In business when we hire new people the goal is to train them to do a job independently and not need continual training and reminding, reassurance, and driving them hard, to do a particular job. Some jobs this takes many months, other jobs it takes just a day or two.
In discipleship the goal is the same. The training (teaching) is a means to an end.
The end is spiritual maturity and a person who listens to, cooperates with and responds to the life of Jesus Christ within.
That is the most precise definition one can muster because this life of God in a cooperating and listening person looks different in everyone.
The act of training and discipleship is not THE end in itself.
If you’ve been trained in seminary or elsewhere that the training is the end itself, it’s time to retrain. All is not lost.
Not even evangelism is a legitimate end to justify the forever sermonizing a community. Sometimes Jesus is not evangelizing, there is no autopilot that if we do abc that is success. No hearing cooperating and serving the life of Jesus is the end for all ministry.
The Sunday sermon is engineered to be the end, it is either:
1) intellectual religious entertainment among the thoughtful Christians.
or
2) Repeated reassurance I am going to heaven among the evangelicals.
or
3) Repeated reassurance I am living a life pleasing to God (and myself) among the rich Christians.
4) Repeated reassurance I can try harder and be better and solve my problems, among the poor Christians.
Just to name a few.
If that is your ministry philosophy, forever teaching but never bringing followers to a place of self sufficiency your philosophy is deeply flawed.
Even Jesus did not do that. Jesus sent his disciples out after and during the training time, (within 3 years of beginning) then after only 3 years he left them alone to the Holy Spirit.
Paul would take just a few months to teach his disciples then leave them to the Holy Spirit. Him Leaving was critical to their growth and dependence on the Spirit as a group.
How long have you been hearing sermons you agree with? 5, 10, 25, 50 years?
The Sunday sermon (which I have loved for years) is more like a Greek pagan philosophizing tradition, adopted for Sunday mornings.
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