We have to assess: Are we making disciples along the way as we draw people to our churches?
The disciples obey because that's what people do when someone rises from the dead and gives instructions.
Every church needs to be able to answer two questions. First, what is our plan for making disciples? And second, does our plan work?
The Seventeenth Amendment serves not the public's interest but the interests of the governing masterminds and their disciples. Its early proponents advanced it not because they championed 'democracy' or the individual, but because they knew it would be one of several important mechanisms for empowering the federal government and unraveling constitutional republicanism.
The Gospel of Thomas, greatly favored in some circles, is ignored by archaeologists, primarily because it exhibits no verisimilitude. It tells us nothing about the historical Jesus and the world he and his disciples lived in. I've heard it said, that if all we had was the Gospel of Thomas, would we even know that Jesus was Jewish?
America does not need gorgeous halls and concert rooms for its musical development, but music schools with competent teachers, and many, very many, free scholarships for talented young disciples who are unable to pay the expense of study.
When we become incorruptible and immortal and attain to the blessed state of conformity with Christ, we will be ever with the Lord, gaining fulfillment in the purest contemplations of His visible theophany which will illuminate us with its most brilliant rays, just as it illuminated the disciples at the time of the most divine Transfiguration. This is the light of God, as St. John has said in his Revelation (Rev. 22:5), and such is the opinion of all the saints.
That is the challenge of a spiritual teacher: not to take on board the projections of specialness people have. This is especially dangerous for spiritual teachers who only have contact with disciples or followers, who may live in an ashram.
Before Jesus leads His disciples into suffering, humiliation, disgrace, and disdain, He summons them and shows Himself to them as the Lord in God's glory.
There is a beautiful transparency to honest disciples who never wear a false face and do not pretend to be anything but who they are.
Being a Christian does not mean that there is one way of living a Christian life, people do it differently in different cultures because they have different interpretations, that's how it should be. The disciples had arguments with Jesus! It is about listening to one another, and respecting one another with those differences.
When we walk without the cross, when we build without the cross and when we proclaim Christ without the cross, we are not disciples of the Lord. We are worldly. We may be bishops, priests, cardinals, popes, all of this, but we are not disciples of the Lord.
We have got to make disciples. Fun nights and pizza nights are not going to sustain us.
I believe in God, Mozart and Beethoven, and likewise their disciples and apostles; - I believe in the Holy Spirit and the truth of the one, indivisible Art; - I believe that this Art proceeds from God, and lives within the hearts of all illumined men; - I believe that he who once has bathed in the sublime delights of this high Art, is consecrate to Her for ever, and never can deny Her; - I believe that through Art all men are saved.
How often does a man ruin his disciples by remaining always with them! When men are once trained, it is essential that their leader leave them, for without his absence they cannot develop themselves. Plants always remain small under a big tree.
The mega-strategy of Jesus: make disciples.
Disciples will not be weakened by suffering, worn down, and embittered until they are broken. Instead, they bear suffering, by the power of him who supports them. The disciples bear the suffering laid on them only by the power of him who bears all suffering on the cross. As bearers of suffering, they stand in communion with the Crucified.
There is the view I call penal non-substitution, or the penal example view. (It is also called the Governmental View in textbooks of theology. ) This is often associated with Arminian theology stemming from the great Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius. However, the view was taken up by [Jonathan] Edwards's disciples in New England, who developed a Calvinistic strand of the doctrine.
Note that charity is given only to those who seek it, only to those who earnestly pray for it, only to those who are disciples of Christ. Before we can be filled with this pure love, we must start at the beginning with the first principle of the gospel. We must have "first, Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. "
You can do more with 12 disciples than with 1,200 religious consumers.