After turning the dead bolt of my apartment door with a haunting click, I slowly turned to the leaders in my living room and pronounced, “We have a problem. And no one is leaving here until we solve it.” I saw one leader swallow with an audible gulp. As I sat back down on my arm chair and looked them each in the eye, one girl's thought escaped out loud. “I feel sick,” she muttered. I continued, “Our problem we need to solve is this…”
“Discipleship.”
For the next 2 ½ hours we talked about the 30+ new believers from the last couple weeks, and how we could effectively follow up on them and care for them spiritually. There were the 10 who had joined the family at one huge Christmas party. The 15 who had made decisions the same night at another party. And the dozen or so who had chosen to follow Jesus in conversations and small groups over the last couple weeks. We had made plans before, but they were simply overwhelmed by the great harvest God is bringing us.
Several hours later, with our new wineskins on paper, I unlocked the door and let them out. And now comes the fun part… putting it into practice. If you were to have eyes in our city this week, you would see new house churches starting, baptisms, people getting filled with the Holy Spirit, and a young American meeting with a local college student over a bowl of noodles as they talk through this new decision more times than you could track.
Jesus, please continue to build your Church!!!