Transcription
Hello everyone and welcome to another session of Inspira. In this session, we will be talking about a supremely important theological topic called "Missio Dei." These are Latin words that simply mean "the mission of God." This is because the church, in the last century and a half, has been recovering the very powerful idea found in the Bible that God is on a mission, a mission to reach and save humanity. And so we find ourselves being part of this story of God's redemption. And that is why the church exists, and that is why each one of us is here, because we are the church.
So, we have to understand that the church is a sign, a foretaste, and an instrument of the Kingdom of God. Listen to this: we are a sign, a sign of the kingdom. People should see what happens and how life is lived in the church. We are a foretaste of that kingdom because we know that kingdom will be fully manifested when Christ returns. But we are that foretaste of how things should be in heaven, right? And how they should be lived, and where we are aiming. Of course, imperfectly, because we are broken human beings, because we are imperfect human beings. So, that foretaste will not be exactly the same, but our lives should be inclined towards it.
And furthermore, we are instruments of the kingdom, meaning that the kingdom should be able to move through us, to be manifested through us, and through everything we do. So, we have to understand that the church does not exist for itself. We do not exist for ourselves. The church exists for the mission of God. "Upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it." The church exists for the mission of God, and therefore, we have to learn to live as disciples, being part of that mission.
Now, this impacts how we understand the church and how we can describe it. If you ask me, what would it be like, an organizational chart of the church, how I imagine it, truly. I imagine the church as a tree, and my organizational chart would be like a tree. But let's say, instead of starting from top to bottom, as one usually says when talking about organizational structures, I would see it from bottom to top. And in that tree, this is an idea of mine, from my imagination. I understand the roots of that tree as what the Bible teaches in Ephesians: the great ministries of apostle, prophet, evangelist, teacher, my pastor. And the Bible says that these ministries exist to strengthen the saints, to teach them and equip them for the work of ministry. So, that's why I see them as the roots, because I see them as those who gather nutrients, those who do the work of teaching, pastoring, caring, counseling, right? And all of this. And we take all these nutrients and pass them to the rest of the body, we pass them to the rest of that tree, so that it can truly remain healthy and fulfill the function that God has given it.
The trunk, I imagine it as the structure that any human organization needs to have. As soon as two people are together, some kind of structure begins to be created in that relationship, and it needs to be created. And the problem is not that that structure is robust or strong. The problem is when we handle it poorly. But we should work to have a good organizational structure for how we do things, because that can sustain what happens in the rest of the tree.
Furthermore, I would say that I imagine the branches as the disciples. I see the branches as those disciples of Jesus, meaning each one of us, right? Who believe in the Lord Jesus, who have decided to follow him. And then, we do something, and it's that these branches come to produce fruit. For me, fruit is the mission, seeing that mission of God, that mission of the Lord, truly materializing here on earth, seeing that kingdom come upon us.
So, I will explain it part by part again. We start from bottom to top, and we will talk about the roots. The roots, again, I see them as these great ministries, as those people whom God has placed in the church, who have a specific calling, as we find in the New Testament, and also the Old, but perhaps we see it more clearly, more closely, in the New Testament, how God calls leaders, calls people to form and lead congregations with different names, with different characteristics, but basically to care for, to nourish, and to bless, to pastor the rest of the body.
I really like, I am telling you several ideas from an author named J.R. Woodward. And I really like how he approaches the idea of the five ministries. And he says that the apostle is the awakener of dreams, because he is the one who awakens something in us and calls us to live the calling that God has placed on us and to live with the distinctive character of disciples. He also says that the prophet is the revealer of hearts, that the prophet is the one who pursues that shalom, that peace of God for humanity, and who calls the church to always return to loving what God loves, caring for what God wants to care for, standing with the poor, the oppressed, the needy, and truly revealing how our hearts are before God.
Then the evangelist is mentioned as the storyteller, because he is the one who knows how to connect us with God's story in a very effective way and how to embody the good news. So, the evangelist is the one who inspires the church to live that evangelistic environment, to celebrate that evangelistic environment. He is the one who creates that click, right, of the church, that we are part of that story of God's redemption, and that everyone is invited, and that we move to include ourselves in it.
The pastor, he calls him the healer of souls, the one who seeks a person's fullness, a person's holiness, the one who cultivates a life-giving spirituality, who personifies that reconciliation with God. And the teacher, he calls him the giver of light, the one who dwells in that sacred text and who immerses us in the Word of God and makes us fall more and more in love with the Bible, right? And we can fall in love with what is there in the word of the Lord.
For me, these are the roots. And that is why I like Woodward's explanation, because I think it explains very well why I understand it this way. Because they are the ones who bring back all those dreams, that revelation of the heart, that pastoral care, the word of the Lord, and they bring all of that together to produce what will be strong disciples and disciples who bear much fruit, as Jesus called us to live. But for all those nutrients to reach the branches, a firm trunk is needed, a healthy trunk, a trunk that functions well. And that's where I see the structure of the church. I believe that every congregation, including ours, needs to have a robust structure that allows all those nutrients to flow in the best and healthiest way possible, in order to live and bring about what God has for us.
The big problem, as we know, with any human institution, any of them, is when we live in function of the structure. And we have to understand something. I believe the important thing is not the structure itself. I believe the structure should live in function of bearing fruit. If the structure is hindering the bearing of fruit, what needs to be changed is the structure, because fruit is non-negotiable. The structure can be changed, the structure can take on different forms. All churches will have different structures, and all structures can be improved, and all structures can be changed. So, we don't have to sanctify or baptize our human structures, because they are simply creative responses to current contexts, depending on each context and what each congregation is experiencing, it needs to give a different structure to how they live their church life.
So, I believe the most important thing is that we always read that the structure is healthy, sound, and fulfilling its function. And when we feel that it is not, then we have to look for ways to improve it, to change it, and to adapt it, simply because, again, we do not exist for the structure; we exist to bear fruit. Within that structure, there are several environments that should be cultivated in the church. There is cultivating an environment of learning, where the Word of God can be lived in a practical way, where we understand that the Bible is for living. There should also be an environment of healing, where we learn to work together, where we can create rhythms of life that allow us to live, serve, work, and disciple together.
There should also be an environment of welcome, because hospitality is very important to us, that any person feels welcome and can be part of what we do, from our services to the counseling we provide, to the classes that can be received at Inspira, to the discipleship groups. They should be environments of hospitality where people feel welcome, not just those who believe like us or behave exactly like us, but every human being, because God has called every human being to be part of this story.
There should also be a liberating environment that encourages people to grow in holiness and in the power of the Holy Spirit, where we live that power of God on a personal and social level. And also, an environment of flourishing, where we can grow and develop at all levels. And that is why the concept of mentors is very important to us, having mentors in our lives, and it will be one of the major themes we will be developing in Inspira.
Now, we move from the roots to the trunk, and now we go to the branches. The branches, again, represent the disciples. So, let's talk about disciples. There is an author named Robert Clinton, and he, along with his students, conducted a study of a lot of leaders in the Bible and throughout the history of the church. And by gathering all these leaders in all these areas and over all this time, he asked himself the question: which leaders ended well, and which leaders ended badly? And he arrived at an alarming figure. He said, 70% of leaders end badly. 70% end up in some way falling into sin, moving away from God, or disgracing the gospel, their family, in some way that they did not end well. 70%.
And then he asked himself the big question: Well, what do the rest have? What do the other people have who have managed to end well? What do those who have concluded their lives honoring God, honoring the church, honoring the name of the Gospel, the name of Christ, have? What could be in them? So, he gathered the characteristics of the 30% who do end well. And these findings of his are what will be guiding the formation process that we find at Inspira. So, it is very important to learn them and take them into account, because Inspira will be based on this to develop this type of leaders. This is the type of leaders we want to be. This is the type of leaders we believe the gospel deserves. This is the type of leaders we believe the Church of Christ deserves. And this is the type of leaders we will seek near us.
First, leaders who end well have experiences of renewal. That is, a leader who ends well is not someone who met God one day and continued with that for the rest of their life. A leader who ends well is one who constantly seeks to reconnect with God, constantly seeks to renew themselves. It's not that I went to a retreat 20 years ago and that changed my life, and I've been fine ever since. No, leaders who end well have retreats at different stages of their lives. Leaders who end well have moments of fasting, of intense personal seeking of God. Leaders who end well have spaces where they intentionally cultivate that renewal through conferences, through moments of worship, through spaces of special surrender to God. And it is something that must be sought, and something that must be invested in, and done. And our church provides those spaces, and we are always inviting you to be part of them. And we expect a leader to know the importance of constant renewal. It's not simply saying, "I've already been to many conferences, I've already been to many retreats." It's that it's part of maintaining healthy leadership to have continuous moments of renewal throughout life.
Furthermore, they practice spiritual disciplines. Leaders who end well in their lives are people who have spiritual disciplines. A discipline is something that one does habitually, constantly. The discipline of good rest, the discipline of prayer, the discipline of reading the Bible, the discipline of tithing, the discipline of gathering. All these disciplines, the discipline of serving. All these spiritual disciplines keep a person healthy. And that is why we have to learn to intentionally cultivate them in our lives. That is why not everyone ends well, because not everyone is willing to intentionally cultivate them.
Furthermore, the third point: they had a learning posture. They are people who constantly want to learn more. And that's why I love that you are at Inspira, because it means that you are the type of leaders that you are: people who want to learn. And that is the posture we must always maintain. We have always learned this in our church; it is something that we have cultivated for many years. Leaders are always learning.
Something very important also from Dr. Clinton's findings was the concept of mentors. That is why it is so important to us. Because it turns out that he realized that leaders who end well had 10 to 15 mentors throughout their lives. 10 to 15 mentors throughout their lives. This does not mean they went to 10 or 15 different churches. What it means is that there were 10 to 15 significant mature Christians present in their lives at some stage of their growth, at some stage of their development. It means that there were people who were there when they first learned about the Lord, that there were also close mentors to help them when they started their leadership journey, when they went through a family or marital crisis, there were mentors who were there. And this is important because sometimes we want one single discipler to fulfill all the roles in our lives. And later, we will have a specific lesson about mentoring, and we will learn about the different types of mentors and roles. But this is very important: one person cannot fill all the roles in our lives. And if we expect that from one person, first of all, that person will disappoint us because they will not have the capacity to do it, and second, we will become discouraged, because we will feel, "How did that person neglect me?" or "How did they not consider me in that area?" Because one human being does not have the capacity to do it. That is why we live in a church environment where we have diverse relationships, different mentors. And that is why a disciple is not the property of a discipler, because a healthy discipler connects us with other relationships, helps us learn and understand that we need different mentors who can help us grow and develop.
And another characteristic, the last one, which is super important, is a broad perspective, a broad life perspective. And this is the idea that, again, God is part of my story, that my story is like a narrative, like a story in which God is part of each of those areas, and God has purposes and fulfills purposes in each of the stages of my life. When a person does not have a perspective, a sense of perspective, that person will become frustrated when there are moments of transition in their life, when there are moments of formation, when there are deserts. When a person does not have perspective, they think that the desert is the end of their story, and they turn away from God and turn their backs on the Lord. But a person who has perspective knows that every desert ends, even though some deserts last for years, but every desert ends. And when we have that perspective, we manage to move from one stage to another and continue maturing in our Christian walk, because the Christian walk is living with God at all times, in all seasons, in the highs and in the lows, taking refuge in him in whatever stage we live.
Now, to finish, let's talk about the mission of God. That is the fruit for which we are disciples, and for which the apostles, prophets, evangelists gather all those nutrients, for which the organization exists as the church, for which disciples are formed as those branches. Everything is so that the Church of Christ can bear fruit, and much fruit, as Jesus spoke. That fruit for us is the mission of God, the Missio Dei. For some people, the mission of the church, the mission of what we do, they only see it in the sense of evangelism. In our church, we do not see it that way, because we believe that the mission is much, much richer and encompasses much more. So, people who only see it in the sense of evangelism think that, for example, things like social action are almost a hindrance or a distraction, right? "How will the church be distracted by helping people when we should be preaching the Gospel?" which is what Christ commanded us. In reality, Christ commanded us to do more than just preach the gospel, right? In Christ, we see someone who cared for the whole person, and I believe the church has to understand that and has to live that way.
So, in our congregation, this is the definition we use for the mission of God. For us, the mission of God unites two things: the mission of God is the proclamation and the demonstration of the Kingdom of God. This is very important. Every disciple in our church should know this. The mission of God, we understand it as the proclamation and the demonstration of the Kingdom of God. Why proclamation? Because the kingdom must be preached, because we must evangelize and talk about Christ, obviously, because through our worship we proclaim that kingdom and the greatness of our King. But we do not only live for proclamation; we are also here on earth for the demonstration of the kingdom. Jesus demonstrated the kingdom. Jesus did not just announce the kingdom; Jesus demonstrated what that kingdom looked like, and what that kingdom looked like where there was resentment, reconciliation was brought; where there was injustice, justice was brought; where there was hunger, that person's hunger was satisfied. That is the demonstration of the kingdom. Where there was sickness, healing was brought about, health was brought about. We live to create environments where the kingdom of God is demonstrated, because we not only proclaim it as a church; we demonstrate it, and we demonstrate it in practical ways in everything we do.
And for this, the kingdom of God, we can understand it. So, we ask ourselves, well, it is the proclamation and demonstration of the Kingdom of God, but what is the kingdom? The kingdom, we can define it in different ways, right? In fact, in the New Testament, it is said to be righteousness, peace, and joy. We see that breadth of the kingdom's reach in human well-being in a very, very real way. In Old Testament terms, there is a very important word called shalom. Of course, it is also present in the New Testament, but its richness comes from the Old. And shalom, Michael Frost defines it as the dream of justice, the regeneration of all things, including internal and global peace, but also prosperity, justice, well-being, and reconciliation. God's shalom is that complete well-being of the human being, and God was constantly seeking to bring that shalom, that peace. But again, it is not a peace of just "Oh, I feel good," but shalom is complete well-being for human beings, for God's creation, which is what we see from the beginning of the narrative of God's story with humanity. And that is what we should seek as a church.
And so, in our church, we should see these great, very practical purposes fulfilled, such as koinonia, loving one another; the kerygma, the proclamation of Jesus as Lord; the diakonia, which is service to one another, to the least of my brothers; and the martyria, which is being witnesses of Christ, witnesses despite everything and despite what may come, witnesses of that Jesus. So, in our church, what we seek is to unite two things. And these words are interesting: orthodoxy and orthopraxy. Orthodoxy, what we understand by it, is the correct teaching of the Word, right? We want orthodoxy, the sound teaching of the Word. But this orthodoxy must lead to orthopraxy, that is, to the correct practice of the Word. Because many people just like to learn about the Bible without ever living it, learn about the kingdom but not live the kingdom, talk about the kingdom but never demonstrate the kingdom.
So, as a church, we seek through discipleship, where perhaps we can most clearly unite this orthodoxy, what we have learned and taught as a church, together with orthopraxy. Okay, how are we going to live this? How do we bring that dream of God's reconciliation to the neighborhood where we meet, to the ministry in which we serve, to the people to whom we have been called to serve? Because this is a church that serves, and that is a concept we use a lot. We are a church on its knees, seeking to serve and wash the feet of the people around us.
So, in our discipleship groups, that is why I want to explain a bit about the structure of how we do discipleship. That is why in our discipleship groups, they are dialogue groups, because we receive the teaching of discipleship on weekends in the general congregation when we gather in the services we have on weekends. There, we receive the teaching, that orthodoxy, right? We receive that teaching and that direction that says, "This is how we are going as a church. This is what the Lord is speaking to us as a congregation. This is important for us to pay attention to in order to be formed." And discipleship seeks to be the dialogue group where we can enrich, comment, question if necessary, but be able to solidify, above all else, in a practical way, what was learned on Sunday or what was learned on Saturday in the service we attended.
So, what we receive on the weekend, we dialogue about it in discipleship groups. There, we hear everyone's voice. There, if necessary, we send a question to the pastoral team during that week, and we say, "In our discipleship group, this question arose because this concept seemed strange to us. We would like it to be clarified further," and we simply send it to the team, to the pastoral team, so that we can address this situation. But we dialogue and learn how to live it in a practical way. That is why our discipleship groups have a missional dimension, and what we seek is that there be discipleship, whether once a week or every 15 days, as each discipleship group agrees, and that what they seek is to dialogue about how to live it in a practical way, but also how to live it missionally. That the discipleship groups are constantly making a difference in the places where they meet, in the people they have been called to serve. So, that we can demonstrate the kingdom of God in the neighborhoods where we are, in the homes where we are, in the institutions where that discipleship is taking place. The creativity of each discipler will determine the result of how that discipleship will look. That is why it is a flexible structure, but what we seek is that there be that dialogue, that what we have learned is solidified, and that what we have been called to learn is lived out missionally.
And that is why our discipleship groups are those dialogue groups. Also, discipleship groups, where people are, there can be discipleship groups from different ministries, from different groups. If they simply feel a connection and close relationships there, there is no problem. Our discipleship groups are based on relationships where people feel that closeness. And that is why it is perfectly possible for a single person to be with a group of married people, with a university student, because what we seek is for discipleship to be organic, and for people who simply have that affinity with each other to gather.
But something very important also is that since they are missional groups, they are open groups. Our discipleship groups are open so that we can always bring guests to the discipleship groups. Our discipleship groups are open so that we can always bring new people to be part of them, people who know nothing about the Lord, it doesn't matter, but so that they can feel part of it, called, and where they can be communicated the message of Christ in a one-on-one way and create that firm relationship with the church of Jesus. So, discipleship groups are always open to inviting people, and all discipleship groups should be seeking to invite people.
But what happens if the discipleship group grows too much? Because then everyone is inviting. That is the grace, and that is why a discipler makes disciples, because that discipler will mentor other people to open other discipleship groups, and the gospel will grow. That is the grace of the gospel, and that is how normal church life is. You want your discipleship group to grow; that is what we see in the gospel, and that is what we learn from the Bible. It is like this; it is how it should be, and to have more and more disciples and more discipleship groups with that same heart, with that same love, and with that same impetus of the Spirit of God.
So, as a church, let us live the mission of God.