Preaching and listening to the gospel is not enough.
Didn’t Jesus preach the gospel? As he taught and modeled the gospel of grace, the gospel was mediated by his relationships of flesh and blood. He not only trusted the sound waves of his voice from the top of the mountain. He always came down from the mountain, directly into the disorder of everyday sinners. Jesus loved the disciples, who love each other. The gospel went viral through flesh and blood, not silicon and dosmegabytes. He pondered the gospel of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost through parent-child relationships with others. His incarnation was not only to carry the cross, but also to become a person whom his disciples could imitate.
- Paul also brought the gospel to earth by dealing with excessively fractional factions and eschatology in Corinth.
- The church was more focused on personalities than real people.
- Guided by characters rather than “generated” by mentors who could imitate.
- In writing to the church.
- Paul contrasts the preceptors with the parents: “For even if you had thousands of preceptors in Christ.
- However.
- You would not have many parents; because I.
- By the gospel.
- Have begat you in Christ Jesus.
- So.
- Do I encourage you to be my copycats? (1 Corinthians 4: 15-16).
- The preceptors were hired tutors.
- Tied to their students for money.
- Parents.
- However.
- Are relational leaders.
- United to their children out of love.
- Paul also calls on the church to publicize the gospel through close and imitated relationships.
Therefore, it is not enough to identify with a gospel guardian; favorite authors, preachers, and teachers are not enough to become disciples; teachers hired and disadvantaged in relational terms cannot replace loving and loving parents. and Paul, the Church desperately needs to find a gospel with relational mediation. We need parents, not just guardians.
Who’s to blame: the Internet or the shepherds?
Today, many Christians identify with specific preachers through podcasts or online sermons. Listening to these sermons can be a great benefit to Christian growth and the spread of the gospel. However, in the hands of sinners, online sermons can also become an obstacle to growth. Listeners can become so close to a preacher outside their church that they identify less with those inside their church. They acquire a gospel with technological mediation, not a gospel with relational mediation.
When this happens, the disciples slow down their growth and the mission of the church; they place doctrine above life, rather than dealing with life and doctrine (1 Timothy 4:16). When discipline is dominated by doctrine, it tends to produce “sofa athletes. “Do the disciples try to dictate the works, criticizing the local shepherds for not being like other preachers?Or why not, make the church, like some leaders. Internet comparison (not the Internet itself) undermines centrality rather than actively seeking local leaders to discipline, church members passively listen to the sermons of other preachers. Countless tutors? gather in podcast playlists, local discipleship is in decline. This comparison of the Internet compromises the disciplinary impulse of the gospel. It produces more guardians and types than parents and children, and worse, it distorts the gospel of God that makes disciples.
Who’s to blame for this crisis?Communications tycoon General David Sarnoff said: “We will most likely make the scapegoat technological instruments of the sins of those who use them. “The Internet is not to blame; it’s ours. Blaming technology will not help our churches raise spiritual parents who empower others. Pastors and non-pastors confuse a theological information regime with a discipleship of life as a whole. As a result, we face a shortage of disciples in the middle of a homiletic feast.
Pastors and churches will have to repent
Repentance for the churches
There are disciples in the local churches who need to mourn the comparison with famous leaders; some will have to confess to their leaders. Others will simply have to change. As they set a new course, they must begin to affirm the leadership of their local pastors and look for ways to participate in the church’s mission to make disciples. Recognizing that God has appointed elders and leaders to his good disciples. They should look for a parent or relatives in the gospel locally. These fathers in the gospel will help them grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus. Look for one? Father, among those who are more mature in faith, leaders of small groups or ministries, or pastors.
Instead of looking for a multitude of tutors for information, disciples should seek (and one day become) parents who make disciples to imitate.
While technology itself is not to blame, personal technology certainly favors the individual consumer. Ken Myers points out that in the West, the identity of the?Disciple of Jesus? It was replaced by the ‘sovereign consumer’. As sovereign consumers, we choose our influences regardless of God’s sovereign influences. We choose the theology of the Internet over pastoral discipleship. We prefer isolated information to relational transformation. Although the sins of individualistic consumerism of evangelical comparison are ours, the Internet environment, in which relying too much, actually brings this message: “Informational discipleship is all I need. “
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