Essential Engagement for Disciples Pastor Dirk Rodgers

Welcome to the final session in our Essential Engagement series. We are learning that our growth as disciples requires other people. It is always about “us and Jesus”, not just “me and Jesus”. In our last session, we found that this Essential Engagement requires a Commitment to Mission. Jesus has given us this mission to become and to make disciples, and He has attached authority, accountability, and reward to this mission.
In this session, then, we address the “how” question. This big mission of disciple-making requires a new kind of power, more power than we humans possess within ourselves. This mission requires divine power, the power of God’s Holy Spirit. We therefore examine the Presence of the Holy Spirit and the Gifts of the Holy Spirit.

Welcome to another session in our Essential Engagement series. We are learning that our growth as disciples requires other people. It is always about “us and Jesus”, not just “me and Jesus”. We have divided this discussion into two related topics: Our Commitment to Others, and our Commitment to Mission. In our previous two sessions we addressed our Commitment to Others, and now, in this session and in the next one, we will look at our Commitment to Mission.

In this series, we are learning that discipleship is not just about “me and Jesus.” It must always be about “us and Jesus”.
In our last session, we introduced the Commitment to Others that Jesus requires. We discussed our motivation for this commitment, our call to love, encourage and serve others. In this session, then, we will build on this foundation. We offer some practical guidelines for engaging in this essential commitment to others. This will require a commitment to church, family and care.

Jesus came to restore broken relationships, with God and with others. To discover these restored relationships, however, we must act. We must carry the mercy and grace of our loving God into a broken and discouraged world. We must engage with others. In this session, therefore, we examine our motivation to engage with others, and, in the following session, we discuss concrete ways to engage effectively with one another, as God intends.

Why must we commit ourselves to others and to mission in order to grow as a disciple of Jesus?