I was so excited to hear Mark speak today! He is so, inspiring!
Mark Chester is the senior pastor at Gettysburg Foursquare and both our churches partnered together this past summer for our "Hope For The City" event. It was fairly successful and thanks to he/and his church we were able to praise God for all he did there. He's been there at the church for the past 5 years and is one of those pastors in our county trying to make a difference. He has a wife and 2 sons.
He was talking to us saying that AG and Foursquare aren't to different. We believe in much of the same things. Him in discipleship, he says that it's like weight loss or self help. He thinks that with our times discipleship needs to change and transform our lives more! He quoted from Proverbs 21:31 where he mentioned that perfection is direction in our lives.
His discipleship philosophy is of a few things. The first thing he said is that approach to discipleship is holistic vs. compartmentalized. Wholistic or holistic is the perspective to look at. In Mark 22:47 it says the whole "love the Lord your God...". Our culture tends to be very messed up. We also need to learn to point people toward answers to help them. The next thing he said was theat method must be incarnational vs. transactional. Departmentalized. We need to want to birth people in and develop from God about this sin. He said that some things that grow in us IS legalism, and that it especially happens in a program/church/ministries like ours. He had started to say something about that the word we study, is the word we have prayed theolgians...but from sitting still in the presence of the living word..." I love when people say it's not about just hearing the words but it's the action of the words. His third point was results must be transformational vs. informational. He mentioned one of my favorite verses which is Galatians 6:15 and mentioning about the new creation..That always makes me think of 2 Corinthians 5:17. We need to not just attend a service but we need to learn to serve.
TAKE NOTES ALWAYS!!!
I pretty much already do that anyways. I like how he said out about what we tithe is pretty much what we get or why people are how they are. He mentioned 2 Timothy 1:6-8 which says about believing in growth even when challenged. That is what part of a discipleship program is! Mark saying that, it made me think back into our amazing breakthrough prayer time that morning about running the race. Though it gets hard at times, that is when the true strength comes in! Matthew 25 "The Parable of the Talents" is part of what he talks from. It was interesting to hear the Foursquare thought of the 80/20 principle like FV does. There are many different talents and people. Everyone has a place they can serve. Some people 10, 5, of 1 talent. Either way, I believe in what he said about the talent in us, is a gift from God so therefore use it to serve others! I never heard it this way before until Mark said, "We should be discipling with people that double our investment." I never heard anything spoken like that before. He who has, even what he has, can and will be taken away." That is that will happen if we don't use it in the correct way for God.
The core of discipleship he spoke about was a lot from LIFE Journal. The website is great and I can't wait to look into that website and book a bit more. Journaling is an excellent way to both record and process what God has spoken to us. We need to use the SOAP application. S, standing for Scripture, O, standing for Observation, A, which means Application, and P, which means Prayer. I can't wait to also start looking at "The Divine Mentor". He recommended that book to us to read. People are the #1 goal of discipleship. I've been thinking a lot more lately about expectations. We need to learn to manage our expectations but sometimes things like expectations tend to lead to discouragement. I personally love when someone goes up to Gerry and asks him how they can help on something. He changes it around and asks no, what are they/we interested in helping out with. That is one of the most interesting things I've heard from Gerry. Interesting because I never really hear people talk like that. Last but not least, he says, "forget being a disciple if you can't disciple yourself." That is such a good word that many people don't want to really face but we all need to do that. If we don't do well discipling ourselves, we can't disciple others. That also means, if you aren't going to follow rules of your minsitry, you can't expect your team to.
My final words from a few hours of hearing Mark Chester, is that I love his heart for his church and his word in wanting to start an internship/discipleship program at his church. He says that not the right person has come along yet, but you know, I can see in the future that his program is going to launch and it is going to be great. It's going to be so great that our team and their team come and work together. I can't wait to see how God blesses the group, church, and area even more. It was such an encouragement that day!
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