Mission Lab

The word "discipleship" is such a buzzword today. It is populat to talk about its importance. We also mention it frequently. But what does it mean? And how do we do it? We grapple with this important and significant question, offering our take on what it means to make disciples and how we do it.

Pretty simple: we reflect on what scares us about mission, discipleship, and the church. 

Shawn sits down with our good friend, Tom, who is a part of our missional community. We talk about his journey as a young man growing up in a Catholic home, his brief stint in Judaism, how his wife's prayers have borne fruit after 30 years of marriage, and his doubts and decisions relating to Christianity, discipleship, and the Bible. At the end of the day, we rejoice in the fun he's having as he explores life in community and on mission.

We pick off a few ideas from Rob Bell, Brene Brown, Jeff Bezos, Esther, Jesus, and Paul and encourage people to realize that "we are the committee." God is longing for people to have the courage to move forward to participate in His mission, prayerfully and graciously being who He wants us to be.

We pick off a few ideas from Rob Bell, Brene Brown, Jeff Bezos, Esther, Jesus, and Paul and encourage people to realize that "we are the committee." God is longing for people to have the courage to move forward to participate in His mission, prayerfully and graciously being who He wants us to be.

Does God need us to dress up? That's the question we explore in this episode, asking whether we need to wear suits and ties and nice dresses when we gather together. Not surprisingly, we say the answer is a resounding "no!" In fact, to do so may give the impression of non-inclusiveness. And it may be idolatrous, as though God needs to be appeased by us by wearing some sort of arbitrary costume.

Over the course of our podcast we haven't talked much about the importance of making Scripture the foundation of our mission, discipleship and community. So that's what we do here. We address the role of Scripture in the life of the disciple and the community of disciples, noting how a missional community is not just a "support group," and then discuss the role of Scripture in the discipling of others.

We mention four questions that can be very helpful in guiding one's study of Scripture:

1. Who is God?

2. What has He done?

3. Who am I in light of what He's done?

4. How do I live?

Shawn sits down with his mother to talk about her life on mission - before being missional was even cool - as a nurse for three decades. She shares a really unbelievable story of Doreen, a troubled co-worker the Brace family took in for a weekend that turned into nearly two decades, and how that simple decision ended up having eternal ramifications.

We reflect back on the past year and discuss whether we have experienced any success missionally. Of course, this brings up all sorts of questions of what success looks like, how we define it, and how we ultimately should leave those concerns up to God.

We crunch some numbers. Not that we're really about numbers, but we make a simple case for why life-on-life discipleship is a smarter investment of time, money, and resources when it comes to trying to change the world than putting on big meetings that might draw a larger crowd. Simply put, it's the power of exponential growth.