely authentic
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and highly skilled or truly excellent. They're not fake, they're not
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a copy, they possess authentic quality and substance. And I know
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that's the definition of the real deal because I looked it
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up on artificial intelligence. And I,
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uh, I want to— I want the church
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that I serve in to be the real deal. So let me just tell you
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briefly what's happened at Mount Gilead, and it corresponds
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with the disciple alignment training that we had back
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at the beginning of this time period. In 2023,
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our average in-person attendance was 1,276 people,
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and we had 239 baptisms. So it was almost
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a 19% ratio. Then in 2024,
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that went down. We had about 1,523 people. We had more
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people, but we had 164 baptisms. And that was almost an
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11% ratio. But in this past year, 2025,
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our average per— in, in-person attendance increased to
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1,773, and we had 308
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baptisms. And so it's a little over a 17%,
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uh, ratio. Our approach is
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pretty simple. Uh, we preach at least one series
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a year that calls for decision at the
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end of the series and throughout the series. You know, some days not on the
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calendar, so we just ask people, we're gonna talk about Jesus for
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these next 10 weeks, and we're
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going to call you to make a decision about Jesus by the end of this.
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We hope you make that decision before this time is up, but just put it
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on the calendar that you're going to make a decision about Jesus by the
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end of this series. In 2004, the whole series was called Reboot. It was
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from Ephesians chapter 4, nailing down the non-negotiables, those 7 things things
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in Ephesians chapter 4— one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and all those things.
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When we did the baptism sermon, we called for decision. In 2024,
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we did, uh, because the eclipse was coming right through our town, we did a
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series called The Path of Totality, and we talked about the totality of Jesus and
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the need of a totality of surrender to him— full disclosure
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and full surrender. In 2025, we did a red-letter living
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series and called for decision at the end of that series. So those series,
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at least once a year, they culminate with a Decision
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Sunday. And we get prepared for that Decision Sunday. We have extra
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dressing rooms. We actually set up tents as dressing rooms. We have clothing.
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We remove all the excuses. We have additional response teams. And so we have a
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Decision Sunday at least once a year. But before that
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Decision Sunday, the, the week before that Sunday, we have
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a baptism class, an adult baptism class.
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And in fact, I just want to— I must have left— can I have that
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clicker there? That, uh, it's always
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a disaster when I do my own slides, but as
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you can see, so, uh, we always do a baptism. So this
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is what baptism would look like if your preacher was a former MMA wrestler.
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Uh, or how about this one? Really breaking the ice with,
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with that. That's an actual baptism in Finland. And you've all had
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days when you had a baptism like that in the baptistry because the heater
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broke or something like that. Uh, you recognize this scene,
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uh, down to the river to pray from the, uh, O Brother,
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Where Art Thou movie. Maybe the song is kind of ringing in
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your ears right now. Uh, this is a drive-by baptism. I mean,
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it's not— it's not— doesn't quite fit our
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theology, you know, but, uh, Cleansing the world's sinners one puddle
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at a time. And then COVID. This is social distancing,
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baptism. And I actually had a picture of a
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baptismal service taking place in a foreign country, and there were like alligators
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coming, something like that. So kind of lighten the mood about—
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that's just a picture I have on my office wall at home.
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But this baptism class that we
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teach the week before Decision Sunday, is really made
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up of 3 things. We talk about people, we talk about passages, and we talk
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about pictures. The people— we just journey through the conversions in the
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book of Acts just like we always have, starting on the day of Pentecost,
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walk through the book of Acts. And it's really interesting when you make
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those people real, when you say things like, what should you do
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when you realize you've made huge mistakes and you've made a horrible choice?
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Acts chapter 2. What should you do when you hear the best news in history
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Acts chapter 8, the Samaritans. What should you do when your life search leads
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you to the ultimate spiritual reality? Acts chapter 8, the Ethiopian eunuch.
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What should you do when you've been messing around with Satan and deceiving others?
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Acts chapter 8, Simon. What should you do when you realize
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that even though you were sincere, you were totally wrong, and you hear God's plan
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for your life? Saul, chapter 9, chapter 22,
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chapter 26. What should you do when you realize you can be accepted by God?
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Cornelius, Acts chapter 10. What should you do when you're wealthy, wealthy But
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you know there's more. Lydia, Acts chapter 16.
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On and on it goes throughout the book of Acts. And so we make those
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stories real and we show them the lives of these people.
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But what we're really doing is we're walking through the conversions in the book of
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Acts, just like we always have in the Restoration movement, to show the
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pattern of coming to Christ. So this— the first part is
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about people. The second part is about some of the passages,
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the epistles. What are those passages in the epistles that talk about baptism
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that help us build this picture out of what baptism is for and
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how it's tied to the death and the burial and the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
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And then the third part is actually pictures, uh, Old Testament pictures that
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are repeated in the New Testament, like 1 Corinthians chapter 10 and the picture of
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the, the, uh, Israelites being led out of the bondage
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of Egypt and crossing the Red Sea of their baptism, like Paul talks about in
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1 Corinthians chapter chapter 10, and it helps people
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to see what's happening when they're baptized. Or 1 Peter
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3:21, when you're talking about Noah's Ark and, and the 8
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people that are saved on the ark— and Noah and Mrs. Noah and Ham,
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Shem, and Japheth and Mrs. Ham and Mrs. Shem and Mrs. Japheth— and how there's
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a picture of salvation there in 1 Peter chapter 3:21. So it's real simple,
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just some people, some passages, and some
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pictures to help people understand baptism. And we end with
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some FAQs. You know, we know that somebody's going to ask us about the
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thief on the cross, so we have answers to
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those frequently asked questions that we do at the end of the presentation.
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And quite honestly, we first started doing that class, I kind
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of came into it with a little bit of chip on my shoulder, you know,
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that I'm going to be ready, I'm going to be loaded for bear when I,
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when I come in here. And We have not gotten pushback
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with all that straight teaching. We have not gotten pushback one time.
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The attitudes we're finding are, man, I want to follow Jesus. What do I need
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to do? And what happens when, when I'm baptized? And I've had to actually
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change my approach because I came in ready to fight
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with somebody who's going to pick a fight, and that's not the approach we
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need to take at all. We'll talk about that more in a minute. So The,
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the next thing that I wanted to point out is
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just the breakdowns for our baptisms in 2025, because sometimes that's a question.
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70% of our baptisms last year were adult baptisms.
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20% were students, teenagers 13 to 18.
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10% were children 12 and under. Young adults 18
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to 30, 25% of our baptisms. Adults aged
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31 to 49, 30% of our baptisms. Adults over
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age 50, 15% of our baptisms.
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Some of those are the most beautiful of all.
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Over 40% of our baptisms were performed
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by non-staff people.
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And that's a metric we track carefully and that we're—
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that we are excited about. And I was talking
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with John beforehand about some experience that he had
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talking to David Young about that. I, I think I baptized 2
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people last year out of 308 baptisms. I baptized,
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um, 2 people. And so it's exciting because it,
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it ignites disciple-making when people get a taste of
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that and they're bringing somebody to Christ and they're baptizing them into
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Christ. Uh, you might— one of the other things you might be curious about,
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I was curious about it, uh, how many of those baptisms actually happened on
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a decision Sunday? Because sometimes when you have decision Sundays, you get kind of accused
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of saving it all up, you know. And abandoning the same hour
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of the night mentality. And our decision Sundays,
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only 15% of our baptisms happened on decision
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Sundays. The other little statistic that's interesting is,
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much like Adam, and I really appreciated his humble approach, much like
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Adam, the recovery ministry at our church has
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been a huge driver. And 10% of
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our baptisms happened on Monday night at our
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Monday Night Recovery meeting. So that just might
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give you a little bit of a glimpse of the breakdown of the baptisms
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that we've had. And then the question is,
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that I guess is my responsibility to try to answer here today, is why
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has this happened? And the simplest answer is,
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I don't know. So I'll say it this way.
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God does what God wants to do when God
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wants to do it through whom He wants to do it.
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I've been trying to serve faithfully for 38
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years, and why God chose to
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allow this to happen in these last 3 years is part
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of His sovereignty. He does what He wants to do when He wants to do
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it, how He wants to do it, and through who He wants to do it.
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But there, there are some factors. There are— there has been a convergence of conditions
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and activities. Um, our association with
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Renew— and it's not a commercial for Renew, but it's just been so incredibly
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helpful. I remember being gathered together with, you know,
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10 or 15 different preachers
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from around the Indianapolis area, and we were going through some of the Renew learning
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communities. And it just struck us that we have the slogan on the wall,
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helping people become lifelong disciples of Jesus.
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But somehow we hadn't aligned our church in such a way that we could do
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that. And so that has been huge for us.
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The recovery ministry has been huge for us. And Bobby, help me understand,
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is that really only saying I got 16 seconds left?
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I'm not sure, but keep going. Okay, you heard it. You heard
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it right there. So a convergence of activities Um,
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started sharing the pulpit. I was always one of those preachers who thought it was
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just my job to preach 50 Sundays a year. And we
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started sharing the pulpit. In fact, the guy that leads our recovery ministry preaches once
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a month. We've platformed that recovery ministry. I was out in the lobby one day
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and, and, uh, somebody came up to me. I didn't have the microphone on.
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And they said, is Justin— is his name, the recovery guy— is
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Justin preaching today? And I said, yeah. And they said, oh, I mean, is Justin
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preaching today? You know, so, so we've, uh,
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we've started sharing the, uh, the, the leadership of that.
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Our recovery ministry has been huge. There's so many stories I
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could tell you from that. I'll just tell you one. Guy named
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John, big tattoo on the side of his neck,
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a heroin addict, in trouble with the law,
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in and out of jail. And John was
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baptized after recovery ministry one night. He started bringing his friends,
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and he had baptized like 8 people. And we
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started calling him John the Baptist. And, um,
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I decided to talk about John on a Sunday morning during the sermon.
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Turns out John wasn't there that day, and some of the people from recovery ministry
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were like shaking their heads on the front row, and I didn't see him.
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And unbeknownst to me, the night before, John had relapsed,
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and I'm promoting him and what he did.
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In baptizing all those people. So the
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next Sunday, John came back to church, and I walked up to him and
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I said, did you hear what I said about you last week? And he said,
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yes. I said, well, what I said about you is still true.
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And a family in the church took him in. He's now
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living with them. He's been sober again for, for 60 days.
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There's a new look in his eye because after he was converted, there was
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still a bit of a pride there. And that's broken, and he
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is on fire. When you, when, when you
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do recovery ministry— and we have about 300 people in our recovery ministry—
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it's messy. When you start getting around lost people,
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it's messy. And it's not just
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all folded and, and under control like we like things
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to be. But when you get around lost people,
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when you get lost people in your building, then you see the opportunity for
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people to come to Christ. So there's a convergence of things. There was a shift
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in our emphasis on baptism, um,
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our presentation of it. And I'm just going to fly through these real quick,
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um, just ways attitudinally that we present baptism now.
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Number one, we emphasize beauty over duty, that it's
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not just got to, it's get to. I think in our zeal to defend the
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truth about baptism, we inadvertently missed the beauty tied
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to the death and the burial and the resurrection of Jesus. So we emphasize the
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beauty over duty. Number 2, we emphasize God's work,
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not human work. One of the biggest hang-ups I think that people have—
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are you doing that for me, Jimmy? Because I'm— thank you. Um,
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we— one of the biggest people, uh, hang-ups people have when it comes to baptism
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is they think we're placing a work salvation in place with
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baptism. And Colossians chapter 2 and verse 12 is so awesome
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because it says that we're saved through faith in what?
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The working of God. Whose work? The working of
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God who raised him from the dead. So we emphasize,
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um, God's work, not, not human work.
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Number 3, we emphasize substance over symbol, that baptism
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is not merely an outward sign of an inward act,
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that something really happens when you're baptized. When I pray,
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I don't say, when I pray, it's a picture of me talking to God.
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No, when I pray, I'm talking to God. When, when I When
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I praise Jesus, I don't say, when I praise Jesus, it's like I'm
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offering a sacrifice. No, I'm offering a sacrifice of praise, the fruit of my lips
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that gives thanks to his name. When I read
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Scripture, it's not like I'm hearing the voice of God. No, when I read Scripture,
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the voice of God can speak to me through his Holy Spirit.
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And so, when we look at baptism that way,
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something really happens at baptism. It's substance over
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symbol. Number 4, we emphasize baptism as a thing of unity instead
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of a thing of division. This is really ironic because Ephesians chapter 4 says,
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make every effort to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of
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peace. On what basis do you do that?
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7 things. I mean, talk about a bare minimum of
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non-negotiables. They're right there in Ephesians chapter 4.
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Number 5, we emphasize Jesus over baptism.
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In other words, uh, Jesus is the umbrella.
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We are the man before the plan. How's that? I believe in the plan of
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salvation, but we emphasize Jesus over baptism.
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Number 6, and like I said, I'm sorry I'm hurrying through this, we emphasize integral
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over optional. It is— baptism is part of the God-prescribed process
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of a sinner coming to God. It's not, not some option that you
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just tack on the end. Number 7, we emphasize the whole
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over the part, the whole following of Jesus, not just— you
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know what, we have our own version of eternal security in the Restoration Movement.
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Because, uh, uh, you know, if, if you're, if you're
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from what we would call like faith-only, uh, background,
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you're saying, hey, uh, you know, I think,
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uh, back when he was 7, he, he said the sinner's prayer and he,
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he confessed the name of Jesus. And so you're standing at the casket and everything's
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all right because you— nothing's ever happened in his life since then. There was no
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following of Jesus, there's no fruit, there's no evidence of the Holy Spirit. But man,
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he made a confession back then, but we do the same thing. What's the first
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question we ask? Was he baptized? No, no fruit,
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no following, no discipleship. So we're emphasizing,
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uh, the whole over just the part— the whole following of Jesus. Number 8,
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we emphasize baptism as a faith response, not as just
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some religious ritual. Number 9, we emphasize baptism
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as a starting point, not a finish line. And number 10,
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we emphasize baptizing for every disciple maker Not
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just minister— not just, for lack of a better term, not just,
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uh, clergy. I heard Roy Weiss say years
25:04
and years ago, the problem is not supply, the problem is not
25:08
demand, the problem is distribution. Think about it.
25:12
The problem's not supply— we got plenty of gospel.
25:16
The problem is not demand— there's lots of lost people. The problem
25:20
is distribution. And we have to make disciples who
25:24
make disciples. And when that snowball starts rolling,
25:29
rolling, when that, when that catches fire, when that
25:32
gets ignited in your church, that's when incredible things happen.
25:37
And I would add these things: today, not someday; normal, not unusual;
25:41
and people, not process. The last
25:45
couple of things I want to say, because I do— I think that clock's really
25:48
bugging me there. So, um,
25:51
I don't want to be that guy, all right? Um, we, we made shifts
25:55
in our staff— too late— we made shifts in our staff and
25:59
church culture toward disciple-making.
26:01
Um, we have a staff meeting every Monday morning. Instead of
26:05
just debriefing, uh, what went right and what went wrong
26:09
on Sunday, the staff is sitting there telling stories.
26:13
They're talking about the, the girl who had 5,000 followers on
26:18
her tarot card reading, and she came in, she got rid of all
26:21
her crystals and her tarot cards, she was baptized into Christ.
26:24
We're talking about the girl who just got run over by her boyfriend and had
26:28
her leg amputated, and she scoots down into the baptistry and
26:32
is baptized into Christ. We're talking about John the Baptist who's
26:36
now baptized 8 of his friends. And so, uh,
26:39
we look— we have to shut those meetings down.
26:42
I get accused that you're— I'm living it out here, I'm going to stop,
26:45
but I get accused at church of not knowing how to land the plane.
26:49
So we don't know how to land the plane. We don't know how to land
26:52
the plane in our, in our staff meetings. So, man,
26:55
there's so much more I could talk about. I'm excited about what God's doing,
26:59
and I just encourage you to let God do what he wants to do in
27:03
your church. Amen.
27:12
In your overtime, you answered literally every question I had jotted down.
27:16
You can get us right back on schedule then because I don't like questions anyway.
27:19
So, hey, well, let's go back to the shifts slide, those 10 shifts that
27:23
he had. So I was, uh, asking my table, you want me to ask him
27:26
when I get up there? And so 9 and 10 actually did capture a couple
27:30
of the things that I know folks want to talk about. But before we get
27:33
to those, I want to ask about this. I think everybody out there is wanting
27:36
to know more about your Decision Sundays. And wanting
27:39
to know more about this, this walkthrough Acts that you
27:43
take. Do you equip your members with this
27:47
or is this just for the class? Is this something— how
27:51
can we get a closer look at that? Well, when we first started doing it,
27:54
members showed up just to make sure I was doing it right.
27:59
Okay. Now,
28:03
there were certain phrases they were looking for. So now
28:06
when we do it, there are members who come to say, I want to,
28:09
I want to come to that to know how to do it. And,
28:13
uh, you've all seen, uh, I think, I think it came from the Church of
28:16
Christ, the, the, the checklist, you know, and you got faith, repentance,
28:20
confession, baptism, and each one of the conversions
28:24
in the book of Acts. And we, we passed that out. It's basically what
28:28
we've always done in showing the pattern of conversions in the book of Acts.
28:32
But it's making those people and their stories more
28:36
real and helping so that the average
28:39
person— I mean, they don't even know who these people are. And so
28:43
it just kind of makes it a little user-friendly to them. Well, let me be
28:47
more user-friendly. I think we want to know, how can we get a look at
28:50
that curriculum? Like, people want to— yeah, what does that
28:53
look like? Can we see it? We can get it through Renew. In fact,
28:56
I think I've sent that Okay, um, to Bobby. So yeah,
29:00
I'd be happy to. Yeah, well, thanks for sharing that. Um, talk about
29:04
equipping your members to join the mission. Um, you know,
29:08
I imagine you could spend 10 more minutes talking about how do you— but
29:12
generally, how do you do that? How do you equip your members? So part of
29:16
it is just natural contagion. Um, they watch this happening and
29:21
they want to be a part of it. I go to recovery ministry every Monday
29:24
night because I want a front row seat to seeing
29:27
people's lives be transformed. And I, I am
29:32
so overwhelmed with emotion by it. I could see the emotion on Adam's face.
29:36
I, I'm watching the book
29:39
of Acts unfold. I'm, I'm watching that, you know,
29:43
the Lord added daily, and I'm seeing tears and
29:47
expressions in the baptistry. And so I, I went for a little while and
29:51
I thought I want to work on Monday nights. And then, then inside this little
29:54
voice goes, no, you don't, because it's not just Monday night.
29:58
They're going to be calling you every time there's a need. And so
30:03
I finally settled on, I'm going to go on Monday nights and make myself available
30:06
for prayer with anybody that wants it. But I
30:10
think it— I think the contagion of watching
30:14
people's lives change is changing the culture of the
30:18
church. All right, so a culture of disciple-making. So if
30:21
I'm a member of your church and I want to, I want to lead someone
30:25
to make a decision for Jesus, is there a tool that you
30:29
use, a menu of tools? Uh, is there, is there a method?
30:34
Well, when we first started having all these baptisms, it struck us, just like
30:37
Adam was talking about, what are we going to do with these people? Because we
30:40
don't just believe in becoming disciples, we believe in becoming
30:44
as disciples. And, you know, discipleship, according to Hebrews
30:48
5, it takes time. By this time you ought to be teachers.
30:52
It takes teaching and it takes training because
30:57
you have your senses trained to discern good from evil.
31:01
And so we were getting ready to start a new series of sermons,
31:05
and the recovery minister and I got up on the platform together and in
31:10
Indianapolis, you know, the Colts were a big deal with Peyton Manning, and, um,
31:13
he would— whenever he'd call an audible, he would, uh,
31:17
Omaha! So we just— we got up, we canceled
31:21
the series we had, and we called a— we called an audible, and we
31:25
did it. We started a brand new series called Walk With Me, and we encouraged
31:28
everybody to walk with somebody or to allow somebody to walk with them.
31:32
And we provided some different materials. We used Trust and Follow Um,
31:37
from, from Renew. We provided materials from— to— for them to do
31:40
that, and we wanted it to be sort of an organic discipleship.
31:44
So when somebody wants to do that, we'll spend as much time with them as
31:47
they need, and we'll give them, uh,
31:51
resources like that to, to help them do it. All right,
31:54
um, the— talk about, uh, the alignment idea.
31:58
Like, you, you gave us a, uh, some numbers, like from '22,
32:02
'23, '24, in those years. Was that a sudden change in
32:06
your experience at that congregation, and it— was it a result of alignment?
32:10
And so talk about the importance of alignment. So the,
32:14
the church alignment program that Renew has helps
32:18
a church to align in 5 different areas, to help them align missionally,
32:22
to realize that disciple-making is the core mission of the
32:25
church. And there's so much more to that than just that statement. To unpack
32:29
it. But it aligns missionally, aligns theologically.
32:33
What are the— what, what are the bare minimum non-negotiables that
32:37
we have to be aligned on theologically as a church to make disciples?
32:41
And then organizationally, how do you get the whole organization
32:45
on board with this? Uh, philosophically, to, to, to know,
32:49
hey, we want to make Jesus-style disciples. We're not just concerned about
32:53
the content of Jesus' teaching, we're concerned about the methods that Jesus used,
32:57
and it was intentional, and it was relational, and it was transformational.
33:01
And, and then the final one, uh, which we often forget,
33:05
is relational— that we need to get aligned relationally.
33:08
And so it's a year-long program. We went through that, and now I've had the
33:13
privilege of helping some other churches go through that.
33:16
And sometimes it's when you have a large existing legacy church,
33:21
it's a little bit harder. How do you turn that whole ship around for a
33:24
church to become a disciple-making church. And so one
33:28
of the things that I've tried to focus on is helping some large legacy
33:32
churches turn that ship around without burning up everything that they've— you know,
33:36
in the case of our church, 1835, you don't want to throw away 191 years
33:39
of, of work and, and resources. So I
33:44
think some of my questions have touched on number 10, but I do want to
33:47
ask about number 9, um,
33:50
recognizing that baptism is the starting line. What happens Uh,
33:54
typically in your congregation, when someone has made the decision to follow Jesus,
33:58
they've been baptized, what happens with them next? Well, we have our,
34:01
uh, we have our adult ministries guy Connor Wood here,
34:04
um, with us today, but there's a pathway that
34:08
we put people on if they haven't done Trust and Follow Jesus yet. They go
34:12
on that Trust and Follow Jesus path. There's a starting point class that
34:16
tells the basic doctrines of the church And then we try
34:20
to get them plugged into a group. And what we're wrestling with right now is
34:24
which context of groups, because people only have so much time to give you.
34:28
So what, what is the way we're going to do that as a church,
34:32
the pathway? And man, just like Adam said, we're still,
34:36
still struggling with that because it's not just about becoming a disciple,
34:40
it's about continuing to become as a disciple.
34:44
All right, uh, biggest challenge What's the biggest challenge to becoming
34:48
a disciple-making church? I think the
34:52
biggest challenge is to make
34:56
sure you get aligned. I have this, this thing that's
34:59
always in my mind about alignment.
35:03
Um, if you, if you get on board with the purposes of
35:07
God, you can't be defeated.
35:11
If you don't get on board, you get left behind.
35:14
If you get in the way, you get crushed.
35:19
And I really liked what Adam said about going to fish where Jesus wants
35:23
you to, to fish. Um, I, I think that
35:28
any success we've had has been
35:33
when we got closer to the heart of Jesus. So to be constantly trying
35:37
to move close to the heart of Jesus, be around the people he would have
35:40
been around, do the things he would have done Watch how, how Jesus
35:45
did discipleship and just never stop trying
35:48
to get aligned with that. And it doesn't happen overnight,
35:52
but it does unmistakably start to happen. And it's
35:57
the most glorious thing to behold when it
36:00
does. And I'm so thankful at 63 years of age, when the
36:04
new guy's coming in to be like, I get to see the
36:08
promised land. To, to watch this, this,
36:11
uh, happen. And I think we're like the prayer
36:14
meeting when Peter's in prison. They're praying for him, he shows up,
36:18
and they can't really believe that it happened. And when
36:22
you get aligned, when you get aligned around the core mission of the church and
36:25
getting closer to the heart of Jesus, good things start to happen.
36:29
Last question: give us one step. What's a first step
36:33
we could take towards becoming disciple-making churches that are aligned with
36:37
the heart of Jesus? So it's going to sound like a cliché,
36:41
but I would say to open up your Gospels,
36:45
watch Jesus and how he did it, and pray.
36:50
It's, you know, I had a friend one time, you know that old saying
36:54
that says, uh, if you keep doing the same thing over
36:57
and over again, keep doing the same thing over and over again,
37:00
uh, expecting a different result, that's the definition of insanity.
37:04
But if what you keep doing over and over again is what Jesus told you
37:07
to do, that's not the definition of insanity. That's the definition of faithfulness.
37:12
And then God does what God wants to do when God wants to do it
37:15
with who he wants to do it. So thank you. Let's thank Jeff Vaw.
37:23
Thanks for listening to the Real Life Theology podcast. For more content
37:27
like this, including free ebooks, articles, podcasts, and and other resources,
37:30
visit renew.org.