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Key: Personal Priority

How can our mission culture lead to more people becoming disciples?

We must transition from transactional mission moments to transformational journeys with people through building deeper relationships. 

Discipleship is a journey. Every person has their unique experiences, questions, and walks with the Lord. So when connecting with people, we must intentionally come to know their unique journey. If not, the good news can come across as a sales pitch, or our actions of love can become more focused on us rather than the person we’re reaching.

Growing deeper relationships with people in our Jerusalems, Judea, and Samaria needs to be thought through the lens of developing simple connections. “Let’s build a hospital!” seems like one way to help people from our Samaria, but rather than big projects with big budgets, let’s think of simple activities that are low cost or free to build relationships. There are hundreds of examples of simple connections that I’m sure you could think of off the top of your head like taking walks, playing sports, having coffee, creating art, cleaning a common area, or even sharing a pizza. But as we consider different simple connections, we must be very careful to not choose a transactional moment over a transformational journey.

Let’s use pizza to think about a transactional vs. transformational mission.

If we had a pizza and wanted to use it to connect with people in our community, what might we do? One idea may be to hand out pizza slices to people. So as we hand out pizza slices, people are happy. They are happy to get a slice of pizza. We are happy to make someone else happy. Maybe a happy photo is even taken together. They go home happy and we go home happy. When we find ourselves in these moments, everything feels like a success! 

But if we only distribute pizza, take photos, and go home happy, but our goal is discipleship, then we may have missed building a relationship. And if we’re missing relationship, we’re missing discipleship. 

What if rather than handing out the pizza slices to as many people as we can, we reexamined our ministry through a personal lens. We can even use the exact same resource, our pizza. What if we took our pizza and sat down at a table across from someone and shared it as a meal together? By getting to know each other, we could find out about their family or perhaps what motivates them. They could find out our stories and Who inspires us in life. 

Connecting with people must be viewed as the starting line, not the finish line. Our time together can become less about the project and more about the person. God’s mission values people over projects.

As we meet with people from our Jerusalems, Judea, and Samaria, we must focus on creating space to pay attention to how the Holy Spirit is opening doors to have deeper conversations. Some people may be willing to immediately open up about their lives spiritually, but many times, they are not ready to jump straight into the deepest heart conversations in life without a relationship to start from.

Journeying with others in deeper relationships gives us the opportunity to share God’s Kingdom life through being light and salt! Jesus said, “Let your light shine before men that they may see your good deeds and glorify our Father in Heaven.” Jesus is emphasizing the importance of life together with others. And as salt, we are sent into our community to be the flavor enhancers of life! Jesus said, “I came that they may have life and life abundantly.” When people see us learning, demonstrating, and enjoying the abundant, overflowing life that Jesus talked about, they can see what new life actually looks like. Overflowing lives as salt and light shows God’s new life not only in word but in action. 

As God’s people building deeper relationships throughout our community, we become the people who seek to love, serve, bless, care for, and sow into the lives of others. This starts to cultivate good soil for the Gospel.

While we’re loving our neighbors and building deeper relationships with them, sharing the Gospel message of who Jesus is and what He’s done for us does not become any less important or urgent, but rather when we’re following the Holy Spirit’s lead in relationship with others, we can see opportunities to share Jesus with others deepen and lead to a journey of discipleship. One way to help us think through this process of following the Holy Spirit through relationships is using this ILOVE acrostic:

When building deeper connections with others: 

I: Initiate conversation. Ask questions and open up dialogue. And then as the Holy Spirit opens the door…

L: Listen to their story. Be attentive to their unique experience in life. As the Holy Spirit opens the door,

O: Offer prayer. Discover connections between their story and an opportunity to pray for them. Then, as the Holy Spirit opens the door,

V: Vocalize the Gospel. Highlight who Jesus is and what He’s done for them in connection to them personally. And as He opens the door,

E: Engage with a community invitation. Community is one of the best ways to maximize exposure to Jesus. More on that in the next lesson.

As we follow the Holy Spirit’s lead, whether it’s in our first conversation or longer down the road of relationship, the best skill we can hone is learning to pay attention to the doors God is opening to go deeper with others. Our job is not to perform. Striving to perform charity or evangelism can lead us to lives of doing a religious duty. God is calling us to be obedient in relationship. To love Him with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. Then to love our neighbor as ourselves. He is drawing people to Himself. Let’s boldly, patiently, and obediently follow His lead.

As we intentionally journey with people, may we learn to pay attention to who they are uniquely, serve them abundantly, and follow the Holy Spirit’s lead to share with them personally.