How are local churches a part of God’s mission of discipleship? The church is incredibly important as a space through which God highlights the love of Christ. The community that the church offers is a key aspect of gospel sharing. In this video, Pastor David Platt paints the truth of the church’s role as a picture of the gospel.
- A Picture of the Gospel
- A Space for Community
When it comes to talking about making disciples, it’s not about individual followers of Jesus, just on their own, lone rangers making disciples. It’s about being a part of a body and together making disciples. So when it comes to those central practices that are involved in disciple making, sharing the gospel, showing the word of Christ, teaching the word of Christ, these things happen primarily through community and in our relationships with others and the context of that, at least sharing the gospel.
The Church Is A Picture Of The Gospel
If we want to see unbelievers come to Christ, those unbelievers need to see evidence of community around Christ, they need to see the love of Christ in action, and to see the mercy of Christ in action and loving one another, serving one another, caring for one another, praying for one another. The church then becomes what Francis Shaffer called an apologetic for the gospel, where the church becomes a picture that, especially for hardened hearts of unbelievers, softens their hearts toward the goodness of Christ and the community of faith.
Part Of The Church’s Role in Discipleship Is To Help Create Community
We’re showing the word to one another in and through the church. And so we don’t just walk in isolation. We walk in love and service to one another. We’re teaching the word to each other and the word spreading through each other. All of that has to happen in the context of relationships with other people. And so disciple-making is intricately tied to commitment to a local church and we make disciples in local churches. And that’s why even in the church that God’s entrusted me to pastor, we have small groups within our church where this kind of community can play out.
In small group relationships with each other, they can more effectively make disciples in the community, spread all around Birmingham through community with one another, locking arms together and saying, “We want people to come to Christ in Birmingham. How can we work together for that?” And so it’s not just individuals trying to figure out how to do this. It’s people in community walking alongside one another and doing this together and together we’ll be a part of the accomplishment of the great commission.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
