One more thought about yesterday’s blog: The result of pastors who have misunderstood their role and the place of a sermon as a part of that role is that congregation members are not discipled, yet think they are “growing in their faith” because they’ve been to church and heard a sermon. And pastors think they are doing their job because they’ve “exegeted God’s Word.” Measured against the job description of discipling, both parties may be deluded. Where do we see in Scripture the weekly sermon as a foundation for disciplemaking? We’ve taken a good thing and institutionalized it, draining it of its power.

People are discipled when they are held accountable for applying God’s program for their life. My guess is at least 90% of pastors focus on the sermon, but have no plan for holding people accountable to it. How absurd is it to preach on prayer, yet never practice praying? How fruitless is it to preach about evangelism and then to dismiss the congregation assuming that they will apply the sermon by witnessing to their neighbors?

If computer programmers were trained that way by businesses, who knows what kind of flawed programs they’d write. People don’t learn that way. They learn the way you learned to ride a bike. Someone showed you and guided you and encouraged you bit by bit. When you crashed, they dusted you off and made you do it again.

That is how we are to make disciples. That is the job of a pastor. If you’re in a church that doesn’t know how to do that and it is run by a pastor who doesn’t understand his job description, you owe it to yourself and your family to pray about finding a church where it does happen.