Mondays Are for Making Disciples: Last words.

This Mondays Are for Making Disciples will be my last as a member of the Embrace Baltimore Team. These last two years have been an awesome experience with a great team and a group of fine church starters. I am grateful to Dr. David Lee, executive director of the Baptist Convention of Maryland/Delaware and to Bob Mackey, executive director of Embrace Baltimore, for the
privilege of serving in this role.

I must admit that closing my office in Baltimore was tough, really tough.  I won’t miss the crazy schedule.  I won’t miss the late nights and early mornings.  I won’t shed a tear when I don’t have to go to the airport as often.

But I already miss terribly a group of men I refer to as the Baltimore starters.  They have become a band of brothers.  I have watched them dream, plan, work, and in a few instances grieve.  They are courageous.  They are men of faith.  They are diverse in age, backgrounds, ethnicity, and approaches to ministry. They are disciple makers and church starters.

January 1, 2010, will start a new decade, and I will begin a new ministry.  I am thrilled to be joining Senior Pastor James Merritt’s team at Cross Pointe Church, Duluth, GA.  I will also become the director of the Dehoney Center for Urban Ministry Training at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.  I have met few pastors with a greater passion for evangelism and missions than James and together with the Cross Pointe team we are going to engage Atlanta and cities around the world with the full extent of the leadership, resources, and creativity the Lord gives us.

I will continue to write Mondays Are for Making Disciples, but this one is special to me.  My Baltimore friends are on my heart, and I wish to express a few “last thoughts” to them as the director of church starting.

So to the Baltimore starters risking it all for the kingdom, I give you this word of challenge and encouragement:  Create a culture of multiplying disciples.  You have everything you need to do it.  In Christ you are able.  Seize the day and the opportunity He has given you.

Next week I will discuss how to create such a culture.  Until then and as you reflect on your priorities for 2010, consider how Jesus did more than make a few disciples.  He created a culture of multiplication among His disciples.  If you will follow His example, Baltimore will never be the same.  For
sure, the world will never be the same.

May His kingdom come, and His will be done, in Baltimore as it is in heaven.

Mondays Are for Making Disciples: Disciples need complex relationships.

Urbanites relate to people differently than people who live in small towns or rural communities.

Relationships among people living in small towns are complex. We might be tempted to think relationships of urbanites would be more complex, but in reality small town relationships are substantially more complicated. Your barber is also your son’s little league coach. You both serve on the volunteer fire department, and you are his small group teacher at church. Oh, I forgot to mention he is your wife’s cousin.

In the city you see your barber a couple of times each month. Your little league coach works for a national telecommunications firm, and he relocated to your city just this year. There is no volunteer fire department. Your wife’s cousin and her husband live in Ohio, and you haven’t seen them in years.

In the city our relationships become compartmentalized. We relate to most people for a purpose. The person and the relationship are task-oriented. Any recurring contact is ultimately based on the task, not the person. During these encounters, we may be personal and friendly, but the relationships remain rather thin.

In addition to these secondary relationships most urbanites are members of a family. They may also be members of 1 or 2 close-knit groups that resemble tribes. These groups are more than clubs as they may have  initiation rites, exert considerable influence over the members’ lives outside of the group, and use “us” and “them” language. It is in these family and “tribal” relationships that urbanites look for their emotional and social needs to be met.

Disciple making in the city needs to be informed by the dynamics of urban relationships. For too many urban Christians, church (the gathering of disciples) has become a secondary relationship. It is a task to be fulfilled, and the relationships are thin. Apart from a weekly gathering, which they may not attend weekly, they have little if any contact with the disciples of their church. Life in the body of Christ has become a simple relationship.

Jesus made disciples through complex relationships. He and His disciples traveled together, attended a wedding together, celebrated festivals together, went away on retreats together, and ate many meals together. Through these varied experiences, deep relationships developed with Him and between the disciples.

Consider three applications. First, in order to fulfill the Great Commission we need to develop complex relationships among disciples. Semi-anonymous encounters on Sunday morning can hardly compare to the way Jesus imitated kingdom life before His disciples and the way He created community among them.

Second, we need to be mindful of families and “tribal” groups in our efforts to make new disciples. As God gives us favor to see a person become a follower of Christ, we should be intentional about them taking the gospel into their complex relationships. We see this occur in the New Testament when an entire household follows Christ.

Third, urban disciples have hundreds of thin relationships, and none of them form by happenstance. God places us in the paths of other people because God wants them to hear the good news and become disciples of Jesus Christ. We need to be an example to new disciples, showing them how to make disciples of people they hardly know.

Mondays Are for Making Disciples: Simple as 1, 2, 3.

Recently, I received some information from a friend engaging a city with the Gospel. He is seeing a significant advance with many non-Christians repenting and becoming disciples of Jesus Christ. Out of these efforts he has seen more than 100 new churches started.

He shared with me 8 core principles that shape his efforts, and he would be quick to say these are not a method. Here are the eight principles:

1. Increase Prayer for My City
2. Increase Competency—Communication, Cultural, Urban
3. Seek Multiple Segments
4. Confirm Vision, Process and Tools
5. Increase Evangelism
6. Build Significant Vision-filled Relationships with Local Believers
7. Increase the Effectiveness of my Time Usage
8. Focus on the Fruitful

 Out of these, I want to share with you a few additional thoughts he gave me for a couple of these principles:

Concerning prayer he said:

I will set and work towards realistic goals of -

• Daily praying for specific requests related to my city including praying for persons of peace and the salvation of the lost I know in the city.
• Recruiting a number of local believers who will commit to praying regularly for specific requests related to the city.
• Recruiting a number of believers in other places who will commit to praying regularly for specific requests related to the city.
• Regularly updating these partners with specific prayer requests for the city.

 Concerning vision, process, and tools, he said:

• I will confirm the basic vision God has given to me for reaching all of my city with the Gospel so that I can communicate it clearly.
• I will confirm the basic comprehensive training process in which I am working to see people move from non-believer to believer; believer to obedient disciple; obedient disciples to a local church; a local church to a multiplying local church. I will be able to simply express each of these steps.
• I will confirm the basic tools I intend to use for evangelism, discipleship, and training believers to be a multiplying church. I will be able to effectively use each of these tools.
• I will ensure that the vision, processes and tools are appropriate to the people and culture of my city and as such are reproducible.

 Concerning evangelism he said:

I will set and work toward realistic goals for –

• My own personal evangelism on a daily basis.
• Training of every believer I know in basic evangelism.
• Inviting believers from outside to come to my city and share the Gospel broadly.
• Where possible to broadly scatter evangelistic materials (print, digital, media) to increase the general awareness of the Gospel within my city, and perhaps to link into personal evangelistic presentations by national believers.

Mondays Are for Making Disciples: Start fewer churches.

You leave your house at 4am for the marina. By 6:30 you motor up to the location marked on your GPS. Your fish finder indicates fish all over the structure 120 feet below you. You fish this spot a couple of times each year, and it always holds fish, big fish. You tell everyone onboard to drop their lines; they have already put bait on their hooks. Thirty seconds later, several onboard are fighting nice fish. On days like this, fishing takes little skill. In fact, on these days you could call it “catching” rather than “fishing.”

For a few urban church starters, launching a new church is like fishing on days when you find active fish at every spot. It seems like even your mistakes produce good results.

But most urban church starters find their experience to be quite different. You follow the best advice, and your results are meager. You work hard, maybe harder than most, and still, your results are well below what you had hoped. Progress is slower than you projected. If that were not enough, a key partner fails to follow through with promises they made. They tell you circumstances have changed, and they wished they could do more.

The church starters in the latter group are not asked to speak at the conferences and nobody calls to interview them for missions publications. Their partners, the ones that don’t bail on them, begin to treat them like an ex-brother-in-law. Too often these starters begin to doubt their abilities, and not a few question their calling. Financial and ministry strains chip away at their families, and then the pull factors increase. Family in other states, new opportunities in other ministries, and memories of prior effectiveness in other roles begin to pull, enticing them to leave.

What is the solution? We should start fewer urban churches—at least in the beginning.

We need to engage our cities by increasing our long-term incarnational efforts. I am about to disappoint a few church starters, but we need to do so by reducing our funding. We need to send men and women to our cities with skills to work in the marketplace so they will be financially self-sufficient and integrated into the community. We need to prepare them to make disciples and to influence the domains of society with kingdom values before they begin congregating new churches. They need to go with a calling to make disciples in their city, and this calling should supersede a fixation on starting a church. A few reasons will explain why incarnational disciple making must be our first priority:

1. Urban churches usually take longer to develop. A number of examples exist where an urban church start experienced a growth pattern over 7-10 years that a suburban church start experienced in its first or second year.
2. Long-term funding is unrealistic and non-reproducible. Funding should not dictate kingdom expansion and growth. If we are to reach all the people groups of our cities, we cannot begin with the limits of our partnership support. We have to find ways to move to the city and “plant our own gardens.”
3. Funding plans, typically not more than 3 years, contribute to the strains which push/pull a church starter to leave.
4. By fixating on a church start, the goal becomes the growth of the congregation rather than making disciples of all the peoples in a metropolis.
5. Many church starters transition quickly from the role of evangelist/church starter to the role of chaplain. As a chaplain, they focus on the spiritual and relational needs of their group, not on reaching the city.

We need to continue engaging our cities with church starting efforts. At the same time, we need to increase our efforts to send men and women to the city whose first role is to make disciples and influence the domains of society with kingdom values. Their second role is to congregate these new disciples into new churches. They need to live and work in these cities with little financial support. They need to be disciple makers who are called to live in that city.

Mondays Are for Making Disciples: GPS for small group leaders.

Recently, some friends were discussing how fun it would be if they could change the messages on their GPS units. Here are a few suggestions that might invigorate your next trip:

• “What is your problem? I told you three times to make a U-turn as soon as possible.”
• “I’m sorry. It seems you have been busy and have not had time to download the map updates. This road has been closed for 6 months due to bridge repairs. The detour sign you saw 2 miles back really did apply to you.”
• “In .5 miles you need to merge to the right and take the next exit. Yeah, I know. I could have told you 1.5 miles ago, but I wanted to see if you could merge across 6 lanes of heavy traffic in less than ½ mile without missing the exit. I don’t think you can do it, but it will be fun watching you try.”
• “You must be a man because obviously you are not listening to anything I say.”
• “Stop. Do not mute the sound!”

These messages got me thinking. What if we had GPS units for small group leaders? Our small group GPS could map the destination and provide real-time instruction. We could help small group leaders navigate difficult situations (people) and keep a clear focus with practical instruction to reach the destination (making new disciples and growing disciples). Imagine a few of the messages we might include on such a unit:

• “Hey. Where are you going? It is good your group really likes each other and always has lively discussion. The destination, that is the purpose for your group, is to make new disciples and grow disciples to be transformed into the image of Christ. How are you doing in reaching this destination?”
• “I know you need to be away this week. Please, please don’t ask her to teach for you. She is a great communicator, but teaching at this time is not appropriate in light of what she shared with you last week.”
• “Your group is more than a Bible study, really. That means evangelism, fellowship, service, sacrifice, discipline, submission, prayer, and missions also should be integral elements. Give them time and attention when your group meets and between meetings.”
• “If you think you have it tough, you should have to listen to your teaching every week.”

Small group leaders need a clear destination and practical directions to arrive there. Urban pastors and church starters need to invest in these co-laborers. Like a GPS, they need to provide regular updates to small group leaders, giving them real-time instruction about reaching the destination, avoiding traffic, and plotting detours when they encounter a closed road. Autopilot is not an option. Periodic instruction only helps them navigate from one error to another. Small groups that effectively make disciples require systematic leadership and leadership development.

Mondays Are for Making Disciples: Making disciples of homeless people.

"Working at the Memphis Union Mission is the only one left," he explained.  I moved from Pensacola, FL, to Memphis, TN, to attend seminary.  During the first week of classes, we were instructed to select a practical ministry experience.  I went to the sign up only to learn that all ministry opportunities had been taken except for working at a homeless shelter.  For the next two years my Saturday evenings were spent at the Memphis Union Mission.

I didn’t like it, especially in the beginning.  I was uncomfortable.  I was ill-equipped.  I felt like an outsider.  Sometimes, I was scared.  I kept going back, even when the time came that I could select a different ministry.

I remember well one night when it was quite cold outside.  The mission was overflowing and turning men away when every possible space had been given to someone seeking shelter.  On this winter night warmth was the main attraction.  It also had an adverse affect on a few men who had been drinking throughout the day, trying to stave off the cold and fill their empty stomachs.  Wearing all the clothing they owned, they overheated and became sick during the service.  This memory is not pleasant.

I remember men whose minds were more scrambled than eggs can ever be.  One fellow was obsessed with fairies.  He saw them everywhere, and they were responsible for everything that happened.

I remember one man who told me how he became homeless.  He was in his thirties, older than I was at the time, and a member of a prominent family in Memphis.  He was well educated and had lived a life of privilege.  Drugs, poor choices, wrong friends, depression, and rebellion led to his wife divorcing him and him loosing the right to see his children.  He eventually lost every possession he had and was living on the street.  On a Saturday night in Memphis he encountered the living Christ Who gave him new life, and he discovered new friends who began helping him with his addictions.

Tonight in Baltimore 3,000 people are homeless.  Additionally, there are more than 700 youth identified to be homeless (400+) or in unstable housing.  Talk with folks working with homeless people, and they say the numbers are rising in many locations because of the economy.  One worker said, “I’ve seen [a] greater number of higher functioning people—individuals who have held professional, skilled-craft positions—in housing crisis. The idea of entering a shelter system is the ultimate sign of personal failure.”

People become homeless for a variety of reasons.  It is wrong and ill-informed to think people are homeless because they are lazy.  Most are homeless because of a complex maze of circumstances and choices.

Consider the single mom who lost her job.  Her landlord told her there are ways other than money to pay for her rent.  She chose to sleep in the car with her three-year-old son until it was towed.

Think about that brilliant high school student who quietly struggled with depression.  He was at the top of his class academically and everyone knew he would work for NASA some day.  Ten years later, Ten years later, after dropping out of college and after his parents spent thousands of dollars for counseling and psychiatric care, he moves from shelter to shelter.  He can function adequately when he takes his medication, but he hates how they make him feel.  He does not take them regularly.  The doctors say he is bipolar.

Churches engaging urban areas must wrestle with making disciples of those who have no home.  They should teach their disciples how to love homeless neighbors without encouraging or empowering them to remain homeless.  There are no simple answers, and there are no excuses for churches that are unengaged or under-engaged.  Our response has to be more holistic than simply offering a cot, a meal, and a tract if we are to make disciples of people whose lives are messy.  Gospel transformation and personal development should characterize our efforts.

Excellent models of ministry can inform and instruct churches as they choose their role in making disciples of homeless people.  Below are links to three ministries worth considering.

Atlanta: Family Consultation Service

Baltimore:  Faith Urban Works

Chicago: Breakthrough Urban Ministries

At this link you will find a list of shelters and agencies in Baltimore that provide services for homeless people:  Click HERE.

Mondays Are for Making Disciples: What do you hear?

You must listen to disciples if you are to do more than make church members who sit in your seats or serve in your community and continue living like the world.

Urban environments bombard us with an endless stream of sounds, music, information, messages, and images. Our disciple making efforts are little different. We direct messages, teachings, lessons, books, studies, music, prayers, and images at the people we are discipling. Even our small groups are prone to be unidirectional channels of information after we complete the required period of “fellowship.”

All effective pastors and church starters listen.

• They listen for future trends and challenges that will impact their efforts.
• They listen for examples in other ministries that could improve their own ministries.
• They listen to counsel when adding staff and when making significant financial decisions.
• They listen to trusted friends when they make mistakes.
• They have a small percentage of people who always want to tell them what they are doing wrong and what they should be doing. They wish they could avoid listening to these people.

 But listening for the purpose of making disciples is quite different.

A sizeable shift is underway in many churches. Pastors and church starters are mobilizing teams of volunteers to clean community parks, paint schools, provide manpower for community events, serve in homeless shelters, provide gasoline at reduced prices, rebuild homes damaged in storms, etc. Twenty years ago most churches strong on preaching the Gospel would have seldom engaged in such efforts. Now, entire ministries are mobilizing and equipping churches to serve their communities. National and local organizations are mobilizing churches across denominations to love their communities together through acts of service on a given weekend.

Another shift is occurring, and you will notice it only if you are listening carefully to those you are discipling, especially the young people. Ask a 40ish adult Christian what is the most important commandment in the Bible, and you will likely hear, “Love God.” Ask a Christian teenager the same question, and you will likely hear, “Love my neighbor.” Our young people are being inundated with messages to serve their community. They hear it from their pastor and their small group leaders. They hear it at school. They hear it from the President and the First Lady. They even hear it in popular sitcoms. Yes, a number of sitcoms have recently incorporated into their scripts messages promoting community service.

If you are listening, you are hearing more than a shift to include loving our neighbors. You are hearing among some a subtle substitution. We needed a correction from our inward self-focus. That correction, however, should be the fullness of the Great Commandment: a passionate, consuming love for our Lord AND a sacrificial love of our neighbors. Substituting “Love God” with “Love my neighbor” neither fulfills the Great Commandment nor the Great Commission, and only by listening carefully will you know if this substitution is occurring in your ministry.

What do you hear?

Mondays Are for Making Disciples: Prayer of an urban missionary.

Urban missionaries and church starters are doers. Action and execution mark their lives. Our systems and culture of missions reinforce this character. They cannot rest on the labor of others because they are starters, launching new churches and making new disciples.

Yet, they must be people of prayer. We hear admonitions for enlisting prayer partners, developing prayer strategies, a term I do not accept, and securing a prayer shield, a faddish phrase for a personal prayer team. What we need most are urban pastors and urban missionaries whose lives of prayer we can follow.

“It is said that the key to the door in the Iron Curtain was cut in Leipzig,” and the cutting tool was an urban prayer meeting held every Monday night. See http://bit.ly/EQrlD to learn how Pastor Christian Führer led this urban prayer movement that changed the world. We need more.

As I reflect on how we who labor in the cities should pray, I am drawn to the Scriptures. We could look at Daniel or a number of the prophets. Today, I want to look at the Apostle Paul who was a fruitful urban missionary and urban church starter. He was a warrior missionary. He faced death again and again. He was persecuted, criticized, and struggled with fear. He persevered to the end, and his passion for extending the Gospel to all the peoples is a model we can and should follow.

I find myself wishing I could spend a few days with him to listen to him pray. Sure, I would like to hear him preach the Gospel, but what I would like most is to hear him pray. This desire led me to look freshly at his letters to urban churches in the New Testament. II Thessalonians reveals much about how he prayed for disciples in this church and how he asked them to pray for him.

Thessalonica was a city of 100,000 people and the capital of the Roman province of Macedonia. Its harbor and trade routes made it a city of broad and rich culture. Religious pluralism abounded with adherents to the Greco-Roman pantheon, the emperor cult, and Egyptian cults. A large Jewish community also lived in the city.

The Thessalonian disciples were persecuted and proved to be faithful and fruitful. Below, I copy a few verses from II Thessalonians. A careful reflection on the full text of this short letter will give you a glimpse of how and why he prayed for these believers. Lord, teach us to pray this way for urban Christians around the world who face many adversities.

II Thessalonians 1 ESV 
3We ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers, as is right, because your faith is growing abundantly, and the love of every one of you for one another is increasing.

11 To this end we always pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of his calling and may fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power, 12 so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.

II Thessalonians 2 ESV
13 But we ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers beloved by the Lord, because God chose you as the firstfruits to be saved, through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth. 14 To this he called you through our gospel, so that you may obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.

16 Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God our Father, who loved us and gave us eternal comfort and good hope through grace, 17 comfort your hearts and establish them in every good work and word.

II Thessalonians 3 ESV
1 Finally, brothers, pray for us, that the word of the Lord may speed ahead and be honored, as happened among you, 2 and that we may be delivered from wicked and evil men. For not all have faith. 3 But the Lord is faithful. He will establish you and guard you against the evil one. 4 And we have confidence in the Lord about you, that you are doing and will do the things that we command. 5 May the Lord direct your hearts to the love of God and to the steadfastness of Christ.

16 Now may the Lord of peace himself give you peace at all times in every way. The Lord be with you all.

Mondays Are for Making Disciples: Prayers of an urban pastor.

Charles Haddon Spurgeon’s preaching is legendary. Most people, however, know little about his ministry of prayer. His prayers reveal his theology, pastoral spirit, evangelistic zeal, missional vision, and his passion for reaching London. It has been said by those who heard him preach and pray that his prayers were more profound than his sermons.

When his church built the Metropolitan Tabernacle in 1861, London was the largest city in the world with 3.1 million people calling it home. Nearly 40% of those people were born elsewhere. Communities of Irish, French, Spanish, German, Chinese, Indian, African, and Jewish peoples made London a global city.

Spurgeon was an urban pastor who was enthusiastic about making disciples. The city and life in the city were frequent themes in his prayers. He prayed for Christians living in the city. He prayed for the millions who lived in the city who were not followers of Christ. He prayed for rulers and for the rich. He prayed for the poor and the oppressed. He prayed for businessmen, the economy, parents, mothers, and children. He prayed against sin and for sinners. He prayed for rest, strength, courage, endurance, faith, hope, and love. He names London in his prayers and prays for the world and all its inhabitants.

I wish to highlight a few sentences from prayers he prayed during services at Metropolitan Tabernacle. After each selection is the name given to the prayer in C.H. Spurgeon’s Prayers, a collection of 26 prayers he prayed at Tabernacle. Let these few words encourage us and instruct us as we pray for the cities.

C.H. Spurgeon:

“We do bless Thee, Lord, for instituting the blessed ordinance of prayer. What could we do without it, and we take great shame to ourselves that we should use it so little. We pray that we may be men of prayer, taken up with it, that it may take us up and bear us as on its wings towards heavens” (The Wings of Prayer).

“Lord look upon Thy people. We might pray about our troubles. We will not; we will only pray against our sins. We might come to Thee about our weariness, about our sickness, about our disappointment, about our poverty; but we will leave all that, we will only come about sin. Lord make us holy, and then do what Thou wilt with us” (A Prayer for Holiness).

“Lord help Thy people to be right as parents. May none of us spoil our children; may there be no misconducted families to cry out against us. Help us to be right as masters; may there be no oppression, no hardness and unkindness. Help us to be right as servants; may there be no eye service, no purloining, but may there be everything that adorns the Christian character. Keep us right as citizens; may we do all we can for our country, and for the times in which we live. Keep us right, we pray Thee, as citizens of the higher country; may we be living for it, to enjoy its privileges, and to bring others within its burgess-ship, that multitudes may be made citizens of Christ through our means” (Deliver us from Evil).

“Let all of the churches feel that they are ordained to bless their neighbors. Oh! that the Christian Church in England might begin to take upon itself its true burden. Let the Church in London especially, with its mass of poverty and sin round about it, care for the people and love the people; and may all Christians bestir themselves that something may be done for the good of men, and for the glory of God. Lord, do use us for Thy glory” (Deliver us from Evil).

“O Lord! stir up the dwellers in this great, great city. Oh! arouse us to the spiritual destitution of the masses. O God, help us all by some means, by any means, by every means to get at the ears of men for Christ’s sake that so we may reach their hearts. We would send up an exceeding great and bitter cry to Thee on behalf of millions that enter no place of worship, but rather violate its sanctity and despise its blessed message. Lord! wake up London, we beseech Thee. Send us another Jonah; send us another John the Baptist. Oh! that the Christ Himself would send forth multitudes of labourers amongst this thick standing corn, for the harvest truly is plenteous; but the labourers are few. O God! save this city; save this country; save all countries; and let Thy kingdom come; may every knee bow and confess that Jesus Christ is Lord” (Boldness at the Throne of Grace).

“Lord, make us useful. Oh! let no believer live to himself. May we be trying to bring others to Christ. May our servants, and work-people, and neighbors all know where we live; and if they do not understand the secret of that life, yet may they see the fruit of that life, and may they ask, ‘What is this?’ and enquire their way to Christ that they may be sanctified too. O Lord, we pray Thee visit Thy Church. May none of us imagine that we are living aright unless we are brining others to the cross” (He Ever Liveth).

“Our Father, come and rest Thy children now. Take the helmet from our brow, remove from us the weight of our heavy armour for awhile, and may we just have peace, perfect peace, and be at rest” (Help from on High).

“And our brethren at home, in poverty many of them, working for Christ, Lord accept them and help us to help them. Sunday-school teachers, do Thou remember them; and the tract visitors from door to door, and the City missionaries, and the Bible women, all who in any way endeavor to bring Christ under the notice of men. O, help them all” (A Prayer for Holiness).

“Now, Lord, we cannot pray any longer, though we have a thousand things to ask for. Thy servant cannot, so he begs to leave a broken prayer at the mercy seat with this at the foot of it: We ask in the name of Jesus Christ Thy Son” (Help from on High).

Mondays Are for Making Disciples: It is never too late.

After a military career, employment with a state government, and a divorce, he moved to Alaska. He wanted to get away, even start over. Well, she lived in Alaska, though he said his moving there was more about convenience than love. I was at one of my favorite spots in an airport I pass through frequently. The restaurant was full, and this fellow traveler was looking for a place to enjoy his lunch. I was eating my lunch and trying to get through a backlog of email. He asked if he could sit at my table, and 30 minutes later we had walked through many of his 70+ years of life. The email would have to wait. My new friend told me he grew up attending church where his mom played the organ. He used words and phrases common for someone very familiar with church life. I was interested to know if he was a follower of Jesus Christ and not merely a person who had attended church most of his life. I told him my story about how I became a follower of Jesus and asked if he would tell me how he went from being a young man who attended church with his mom to choosing for himself to follow Christ and trust in Him alone. He smiled and said it happened when he was in Alaska. After he had been there a while he began to attend a vibrant church. He contrasted this church to ones he had experienced where the preaching focused on financial blessings and where the preachers lived better than most of the people who attended the church. His eyes gleamed as he talked about the preaching and worship at this church and how he became a follower of Christ there. I am glad he was unaware George Barna wrote: “In other words, if people do not embrace Jesus Christ as their Savior before they reach their teenage years, the chance of their doing so at all is slim.” Really? Their chances are “slim?” Barna’s statement is wrong. Statistics that give slim possibility to someone becoming a follower of Christ after their 18^th birthday wrongly communicate God’s activity in salvation. They indicate the Holy Spirit’s power is optimum only among children. Tell that to Peter, Mary, Paul, and Lydia in the New Testament. Many people become followers of Christ after their 18^th birthday, as did my wife and I. For example, Southern Baptists have reported consistently for the last few years that 54% of their baptisms each year are of people under the age of 18. That means 46% of the people baptized are 18 years of age or older! I often make the following request of people in groups where I am teaching: “Regardless of when you were baptized, raise your hand if you became a genuine follower of Jesus Christ, that is were born again, after your 18^th birthday.” It is not uncommon for 50% or more of the people to raise their hands. I strongly support communicating the Gospel to children and youth, and I affirm that many people in North America make genuine commitments to follow Christ by their 14^th birthday. Even so, published assertions do not make reality. Many adults in cities in North America and around the world are becoming disciples of Jesus Christ. It is never too late to invite your non-Christian, adult neighbors to turn and follow Christ.