Apostolic Hub

Hi Guys, I have taken myself a video explaining what we are believing and doing here. We tried to keep some noise out but dog’s are barking around but hey, ‘they are part of the church here’ as my friend Criss commented.

Enjoy, click the link below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kaXUcPSFog

Discipleship v/s Fathering

We have to agree based on what we see going on in churches when it comes to ‘equipping the saints.’ It’s called ‘discipleship’ – that is express it this way: Collecting materials and recruiting people to be trained in a certain day/hour for a year or three, with, if you don’t mind, with a workshop. More serious programs are so-called ‘Bible Schools’ today. For pastor’s to say that that is not discipleship is all about, “it’s about life-discipleship,’ well that’s not what we really see happening in churches.

Does “Discipleship Programs” have really discipled the saints?

I heard one churchy-guy today in speaking about ‘maturity’ says, “The problem is lack of discipleship.” What he basically means is that we lack ‘trainors’ and ‘trainees.’

Is that really ‘the problem?’ in churches today that’s why they do not grow in maturity?
Do we really not have enough ‘Discipleship Materials?’
Do we really not have enough ‘Bible Study Meetings’ to ‘mature’ the saints?
How about our ‘Sunday School Programs?’
‘Church Services?’

Not only most Christians doesn’y know how to define ‘what a disciple?’ they are also wondering if they are one?
If Jesus commands us to ‘make disciples’ do we really know how to ‘make’ one?

The hardest questions to ask is, “With all the ‘endless’ ‘meetings’ and ‘programs’ that we have already in place week-after-week, month-after-month, year-after-year, do we really need ‘Discipleship Programs’ to disciple the person?

You decide.

But let me offer you the better way I believe it make sense to you.

FATHERING AND MOTHERING THE NEXT GENERATION

Church is about relationships, “love God above all, loving your neighbor and loving your brother.” Without ‘it’ you cannot fulfill what is church is all about.
From that ‘relationships’ brings forth the intention of it – ‘family.’ Relationship that is close like husband and wife – it’s how Paul liken it anyway, Eph.5 – bears ‘children in the Lord.’

So, church is a family, it has ‘hundreds of mothers, hundreds of brothers and hundreds of sisters,’ and also by the way, ‘hundreds of houses.’ It is not an ‘orphanage’ where a child is ‘still ‘ an orphan, why? Simply, it has founders, directors, pastors and staffs but lack one thing – father figure and mother figure.

So, church is a family, it has hundreds of relationships like a ‘mother to her child.’ A family, you don’t have to ‘attend’ to be a part of it. You are. A church that you attend is not a family, but an orphanage. They may do what a family does; eat together, play together, etc, but it is still an orphanage, not a family. By the way, in saying that, I will also say, you don’t ‘attend’ Christ!

So, church is a family. Jesus doesn’t define her having ‘hundreds of cousins, and relatives and uncles and tita’s’ or is He saying having, ‘hundreds of Christian neighbors?’

We are a family. It has ‘parents in the Lord’ and ‘children in the Lord.’ – Eph. 6:1

So, how does ‘equipping the saints’ fit so well in the family concept?

Simple.

First, is “He who manage well of his children, can manage the household of God.” 1 Tim. 3:6

Imagine, every dad and mom are ‘pastors,’ and ‘Sunday Schoolers’ of their children [I didn't mean being religious on that], how ‘simple’ is it to ‘manage the household of God.’ Imagine our own children is well ‘submit’ to us, ‘respect’ us, and so we can be able to teach them ‘all the commands’ of Jesus – remember Duet. 6:4-6? It all started in the home. How easily we can ‘train up a child in the way he should do…’ and ‘equip him for every good work?’ In other words, fathering and mothering becomes works in a natural way – in the context of a family, who don’t just talk about life together, but also who are living life together.

A lifetime of discipleship v/s a lifetime of relationship

So called ‘Discipleship’ not only happens outside home, once a week training, especialize workshops, but they are also not meant to be a family, but a years event and done. We are not good at ‘raising sons and daughters’ of God but good at ‘birthing spiritual orphans’ who are irresponsible Christians of their life – they blame their pastor if he preach lousy messages, blame the leadership if they don’t like to submit and blame the programs if not good enough and so the best way to solve their problems is transfer to another church! Imagine that, froggy-like Christians can just transfer church they want without changing their lives?!!!

Family relationship are what’s most lacking in most simple church. They could not even name 4 persons to watch over their kids on a weekend when they needed to. They are meeting-based churches not family-based. They meet because there is a ‘meeting.’ Unlike ‘family-based’ churches meet simply because they ‘miss each other’ – they love and care enough even to transfer next door. Yes, they literally ‘live from house to house.’ “Behold how good it is for brethren DWELL TOGETHER in unity.” In a ‘meeting-based’ church they ‘talk-about-life-together’ simply because they meet once-or-twice-a-week. In a ‘family-based’ church they ‘do-life-together’ because they just live next door. “House-to-house” in the early church doesn’t mean they’re having ‘meetings from house to house,’ no way, but they are ‘living from house to house’ and because of that they can simply ‘meet’ together from house to house.

Building Healthy Devoted Relationships is meant to be a lifetime adventure.

Treating a new disciple your own ‘brother’ or ‘child’ rather than your ‘student’ can easily he become be treated as a ‘project’ rather than a ‘person.’ What I mean by that is, you cannot treat a person the same way just as you cannot force your discipleship course to anybody! Raising a ‘child’ to become a ‘son’ then to become a ‘father’ takes a ‘lifetime of relationships.’ That why church intention MUST be family. He lives with his father and mother, [imagine how a child would grow if he only sees his parents once a week?] they do life-together in a daily basis just like the early church. What could be more our pattern? No wonder Jesus fathers only 12 for 3 years and He can be able to multiply that into a thousand just like the fish and the loaves! Simple as that.

Disciple Class? What’s that’s class all about? Would you raise up your own son by the book?! Or by doing-things-together? Teaching in the early church was never in the context of a ‘daily-life-together.’ I know there are those who say there are ‘traveling teachers’ and I say, “Yah? Who are they if they didn’t build such relationships of trust and respect with the ekklesia?” I do not really care which ‘five-fold gifts’ you are, if I do not know you and your family, forget it. Many who traveled today in churches are desperately looking for ministry. I know this by experience. The best way to find out is through his own family. If they have one.

Paul might did some ‘training discussion’ but for how long? The longevity of having discipleship is, “How long?”

House-to-house

“Living from house-to-house” not having “meetings.” Family don’t do meetings, but they meet a lot. They don’t do ‘scheduled-meetings’ they do ‘spontaneous’ ones. Get this, how can we have Bible Study Meetings when you just live next door where we can have coffee every morning and discuss the Bible? How can we have Prayer Meetings every Friday night when we can just pray anytime? Does this add nor subtract your time? Don’t think so. Family does the ‘busy’ things together. They wash clothes together, they play together, they do market together, they cut the grass together, they plant tomato together, what else? It’s doing-life-together, not ‘talk’ about it.

This is FATHERING your next generation.

“You are interrupting me Molong.”

Amazing how we can do something without God’s Spirit leading us!

In the process of making disciples the way God does He has already challenged me right from the beginning. I am so tired of following a pattern, a model, whatever. Although, I want to see something new but still I thought that this ‘new’ would still came from other people’s thoughts and ideas. So much a human could do without God – not only that we’ll miss the point [that's it's all about Him] but also in danger of loosing lives just because we interrupted Him!

To my surprise He said, “Molong, if you want to taste the fullness of the Holy Spirit, you have to trust me fully.”

From Rad Zdero’s Desk to the “Thriving” Philippine House Church Movement

Dear Friends in the Philippines,

Some time back brother Molong Nacua invited me to write a letter of encouragement to your nationwide network—in fact, your thriving movement—of house churches. I feel humbled and grateful for the chance to do so. Of course, modesty prevents me from being too enthusiastic about the idea because I feel I too am always learning and growing in this thing that God is presently doing on the earth by restoring his grassroots church. But, equally, false modesty might prevent me from writing anything at all and miss the opportunity for me to share what I have from the Lord for you and for us to connect on a deeper level with one another. And so I have taken your invitation soberly. What I would like to do is simply highlight some important elements that I believe any Spirit-led, Scripture-based, and  strategy-driven network of simple, organic, house churches should endeavour to include in their midst. These insights I have written about before in an article, but I wanted to make sure that I also send these to you at this time. I want to first remind us of what God has done in history, and is doing today, through small group and house church movements and then move on to give 10 specific points for your national network to consider.

The God of History

Leadership or Servanthood?

I am thinking Apostle Paul was a leader because people follow leaders….right?

People follow leaders indeed, they normally look for leaders or who’s the leader. Let unbelievers follow you, for ‘awhile’ like John the baptist, he has disciples on his own ‘for awhile’ until Jesus came and then his disciples followed Him, so we don’t know until when those people ‘followed’ Paul. I believe it’s ‘for awhile’ since he himself warned the Ephesian elders that, “there are some among you here who will draw disciples for themselves.” So the question really is ‘Are you drawing them to Christ or to ourselves? This is entirely up to us. People normally look and follow leaders, let them follow you, make sure of that because of your light, lead them, but not for long. When they started following you, push them to follow Christ by hearing His voice, being spirit-led. In this way, we are only taking men to Christ for him to be discipled. Or as Floyd McFlung would say, “we disciple the lost to convert, we don’t disciple the convert.” Or in leadership we say, ‘we serve those whom we lead, not lead those whom we serve.’  This is the difference between a servant and a leader.

If people followed Paul, yes, but following Paul is following Christ. If so, he himself did not call this ‘leadership’ but servanthood. He calls himself a ‘servant.’ Not a ‘leader’ nor a ‘servant-leader.’ Even that word ‘servant-leader’ confuses me, is he a ‘servant’ or a ‘leader?’ Or 50 percent of both?

People follow Jesus, because he is a leader. I think Paul said …. Follow me as I follow Jesus. So if Paul was not a leader why did he say….Follow me????

discipleSHIFT: from one-man discipling to one-another making disciples

One of the biggest shift is that the next generation can be able to make disciples to their next generation without us! How can this be?

The modern discipleship that we see in today’s church is so weak in that without ‘the pastor’ the church or the work dies. Someone’s got to do it? We have so neglect the work of the Holy Spirit Who can be able to mature the person without human intervention. Inspite of the heavy materials and schedules [you need a ‘shcedule’ in order to answer the ‘materials’] and ‘services’ and ‘programs’ and ‘methods’ of discipling their members, still the work isn’t done, even ‘turning their own city upside down’ it didn’t happen. For more ‘additional’ trainings they even built ‘Bible Schools’ and do ‘seminars’ and ‘conferences’ about it, yet somehow the answer to the question, “Discipling? How long?” can never be answered.

We Don’t Disciple

We make disciples and equip them. We don’t disciple them as we are not the Holy Spirit. We have the Holy Spirit, but we are not the Holy Spirit. Every follower of Jesus has the same Holy Spirit in them. We equip them, that is not ‘discipleship’ at all as we see it happening in classrooms. Best words are not “lead” “mentor” “train” or having “successors” but more on “fathering and mothering” the next generation. Paul, fathering Corinthian Believers 1 Cor 4:14-18, fathering Timothy, “My son Timothy, and like John fathering “many children.”

JESUS, THE HOLY SPIRIT and Me

Job Discriptions:

ME: disciple-maker
HOLY SPIRIT: discipler
JESUS: church-builder

“Our job is to make disciples. The Holy Spirit’s job is to disciple. Jesus job is to build His Church.”

Jesus last command is as important as the first, “Go and make disciples” is just the “how” of “loving God and one another.” Actually,”loving one another” is “loving God.” How can that be the same? The second commandment is the same as the first. How can we say, “I love God” whom we do not see that we cannot even love someone whom we see? [1Jn.4:20-21] The only way to show God’s love is for me to love you. It is through our love for one another that the world will know that we are His [Jn.13:34,35] And actually, this is true “worship service” where “faith expresses itself in love” towards your neighbor in the “field” where sheep is made for, not in the “barn” where they held their “endless” meetings and “weekly Sunday Schools” where graduation was still never announce when.

LIFE TOGETHER

It’s about 24/7 Christianity, not a Sunday-Cum-Wednesday Night nor separating our lives between sacred and secular. It’s a ‘lean not on your own understanding,’- that is changing the way you think about Church. It’s not an ‘attendance’ ‘meeting’ based church, as we know we cannot ‘attend’ Christ. It’s not a church-based-church relationship like we know each other because we’re Christians and we go to the same church and all our talks is revolving around ‘church’ stuffs. It is a family-based-church relationship. Family conversations involves about everything. We have become family because we are Christ’s, inspite of our names [-in which honestly it divides Christianity, to be ONE in Christ, names should be eradicated-] all my intentions to you is because we are family, not ‘Christian neighbors.’

It is undeniably the Holy Spirit!!!

Noel comes home, to his extended family here. And everything he shares blows our mind! I believe it will do the same to yours. Again, the way we blog on how we make disciples is go through by detailed account of what is really actually happened. So, here is a new one!

For a couple of days we, I, Jomie and Albert, we still could not finished the dressing cabinet that we’re making for the Lambs here. I thought of buying a plastic drawers but my wife Lisa suggested that since we have unused plywoods why not make one instead. We did, so one day Noel came. I will go through what we’re discussing while we do the carpentry and we let Noel paint the other box. We made two, but one is still on the process of building it.