1st Session Pastors And Ministers Conference by Pastor Poju Oyemade: MP3 Download & Sermon Notes

The Commission to Make Disciples

The commission God gave was to go and teach all nations. That word teach means go and make disciples of all nations. The church is supposed to produce disciples. Anything God instructs must have a method through which it is accomplished. One thing is to know what God wants done. Another is to understand the method through which that particular thing is done, just as David knew to carry the ark into Jerusalem but also needed to understand the right method of doing it.

True ministry is a burden. A person whose ministry will have impact is actually carrying a genuine burden on the inner side. It is not about following what is trending, what is in vogue, or copying what somebody else is doing that seems to be working. Something has entered the heart of that particular person, and that thing has become the very anchor of the soul. Like Moses, it entered into his heart and became the total anchor of his entire life.

Legacy Is Built Through Disciples, Not Crowds

When talking about discipleship, the goal is to see believers fulfill the will of God in their lives. It goes beyond numbers. The question is whether the individuals are walking in the will of God, growing, and expressing more of the life of God in them.

The legacy of any church or ministry, projected fifty or seventy years from now, is found not just in the people who gather but in the people who are taught and trained in the path of God.

Multitudes came to the meetings of Jesus, but at the end of the day, the legacy of Jesus was carried by just 120 people in the upper room. The multitudes who came did not matter in the long run. It was the 120 who stayed, who were there for Jesus and for his cause and believed his words, who actually became the legacy. Any ministry that lasts or crosses generations is one that raised disciples.

Romans 9:29 speaks to this. Isaiah said that except the Lord of Sabaoth had left a seed, they would have been like Sodom and like Gomorrah. The problem with Sodom and Gomorrah was that they did not have a seed. When Abraham negotiated for them, the question was whether a remnant could be found. The only thing that qualifies a ministry to last beyond one generation is that there is a seed.

It is not just the size of a congregation that matters, but the quality of the people being produced.

The Real Threat Is Internal, Not External

The threats to Christianity can be shown scripturally and illustrated from the human body. They have always been within and not without. People speak of external forces, but the real threats are internal. When it seems that an external force destroyed Christianity in a certain nation, the deeper truth is that something internal had already gone wrong. Like the human immune system, when the defense collapses, external infections that would normally be resisted become fatal. A casual observer will say it was what came from outside that caused the problem, without seeing that internal failure was what allowed that thing to come in.

Scripture never records external persecution destroying the church. There is nowhere, even from Judaism, that external aggression has been a true threat to God's people. The only thing that can be a threat to the people of God is that they are not connected.

Revelation 3:1-5 says to the angel of the church at Sardis: thou has a name that thou livest, but thou art dead. It is possible to be told your church is alive while you are actually dead. The instruction is: be watchful, strengthen the things that remain, hold fast, and repent. When they failed to make those internal adjustments, something external came in as a thief in the night. The casual observer would say a thief came, not knowing that certain internal failures caused the thief to come.

Revelation 3:14-19 addresses Laodicea: because thou art lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I will spew you out of my mouth. They said they were rich, increased with goods, and had need of nothing, not knowing they were wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked. The problems of those churches were not external. When they failed to obey Jesus and make the adjustments they were supposed to make, something external came in, just as happened with the nation of Israel when foreign armies took them captive. The real cause was that something internally wrong was never corrected.

Church size is therefore not the issue. One can be small and very weak. One can also be large and very strong. Some people say they are not growing because they are doing true discipleship. There is nothing like that in the Bible.

Discipleship Is an Emphasis, Not a Class

Discipleship is not a class that somebody goes to for six weeks and comes out saying they went through discipleship. It is an emphasis in the ministry. It is in the message every Sunday morning and during midweek. It is a push across the entire ministry.

Every church has a resident anointing. There is something being emphasized and practiced inside that church.

All who identified with Christ in the early church were called disciples. When the name was later changed to Christians, something was lost because when you say disciple, you know who you are and what you are doing.

Disciples can multiply and become multitudes. The argument that doing discipleship means slower growth has no basis in Scripture.

Acts 6:1 says that in those days when the number of the disciples was multiplied. Acts 6:7 says the word of God increased and the number of the disciples multiplied.

How People Enter the Church Matters

The first thing to understand about building disciples is that how people actually join a church matters. The point of entry matters.

Make sure that the point of entry, the means through which people come, is first and foremost through prayer. Do not use underhanded methods, entertainment, gimmicks, or trickery. As Paul said, the hidden things of dishonesty have been renounced. Walking in craftiness can be done in ministry, but it will cost dearly in the future and may compromise the entire church so that what God birthed that church for will never be fulfilled.

If people are brought in through comedy or entertainment, the result is Ishmael fighting Isaac. That ministry will have serious problems going forward. That which is born of flesh is flesh.

John 6:25-27 records Jesus saying: seek me not because you saw miracles, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled. Labor not for the meat that perishes. People can come for bread, for what they will eat, and not for the real reasons.

John 6:64-68 shows that Jesus knew from the beginning who believed not and who would betray him. No man can come to Jesus except it is given to him of the Father. And that comes in answer to prayer. Simon Peter's response was: Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou has the words of eternal life.

If the church is filled with bread-and-butter people, the pastor will know the pain. In the days of social media, when teaching moves beyond their comfort zone, they will react publicly. This is why getting it right from the start matters.

If people have already been brought in the wrong way, do what Paul did in Galatians 4: my little children of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be fully formed in you. Enter into travailing prayer over the people in the church who do not yet have the spirit, who come for social reasons. The pastor must travail until something is birthed in them. There is a release that comes with that kind of prayer. It is not just talking to someone and having them say they will try. There is an actual birth.

What a Disciple Actually Is

A disciple is beyond someone who initially believes. A disciple is someone who continues. John 8:31: Jesus said to those who believed on him, if you continue in my word, then are you my disciples indeed, and you shall know the truth. Those people come into a personal, experiential knowledge of God. They come to know God themselves.

They shall all know him from the least to the greatest. People who have come to know God personally cannot go on social media and abuse their pastor because they have come personally to know God. It is not that somebody taught them. It is a personal knowledge.

It is possible for a person to be ever learning but never come to the knowledge of the truth. They come to church every time and are ever learning, but they never continue because the hallmark of a disciple is entering into the fellowship of the sufferings of Christ. A person can come to church, take notes, and participate in everything, but once the teaching moves toward entering the sufferings of Christ, those whose God is their belly fall away. Anything that brings convenience, they follow. Anything that costs, they leave.

The Sufferings and the Method to Glory

There is no Christianity without suffering. The method to real glory is not manipulation or association with people of influence. It is suffering. The reason Jesus was exalted was that he humbled himself. The method to glory is the same.

Suffering is not what is happening on the outside. It is the decision being made to live according to what God has said and to obey the voice of conscience. Disobeying that instruction and then associating with people for position is like Saul, who lost the anointing but asked to be seen publicly with the prophet so the people would think he still had standing. That is going with people, not with God.

Social media creates similar pressure. The full consequence of what is currently happening on social media will not be known for another fifteen to twenty years. If the conscience says do not post that photograph because it is creating an impression, do not post it.

God will raise a pure generation that nobody sees coming. They will just be rising. And after some time it will be clear that it was not social media that produced them.

Ever Learning Without Coming to Truth

1 Timothy 2:4: God will have all men to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. 2 Timothy 3:7: ever learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.

After some time, what begins to matter is whether the pastor said something new. It stops being about practice and becomes about novelty. Over time, people with itching ears are developed.

Discipleship is not a class. It is not that someone went to a discipleship class and now they are a disciple. It is an emphasis in ministry that steers continuous spiritual growth and exposes people to the exercises that bring growth. Discipleship is about continuity.

Derek Prince said today there is a tendency to think in terms of mega churches, the biggest church in the world, a church with five thousand or ten thousand members. He said he did not believe Jesus was impressed. Jesus did not tell us to make church members. He said go and make disciples of all nations. There is a difference between a church member and a disciple. A disciple is someone whose primary aim in life is to follow Jesus. A church member can be just somebody who has some religion. One of God's biggest problems in the world is church members who are not disciples.

Discipleship is about continuity. There are various seasons Christ will go through. The disciple is willing to follow him through all the seasons. It is not just convenient seasons. There will be seasons where Jesus was a man acquainted with sorrow. The question is: are you willing to follow through it? Or when it is not convenient, do you turn away?

1 Peter 5:1: the elders among you I exhort, as a fellow elder and witness of the sufferings of Christ, and also a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed. Suffering leads to glory. Not just suffering, but suffering and glory.

Do not create a separate tier inside the church and label some people as disciples while others are seen as multitude. That will simply produce pride. Disciples are disciples of Jesus, not of a minister. And discipleship must be an emphasis throughout the ministry, not a programme for a select group.

Father, we commit to building the right foundation. Let the emphasis of this ministry always be the making of true disciples. Let prayer be the point of entry. Let the word be sown in good and honest hearts. Let every believer come to a personal knowledge of you. Raise up the 120 who will carry what you have built into the next generation, in Jesus name.