Yesterday, we began a new series of sermons on the Lord’s vision for winning the world through making disciples. We tried to ask and answer the question, “What is a disciple?” from Mark 1:14-20.
Last night, I decided to do a few minutes of reading before turning in to bed. I picked up a book on discipleship that former attenders gave me as an encouragement and gift. The book is called Tally Ho the Fox: The Foundation for Building World-Visionary, World-Impacting, Reproducing Disciples by Herb Hodges. I don’t know brother Hodges or the book, but I was gripped by his opening paragraph:
The typical Christian church in America has a giant undeveloped “labor pool” in its membership. The typical Christian is unemployed as far as Christ’s standard of employment is concerned, and the typical employed Christian is often “under-employed,” spending much time and effort in activities that show very little result in reaching and building people. The typical Christian church meets Sunday by Sunday in an “auditorium” and its members are individual “auditors” forming part of a listing “audience.” In short, the typical church is jammed with “pew potatoes” whose only intent is to come to church, listen to a sermon, and go away, hoping that this course will help to privately smuggle their souls to heaven and help them to have a reasonably comfortable life on the way. Any resemblance between this lifestyle and the Christian life pictured in the New Testament is purely coincidental.
I trailed off to sleep a couple minutes after reading this, but not before I felt a renewed sense that I want to be fully employed in the work of Christ in making disciples.
