Call Instructions

For the call tomorrow night I want everybody to have a piece of paper to write on with a writing device at your service (basically just have a pen and paper) cause we're going to be covering some things that I want you guys to interact with. Hope to see you all on the call tomorrow at 9.

Please do your best to call in before 9 so that we can cut down on the static.

Thanks

Great Call Last Night!

I will be posting the message that Matt gave to us on this website within a day or so but I thought I would let you all know that we had 14 people on the actual call and we had one who called the playback number.

For those of you who are looking to get others involved in threemid I would encourage you to get them on the Playback number (218 339-3699 Access Code: 937-332#) sometime this week and let them listen. There is a feature where you can rewind or fast forward your whole way through the call and that is really neat.

Thanks for all your support! Lets light up the website with comments, questions, and ANSWERS (I want you guys to answer the questions of other members so we can get discussion going).

A Faith Built on a Foundation

That's the title for our call this week. If any of you guys have friends who are non-Christians or are questioning their faith in God you NEED to get them on this call! Guest speaker again and lets have over 15 on this week!

We are on Facebook!

Thanks to Jesse Fontaine we now have a "Threemid" facebook account. Click here to go to this site.

Thanks for all the comments

Thanks for all the comments guys! Something you guys can do is be a follower by clicking on the "follower" link on the right hand side of the page. When you do that you will be able to put your picture on your comments as well as your name.

Call to Discipleship Conference Call

Awesome job guys and we had 11 people on the call Sunday night for guest speaker Titus Byer which is outstanding! Titus did an excellent job in hitting five key points that are extremely helpful in discipling individuals (given at the bottom of this post). Here are the minutes from the call just in case any of you wanted to jot down some of the info that was given.

The setting was a warm summer day on the mountains of Galilee in the year of A.D. 37. Jesus had recently risen from the dead and was soon to make his ascension up into heaven. However, before He did he had a simple and powerful command for His followers and we pick this up in… Matthew 28:18-20 18 And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, "All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. 19 "Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age."

Jesus did not tell His followers to go out and build large churches. He did not tell them to go door to door calling. He did not even tell them to help others become Christians. He told His followers to make disciples in all the world.

Guys, in our brief few minutes that we have together, I want to share with you guys the vision that I have for Threemid and the vision that I believe God has for each of us on the line here tonight. Threemid is all about being centered on what we believe Jesus thought was most important in life and that is discipleship.

The word “disciple” is mentioned 272 times in the Bible with 270 of the references coming from the four gospels or the book of Acts. In comparison the word “Christian” appears just 3 times in the entire Old and New Testament combined.

Just as a guess, I’m assuming that some of you on the phone tonight have always been under the impression that helping others become Christians is the main role of being a follower of Jesus Christ. The only problem with that though is that there is a distinct difference between being a Christian and being a Disciple.

Example: Roughly 70% of all Americans consider themselves to be Christians. And if I were to do a poll downtown with some of the lower criminals of Cincinnati, it would be fair to say that a fair majority of them would believe in God and probably call themselves Christians. How many of you would agree though that a large majority of the people who call themselves Christians in the world are not really Christians at all? They merely maintain an identity for whatever selfish reasons them may have.

To most people, they define being a Christian as someone who: 1) Puts their faith in Jesus Christ 2) Asks Jesus to forgive them of their sin. This is all well in good but most of them miss the third and final step that is so crucial and it is 3) Making a commitment to walk with Jesus in a teacher/student relationship. A relationship that says I am absolutely committed to doing everything that my master Jesus wants me to do.

This third and final step is the heart of discipleship. Jesus modeled discipleship in two ways: 1) In his relationship with His heavenly Father and 2) In His relationship with His disciples. Jesus role modeled how we should act with our heavenly Father and He also role modeled how we should act with others.

Certainly Jesus preached to thousands of people in His lifetime but how many people did Jesus have in his “discipleship group?” That’s right – 12. However, Jesus also had an inner circle that was even closer to Him than the 12 and how many was that? The answer is 3 (Peter, James, and John).

Just think about that for a second! Jesus, the God of the universe, who most certainly could have worked with thousands of people, had he so desired, chose to instead work with a very select group of men. He chose to invest His time and energy into these three core men and most specifically Peter.

Why did He choose to do this? I believe He chose this method because He saw that in the long term this idea would have the most results.

I like a quote that one person mentioned in regard to business that I believe applies to our walk with other Christians. He said I would rather run with 7 people than drag 30 with me.

I believe that this is kind of the approach that Jesus chose to use with his discipleship tactics. He was very straightforward with his followers on what it meant to be a disciple when He said in…
Luke 9:23 “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me.” He was not constantly begging people to follow Him (e.g. the rich young ruler). He was loving, kind, and gracious but when it came right down to it He gave people the choice to be His disciple no matter what the cost or to reject Him.

So we have set the stage that discipleship is important and that it was the method that Jesus Himself used but what does it mean to disciple someone?

To answer this question, I want to bring in someone who has been doing an excellent job in discipling others up in Rock Lake Michigan. He is currently the assistant pastor to Blake Jones and I highly value his opinion and his ideas that he has for working with people. I like to introduce my brother Titus.

Titus’ Five Points on Discipleship

1 – You do not need to be highly trained
2 – No need to act different
3 – Realize that people have different schedules
4 – Be a real person
5 – Respect everyone as equal

Call tonight!

Tune in at 8:57 PM and don't miss the special call tonight on discipleship.