Pastor Weekly - 2/5/25

Hello ICC Family!

How often do you use the word “disciple” in everyday conversation?  I have been spending the last several minutes trying to think of when or why somebody would talk about a disciple outside of a church or religious setting.  You might hear the word when reading an article about a famous person.  “This guy was a disciple of the famous football coach, Bill Walsh,” for example.  Or “She was a disciple of the business guru, Steve Jobs.”  But for most people… this word would not be a major part of their vocabulary.  In the church, however, we use the word “disciple” quite a bit!  Because the word “disciple” means learner and follower.  Implied in the word is the idea that one thinks so highly of another person that they want to devote their life to learning about that person, following him/her, imitating him/her, and then working hard to convince others to do the same.  That person we think so highly of and long to follow in the church is, of course, Jesus Christ.  The idea of being a disciple is important to us personally at ICC as well.  To the point that it is part of our mission statement, which says, “Our mission is to grow fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ who share God’s love with the people of all nations.”  We want to be disciples, and we want to make disciples.

Unfortunately, there are many in the church that do not fully understand the complete picture of what is involved in being a disciple, mistaking being a Christian with being a disciple.  The two are not necessarily the same thing.  It’s actually being a disciple that was most important to Jesus and to Paul and the other writers of the New Testament, because the word “disciple” is found 269 times in the New Testament.  The word “Christian” is used just 3 times.  The word “believers” is only used twice!  Therefore, we are commissioned by Jesus to go out into the world to make disciples, not only to sign up converts.  And since this is the case, we should especially be careful to make sure that we are disciples and not just converts ourselves.  It’s not an easy commitment.  Just read Luke 14:25-33 if you want to understand the cost of being a disciple.  Jesus ends that passage by saying, “So you cannot become my disciple without giving up everything you own.”

We talk about discipleship a lot in the church, but that doesn’t mean that making progress in it is easy.  As that passage in Luke makes clear, every step will be costly.  J. Oswald Sanders wrote:

The temper of our times is for instant gratification and short-term commitment - quick answers to prayer and quick results with a minimum of effort and discomfort.  But there is no such thing as easy and instant discipleship.  One can commence a walk of discipleship in a moment, but the first step must lengthen into a life-long walk.  There is no such thing as short-term discipleship.

Because this is true, we are constantly trying to find both regular and new ways of growing in discipleship at ICC!  To that end we are swapping our discipleship and prayer meetings.  On February 19th, we will begin a new discipleship time that will take place every Wednesday evening after our fellowship meal together at 6:15 PM.  You can read about the first series that we will be going through in the graphic above.  Our regular prayer meetings will be moved to Sunday mornings at 9:30 before our regular worship time at 10:30. We will start those 9:30 AM prayer meetings on March 2nd.  I highly encourage you to come to both!  But my hope and prayer for each of you is that regardless of where or how… you will make daily progress in truly becoming a disciple of Christ.  There is nothing more fulfilling in all of life!

Blessings to all of you and know that I am praying for you!

Pastor Aaron