– Thank you everybody for joining us for this afternoon’s session of this webinar. My name is Andy Frazier. I’m the pastor at Grace Baptist Church in Sumiton Alabama. And I am a part of the Alabama Baptists associations lead team for disciple making, and that ministry is headed up by our state missionary, Daniel Edmonds, along with Robert Mullins and Mark Gainey and myself we’re, glad to be able to present this opportunity for us to learn together today. And as we get ready to work through some things and talk through some things, let me encourage you to look for this recording that’s gonna be on our state disciple making ministries website coming up pretty soon as well as the one we just had prior to this at 1:00 p.m. with Daniel Im, that was fantastic. So we’re doing this today instead of having the in person conference we were supposed to have right now. Which was supposed to be at Fultondale First Baptist. We’ve postponed that until September. So if you have not signed up for that or registered for that, please do so. That’s gonna be a fantastic time to be around personally, the people who are gonna be leading the webinars today and tomorrow. So join us back in the morning at 10:00 a.m. Also, we’ll share a little bit about that later but right now, I’m just gonna turn things over to my friend Robert Mullins and he’s gonna introduce you to our guest, who’s gonna be leading us today Ken Adams. So thank you for joining us.
– Thank you, Andy, I’m so excited to be here today and to be able to go into the second session, one with Ken Adams, a dear friend. Before we do that, I’d like to welcome you all and especially some students from Samford University, we’re glad that you’re on the call and we’re just thankful that you have taken the opportunity to jump in on this training opportunity in the middle of staying at home and doing all these things. Ken is a dear friend and Ken Adams is the lead pastor at Crossroads Church in Newnan, Georgia, he planted that church in 1989. So he’s been there over 30 years. And some amazing things have happened at that church. But the coolest part is that, his whole mantra there is to be a disciple making church. His whole calling is that Crossroads would be a disciple making church, he began to write curriculum for the church. And in that felt God calling him to make that curriculum available for the entire universal church. And that’s us, and we’re lucky for it. But there’s a website called http://www.impactdisciples.com and I’d love to encourage you to check that out and all of his curriculum is there, which is great stuff, great tools for making disciples. And so you wanna do that. Ken under his leadership, Crossroads has grown to over 3000 in attendance and they have three campuses and they’ve planted eight churches. Ken is a personal friend of ours in Alabama and Ken, we’re thankful to have you. Before you begin, I was gonna ask if I could say a word Prayer. Let’s pray together. Father God, thank you for this day. I thank you for this opportunity we have to hear from Ken and thus we wanna hear from you. God, encourage and equip us today to become disciples that make disciples, thank you for Ken and his call, in his passion for doing this and leading others to do the same. We love you in Jesus name, Amen.
– [Robert] Ken Adams.
– Yeah man, so it’s great to be with you guys and been looking forward to this for a while and very excited to join you today. Want to say a big thank you, first of all, to Andy for just the welcome for Robert, for introducing me and really want to say thank you to Daniel Edmunds just for also allowing me to have the opportunity to be with you guys today and be able to share with you, also I just wanna say a big thank you to all you guys that are really championing really, a disciple making movement in the state of Alabama. And man, I think y’all a lot of y’all know this, but you are really leading the way for a lot of state conventions in Southern Baptists and you guys are kind of my heroes. And so it’s exciting to be able to partner with you and to be a part of this training and so I just really do, I really want to say, thank you for what you’re doing and just keep doing what you’re doing ’cause you’re making a difference and you’re doing it the way Jesus wants it to be done. And so man, I just can’t say enough and really, really honored and humbled to be a part of this virtual disciple making seminar. So I’m looking forward to the live version of this that we’re planning on for September and so really excited about that. But in the meantime, in the meantime, the truth is, that the mission of making disciples has not been postponed. And it has not been shut down and the mission that Jesus gave the church 2000 years ago, man it is still going strong. It’s still relevant and it’s still as needed today right now, as much as it ever has been. And I’ve been thinking about this a lot that when Jesus gave His disciples the Great Commission, 2000 years ago, it didn’t… What we’re going through today did not take Him by surprise. And He knew 2000 years ago, every plague, every pandemic and every persecution that was gonna come throughout history, until He came back and so the good news is that we may be living in a changing world which we are I mean, it’s changing every day. And so we’re living in a changing world. But the mission has not changed in 2000 years. And that is very exciting and what better time for us to be learning, for us to be growing and for us to be preparing for how to how to flesh this out and how to become disciple making churches and so, I just wanna say again, man, what a great thing rather than waiting until September, taking advantage of this time, probably a lot of us have a little bit more time on our hands than we normally do and so what a great time to really be going back and looking at the mission of Jesus Christ and how we flesh it out in a very changing world. I think that really the challenge for us today is how do we take an unchanging mission and execute it in a ever changing world. And that’s really what we’re up against today. We’ve gotta mission that hasn’t changed in 2000 years. But we’re living in a day and a time that’s changing radically and dramatically. And so really the ultimate task of a leader is to figure out how to execute this timeless changeless truth and mission in a world that’s constantly changing. And so what I wanna do in the little bit of time that I have here today, is that I just wanna share with you really a few reminders, probably not gonna share anything with you today that you don’t already know but I’m gonna share with you a few reminders about how do you stay focused, on this mission in the middle of all this madness, and so I guess that would be the way I would frame it up. What I wanna share today is just, how do we do that? How do we stay focused on the mission in the middle of all this change and all this mad… All this craziness that’s going on in our world today. And the one thing that I can say is that that really is the task of leadership. It is the job of a leader, to keep people focused, to keep the church focused. That’s what leaders do and if you ever notice, poor leaders lose focus and good leaders, keep focus. You know, one of the best examples I think, in the whole Bible is a guy named Nehemiah. And you remember the story Nehemiah rebuilt the wall around Jerusalem in record time, actually rebuilt it in 52 days. And part of the reason he did that, is because he stayed focused and he did not get distracted and he did not get derailed and he did not get detoured by a lot of the things that were changing and going on around him. So what I want us to do today, I want us to begin by going back to where this whole movement of multiplication started. You guys remember it, Jesus was having a leadership team meeting with his lead team. He gathered them on a mountain outside of Galilee. We don’t know exactly what that mountain is, but my guess is a place called Mount Arbel. And if you’ve ever been there, be great spot for Jesus to make one of the most important statements of all time and here’s what He said in Matthew chapter 28. Probably have this memorized but Matthew chapter 28, verse 19, and 20. Jesus has got this little team of leaders. He had been discipling them for years and now they were ready to take on the role of leading His movement and leading His mission and this is what He says. He says,” I want you to go therefore, “and make disciples of all nations, “baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, “and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe “all that I’ve commanded you. “And behold, I’m with you always, to the end of the age.” And so if you put this in context, you remember what’s happening here, is that Jesus is in the process. This is right at the point where He’s about to hand over the reins of His movement. And so He’s in the process of turning His mission and His movement over to His leadership team. And so it’s about to be in their hands. And so their job is to execute this mission. And so, what I think we find in this one statement that all of us have been listening to, much of our our lives and much of our ministry is that in this one statement, that we call the Great Commission is that we see three really, really important truths that ought to be truth every single disciple making leader over the last 2000 years. And I really believe that . I believe that there’s three things that are really simple but yet they’re very profound. They ought to be true about every single disciple making leader, really over the last, 2000 years. I like to say it like this, I like to say that, this one statement is great commission. These are 48 of the most important words ever spoken in history. Now, that’s the ESV version, you might get one or two more to the different version. But the words that Jesus uttered on this mountain side in Galilee, is that these are 48 of the most important words that have ever been spoken. And so if you take a look at those words, and if you kinda break those words down, I think there’s some important truths that I just want to remind us of here today. Let me give you the first one. The first truth is simply this, is that disciple making leaders always, always know the mission. Disciple making leaders always know the mission. Now, it probably sounds like that’s sort of an oversimplification, but I don’t really think that it is. The truth is, that you can’t accomplish a mission if you don’t know what it is. I mean, you can’t accomplish the mission of the church if you don’t know what that mission is. And so, when I believe that when Jesus is giving His disciples, the Great Commission, the first thing that it is, is it is a statement of direction or some people would like to say it is a statement of vision. And there’s man, there is no question that the Great Commission is literally, it is the direction for the church for the last 2000 years. And what Jesus was doing when He was on that mountainside in Galilee, is that He was giving us our marching orders. And He was clarifying the direction of the church until the day He comes back. And He wasn’t being ambiguous. He was making it incredibly clear, so clear that we really couldn’t miss it. He wanted it to be really, really clear that we knew exactly why we were here and exactly what we’re supposed to do. I’ve heard someone say it before they said, “Whenever you forget your why, you will lose your way,” It is so true, and it’s so good. It’s true about churches, it’s true about governments. It’s true about sports teams it’s true about families. It’s true about businesses. Here’s what happens. If you ever forget why you exist and what you do, you will lose your way. I cannot believe how many churches today have probably lost their way, because they don’t know what our mission is. I think the first time that this ever became really a reality for me, is when I was teaching a seminary class at a place called Luther Rice Seminary, been a number of years ago now and I was teaching a class called, disciple making in a local church. And I had 32 students in this class that obviously represent the future of the church. They represent future ministry leaders, pastors and staff people and that kind of thing. And the very first thing I did in this class, I asked everybody to take out a piece of paper, and I asked everybody to write down on that piece of paper, what is the one mandate, the one imperative in the Great Commission. And then I had everybody turn it in. And then I asked everybody to tell me what they wrote. And I will never forget being in this class and out of 32 students, the first person said, the mandate is to go and then somebody said, the mandate is to glorify God. And somebody else said, the mandate is to teach and somebody said to feed the poor and literally, they were all over the map. And only two students out of 32 students wrote down that the mandate the one imperative, in the Great Commission, is to make disciples. Now, the problem with that is, is if that is the future of the church, we’re in trouble. Because you got to know is it a leader, a disciple making leader? And that’s what pastors and staff people and really, that’s what leaders do. Leaders know, the mission. You know, what I’ve also discovered is that sometimes, it’s not just that they don’t know the mission, but I think probably even a bigger problem is that they lose focus of the mission. And what happens is, is that we tend to have a little case of mission drift, in over 2000 years, there’s lots and lots of people and lots and lots of leaders and pastors and staff people who have, I think, have lost sight of what the mission really is and so you have to remember that the farther you go, the longer you exist, the larger you are, sometimes it’s harder to stay focused and to keep the mission clear. And so when Jesus is on that mountain side, man, He’s making it very clear. And He’s keeping it in focus for where they go after they leave there. I don’t think for a minute that the disciples ever had a business meeting, where they said, Now what was our purpose again? What is it we’re supposed to be doing? I don’t think that ever happened. I think they knew exactly what it was they were supposed to do. I heard a story, actually true story about a lady named Florence Chadwick. She was the first woman to swim across the English Channel. And she was about to make another swim from a place called Catalina Island to the coast of California. And it was on a July morning back in 1952, and she got into these waters and she started swimming, it was freezing cold. Some areas were shark infested waters and she was cramping, she was struggling. She’d been swimming for an hour and a half. And the fog was so thick and so dense that she couldn’t see where she was going. So she asked to be pulled out of the water, a half mile from shore, a half mile from completing a record swim she asked to be pulled out of the water. And just as a reminder, she did come back actually, two months later, and on a very clear day, she completed that swim, first woman in history to do that. So the point is, is that sometimes we lose our focus, we get caught up in the fog, if you will and we lose sight of the mission. And so, if we’re gonna really be able to make some sense, out of this craziness that we’re that we’re living in, we gotta make sure that we are very clear on the mission that we know what the mission is. Jesus wants every disciple making leader to know the mission. But then a second thing is that the Great Commission reminds us that disciple making leaders need to do the mission, they need to do the mission. And so by that, what I’m saying is, is that the Great Commission, and it’s not just given for direction, it’s also given for action. It’s not just a vision, its application. And these are really, Jesus has given His disciples, not just direction, but he’s giving them orders. He’s telling them this is something that I want you to do and Jesus is not just giving them rhetoric or theory, Jesus’s giving them instructions. One of my favorite stories is story by Francis Chan. He tells us quite often that, when he tells his 14 year old daughter to go clean his room, what do you think he means? And he doesn’t mean, go memorize the phrase, clean your room and he doesn’t mean go sing about cleaning your room or write books or have conferences about cleaning your room. He actually means go clean your room. So let’s go back 2000 years ago, so when Jesus gives this statement, 48 in the most important words ever uttered, when Jesus gives this statement, man, He’s not just giving us something to put on the letterhead of our church. He’s not just giving us something to put on the back wall of our sanctuary. Jesus is giving us something to do. Jesus is not just being oratorical, He’s being behavioral. And what Jesus knew is that these guys would understand what he was asking them to do because He had done the exact same thing with them. So when He was telling them to go, that’s because He had gone to them, when He was telling them to baptize it’s because He had seen them get baptized, when He was telling them to teach it’s because He had taught them and so when you look at this statement, most important statement in history, is that it wasn’t just philosophical, or rhetorical, man, it was it was meant to be applied. It was meant to be carried out and so you go, so why is there, why do we struggle, how do we keep this fresh? How do we keep it alive? I think for a lot of people is our problem is that we just we struggle to do it, because we’ve never seen it done. It’s funny I was in a pastor’s luncheon, actually with Robert Mullins who you guys know just introduced me. And Robert asked a roomful of pastors to raise their hand if they’ve ever been discipled. It was unbelievable. Probably less than half of the pastors in the room, raised their hands, saying that they had been discipled. So the point here is this, it is really, really hard to do something if you’ve never seen it done. It really is. I remember the very first group of guys that I ever set out to disciple I had the opportunity to lead a student retreat down in Panama City and several kids got saved and I knew that I needed to invest in them, I needed to do something. I didn’t even know what you called it, but I knew I needed to do something. And I had grown up. I had grown up in a great, great church, great Baptist Church, where we were really, really good at the going in the baptizing. But I had never seen the teaching, and I didn’t have any idea how to do it. And so I just kind of figured it, I thought, you know what, if Jesus made disciples, then I gotta figure out how to do this. And so literally, the Gospels and the life of Christ became my example and as I went, as I, as I began, I started to learn more and more, literally, about how Jesus did it. So sometimes, we don’t do it because we have never seen it done and then I think more importantly, and sometimes, it’s just because we get distracted and I do know that one of the things the enemy is really good at, is if he can’t get us bad, he just makes us busy. And if he can make you busy, he can accomplish the same thing about making you bad. And so we gotta resist that temptation. So when we think about the Great Commission, the first thing is it is something that we need to know. Secondly is something we need to do. But then the last thing is, it is something that we need to share. So disciple making leaders know the mission, disciple making leaders do the mission, and disciple making leaders share the mission. And so when Jesus gave the Great Commission, it wasn’t just directional, it wasn’t just action. It was also for mobilization. And Jesus intended it to be replicated and reproduced. So think about this, so when Jesus gave the Great Commission, man, His goal His desire, was to see it passed on, and He didn’t give it for one Generation, He gave it for every generation. And what’s cool is that we’re talking about it today. Is that we’re actually having a webinar or a seminar where we’re actually talking about, we’re talking about the very same mission that Jesus gave His original disciples 2000 years ago. So when Jesus made the statement, He was actually intending it to launch a movement of multiplication, that would continue for the next 2000 years. And so that’s why you probably heard it said but a lot of people say that not only were these Jesus’s last words but these were his famous words, because we call them Famous last words and so when Jesus gave these last words, last words are important words. If you’ve ever been by somebody’s deathbed and they say something, those are words that you remember. Those are words that you don’t forget, because they’re important words and so, when Jesus makes these words, and He gives these words to His disciples, is that these were words that He wanted to give them direction for the next 2000 years. He wanted these words to be something that they did, that they actually carried out. And then He also wanted these words to be words that would shape the movement for the next 2000 years. They would be passed on from generation to generation to generation. You say, well, how do you do that? How does that happen? I think there’s two important things. First of all, is it I think you have to make it a priority. I got a good friend who says it like this. He said, “Christ last command, “ought to be our first priority.” And that is so true. If it’s not a priority, here’s the deal. If the Great Commission, if making disciples is not a priority in your life, it’s not gonna be a priority, in anybody else’s life that you’re trying to lead. So we say it all the time that what gets talked about gets done and people do what people see, we got all these phrases and things like that. But the truth is, is that the disciples carried out the Great Commission, not only because they heard Jesus say it, but also because they saw Jesus do it. He said in John 20:21, “The things that you’ve seen me do “you’re gonna do these same things.” And so Jesus talked about it, but He also did it and so we have to make it a priority, but we also we have to make it personal. And when I say make it personal, that means we gotta take responsibility for it. One of the things I’ve discovered, Robert mentioned I’ve been a pastor for 30 years in the same church and I’ve had an opportunity to talk to a lot of people in the last 30 years about disciple making, and I’m still amazed at how many people there are that like to talk about disciple making, but still don’t do disciple making. And until you take personal responsibility for it, and until you make it a personal thing, it won’t get passed on and it won’t be shared, the mission won’t be shared. And so you have to make that a priority in your life. But you also have to make it a personal thing in your life. And so you gotta be committed to invest in your life, in a handful of men that will turn around and reproduce it and continue to do that, throughout really throughout the course of your life. You gotta make that a personal responsibility. I think one of the greatest stories that I ever got in seminary was in an evangelism class that I had with a guy named Dr. Roy Fish. And a lot of guys who’ve had Dr. Fish and I will not forget probably one of the first classes that I was in. He was telling a story about Jesus and after Jesus had ascended back to heaven, he went to the Gates was going, through the gates of heaven and there’s the angel Gabriel and Gabriel greets Him and he says, “Lord, it’s good to see you, “man, so glad to have you back home. “We’ve been missing you “And how did it go while you were while you were on earth?” And so Jesus says, “Gabriel, you wouldn’t believe it, man. “It’s been awesome.” He said, “While I was there, “the father is done a lot of incredible things. “I’ve been able to teach some great truth, “do some miracles, it’s been an incredible 33 years “and it’s just been really powerful.” And so Gabriel says, “Well, Lord, what now what happens?” And Jesus says, “Well, you know Gabriel,” He said,” Right there toward the end, “Satan thought he had me. “And so they crucify me and put me in a tomb, “but Father, you know, raised me from the dead. “And so we have the victory.” And so Gabriel says, “But Lord, how’s He gonna keep going? “I mean, what are you gonna do?” And Jesus said, “Gabriel is the best part. “Because while I was there, “the father gave me a handful of men. “And I’ve been teaching them everything that He gave me. “And I’ve been teaching them how to lead the movement “and how to keep the movement going on.” And He said, “So now that I’m here, they are going to keep it going.” And so Gabriel looked at Jesus and He said, “But Lord, they said, what if they don’t do it? “What’s Plan B?” And so, Jesus said, “Gabriel,” He said, “There is no plan B.” He said, “I have no other plan.” And so here’s the good news. So the good news is that we are Plan A, you and me everybody that’s watching on this webinar. Man, the cool thing is that Jesus Christ, the same way that He entrusted His movement into a handful of leaders 2000 years ago, He is entrusting it into our hands, right here right now, in the middle of this pandemic. Man, He has entrusted the greatest calling in all the world to make disciples that make disciples. He has entrusted that into our hands. We are Plan A and so that’s good news, man. That’s exciting news. So I would leave this message with you like this. I would ask you to ask yourself three questions. Almost Kinda like a check the box type of evaluation. So my first question would be this, Do you really have a clear understanding of the mission? Are you really clear on? Or have you lost focus ’cause that’s what happens to a lot of people. My hunch is that most of you that are tuning in here, probably know the mission or you wouldn’t have been been a part of this webinar. But number one, are you clear on the mission? And then number two, are you doing it? Are you carrying it out? Are you literally fleshing it out? And then are you sharing? Are you investing? Are you investing in a handful of other leaders that are gonna be able to carry on the Great Commission? No question about it, the most important 48, 49 words in all of history and they have been entrusted to us. So those are some reminders I wanted to share with you today just to try to help you, stay focused on the mission in the middle of all this madness, so think we’re gonna do a few questions. And so Robert, jump back on screen here and take it away, baby.
– All right. Well, first of all, Ken, thank you so much. As I was sitting here taking notes myself, it just took me back to the first time I heard you. I don’t know if you remember this, but at Samford University, was the first time I heard you speaking back at Flashpoint several years ago. And man, you really encouraged me at that time, just like you did now just making sure that I go back through even though, we’re trying to be a disciple making church. I’m trying to be a disciple making pastor to walk back through those questions. Keep those questions in the back of your mind and just make sure you’re doing it. We have had a lot of good questions so far. Folks, there’s still time you can put in the q&a and ask some more. I’m just gonna start things off, our buddy John, who’s actually out in Texas, he says, “What things attempt to move a disciple making leader “away from the mission?”
– [Robert] What have you seen to move folks away from the mission?
– Yeah, well, I think there’s a lot of things that happen. Obviously, one of the very first things is really is discouragement. And I would say, maybe number one is that sometimes it can be discouragement from maybe the people that you’re trying to pour into and some of them, maybe not getting it or giving up or not being willing to count the cost. So sometimes it’s discouragement from the process. But then sometimes it’s discouragement from outside of that it’s from other things that are going on in your world or in your life that can can discourage you. I know that Satan is, he is a deceiver and he will do everything he can to stop a movement of multiplication from really taking off. And, if you go back to the story of Nehemiah, Nehemiah was, he wasn’t making disciples, but he was building a wall. And they came out, a couple of guys called Sanballat and Tobiah, came out to try to get him off the wall. And so they weren’t necessarily using discouragement. They were using distraction. And so they tried to get him to come down off the wall and Nehemiah said, “No way, I’m not coming down. “And we’re not gonna give up what we’re doing. “We’re not gonna stop what we’re doing.” And so I think distraction, and I also think discouragement would be two of the things that, I think keep us from doing what Jesus calls us to do, Robert.
– Great thank you, another question is I’m kind of reading some questions together here. I think the consensus of this one is, well first of all, how do you make time to disciple people that are very busy? One of the things Daniel Lim talked about the last time is the gig economy. Everybody’s got a side hustle, everybody’s, when you think about a block of time, you’re thinking about how much money you can make during that. So how do you in this culture we live in now, how can you make time to disciple more people even with the busy schedule?
– So I think it just comes down to, you get to a point where, you control your schedule, and you control your priorities and so, one of the first things you do is you look for people who are hungry. You look for guys that have a desire, to want to grow to want to know more, to want to be more and so first of all, that’s the selection part of it. And Jesus was looking for guys that were hungry for more they were, you know, desiring to go deeper and so you look for the right kind of guys but I think for most of us, the challenge is not so much finding those guys that are hungry, but it’s carving out that time in our own lives. And so, I heard it said years ago that you can be busy and not productive and you can be active and not effective. And so for what I’ve discovered, is that for a lot of guys, you just gotta block it out in your calendar and you just gotta make it a priority to meet with a group of guys. I believe in an intentional in a strategic way to help them develop the character of Christ and the conduct of Christ, and then do that in a way that they can go out and reproduce it with other people. So I don’t know if that exactly answers the question but I’m finding even not just today, but even in the last 30 years, is we just have to make sure that we don’t let the good things become more important than the best things. And that will happen if you let it.
– Right, right, becomes more important than the mission.
– Yeah because most of the things that we’re doing in ministry are nobody would consider bad. I mean, nobody would consider a heavy counseling load a heavy teaching load ,a heavy leadership load. Nobody would ever consider what we do bad. You go to a hospital, to a funeral, whatever it is, nobody’s gonna say, “Why’d you do that?” But you cannot allow all of that, to keep you from doing the single most important thing that Jesus did while he was here.
– [Robert] Right.
– No question about it.
– So do you have anything? I understand what you said and maybe this is just a redundant question, but you have effectively encouraged people to trade off, if you will, those things that don’t matter for the mission?
– Yeah, I think so, yeah yeah. I would like to think of it more so as just being a good steward of your time, right?
– [Robert] Yeah.
– And honestly, I like to think of it like this, I think of it as living your life, according to the mission. You live your life by one of two ways. You live your life by pressure or you live your life by priority.
– [Robert] Okay.
– So when I came out of seminary, I came here to plant this church. While I was in seminary with the southwestern seminary. And while I was in seminary, I had somebody telling me when to be at class, what to study when I was gonna be tested. I had somebody dictating everything I did. I came here to Newnan, Georgia to be a church planner and I didn’t have anybody telling me anything that I was supposed to do and yet at the same time, anybody and everybody was calling the shots in my life. And I was just kind of bouncing around like a pinball to whatever was screaming the loudest really. And I couldn’t believe it, because I was a church planner. And I was frustrated because I didn’t have time to do things. And so I realized not too long after that, that if I didn’t exercise self leadership, and determine what my priorities were gonna be, I was gonna probably struggle. In fact I hope you don’t mind me mentioning this, but I’ve actually started doing a thing called, disciple making pastors equipping group, where we take six months and we walk through a lot of these things like mission and self leadership and leading the movement, the organization, actually prioritizing your time leading well, all those kinds of things. And so I’m actually gonna be starting another one of those groups toward the end of the month of May and if anybody like to jump in, they can go to http://wwwimpactdisciples.com find out more about those online equipping groups, be really helpful.
– That’s great, that’s very good, yeah. Here’s a question. I think there’s a struggle sometimes with in the church world, we have evangelism and we have discipleship. Can you do something with that? Maybe here’s a question, how to balance evangelism and discipling young believers, if there’s such a thing.
– So I think you go back to the Great Commission, and think Jesus never saw it separate. So I don’t think Jesus, I think that’s something that we’ve created, that Jesus never saw it that way Jesus never saw, discipleship and evangelism as separate departments, if you will. He saw, the whole thing was called disciple making, and it was actually full, it was full circle. And so, the goal, of the Great Commission, is to reach people and disciple them so that they reach more people. If we were doing this seminar live, you are gonna have a guy on the on the agenda named Robert Coleman. And Robert Coleman has written the classic book on disciple making, but the title of it is called “The Master Plan of Evangelism” Now, if the classic book on disciple making is called “The Master Plan of Evangelism” that ought to tell you something. That ought to tell you, the reason he called it that is because if we are really making disciples and make disciples, ultimately we evangelize the planet. We evangelize the world. So Jesus never separated evangelism and discipleship. He thought that evangelism led to discipleship and discipleship led to evangelism. So, I don’t know if I answered your question but.
– No, that’s great. I’m glad you brought up Dr. Coleman. Just throwing this out there. He is scheduled to come back in September if the Lord allows us together and all that. He’s scheduled to come back and be with us. So that’s gonna be great. A question that I want to, I really want us to just think about for just a minute because you alluded to this that, at the very beginning, you talked about plagues and all these things that God already knew all this COVID-19 was gonna happen. He knew this was going to take place, however we didn’t and it can shake up our culture, and it can change things a little bit, and many prognosticators, think that it may change the way we do ministry in church. So how do you see COVID-19 and getting back to church, making disciples, all of that sort of thing kind of playing out?
– Yeah, man, what a great question that is, and I think a lot of us would like to be able to have the answers to that. So I think probably, you’re gonna have to answer that by looking at how does it affect, how does it affect the large group gathering and I think that might be differently than how it affects, a small group gathering and so, I still believe that disciples are best made in the context of relationships, and no question about that one. And so we can have relational connection. Preferably we like to do that in the same space, right? We like to have a close proximity. But if that’s not the case, then like we’re doing this conference, this virtual conference right here today and we have the opportunity to do that. So God’s way ahead of us on that one. And but at the same time, I think we’ll have a, I mean, we’re all praying that we’ll have a chance where we can all get back together and continue. But we were talking about this in one of our church services recently, that 2000 years ago, the Church of Jesus Christ was built for such a time as this, right? And so when you go back to the church in the book of Acts, they were meeting in homes and they would go to the temple court, for praise and worship that kind of thing. But I’m telling you, man, the church is actually been engineered an architect, it has been set up, orchestrated for, persecution, pandemics, you name it. The church is resilient and the church will stand. Well, even the gates of hell will not prevail against it. So, we’re gonna weather the storm. I really believe that, I don’t think there’s gonna be a problem. I don’t know what the specific is, but we’ll figure it out.
– Sure, sure and I just wanna do a cheap plug for you. I know that a lot of times you have a conference and you have the speaker guy and all that kind of stuff, but man I appreciate you so much. You’ve been a great friend to us. Just on that note, is there anything that you’d like to share with everybody before. Just one last thing, here it is.
– Well if you put it like that, man, one of the things that I love to say is, try to say it every chance I get. And that is Jesus started the church, the way he wanted it. now He wants it the way He started it. And so, man, I just think that our biggest challenge today is making sure that if we’re successful, that we’re not successful in things that don’t matter, but that we are successful in the things that do and that’s kind of a twist on a statement from D.L. Moody but let’s get the church back to becoming a movement of multiplying disciples. That’s what I love about what you guys are doing at Alabama Baptist you guys are really are man, you are leading the way, among a lot of conventions around the country. And so this kind of training that you’re doing right now, I think it’s huge and so I just say keep doing what you’re doing and keep beating the drum for the great commandment, the Great Commission. It’s really good.
– [Robert] Well, good, Man thank you so much, Ken, for being with us today. What an honor to have you. I can’t wait to get back with you sometime at Baumhower’s and get some of that white chicken man that was so good. And just hanging out and spending some time with you. But this was just great. If I can’t have it over food at least I get it over zoom right? And so thank you to all the men and women that are here and I want to turn it on over to Andy Frazier.
– Guys, thank y’all so much for joining us today. We are glad you took the time out of your schedule to be with us. Ken we really really appreciate you sharing your years of experience as a pastor and disciple maker is not just something that we can sit down and just take notes today and walk away with a, oh okay? It was very impacting for me and I’m sure everybody else that listened today. I hope you’ve been encouraged and challenged like I have is what I’m saying. And reach out to us if we can help you in any way. You’ll probably hearing from us as a follow up for being involved in this. But once again, we thank you Ken. Thank you, Robert. Thank you, Daniel and Mark and Doug and everybody who made this happen today. We look forward to seeing you guys tomorrow. Hope you’ll have a great evening. Thank you for joining us.
by Dogwood