A summer leadership training program is an artificial structure – it’s not “real life”.
I told the students that in Wisconsin Dells as we kicked off the Dells LT. We live in very close quarters, meet daily for prayer, music, sharing the word and all eat together for breakfast and dinner. Many people even work together and reach out to their coworkers together. During college, summers afford us these sorts of opportunities. The opportunity to enter a greenhouse to encourage spiritual growth, to push ourselves outside of our comfort zones and to build new relationships across regional lines.
In Acts when 3,000 people were added in a day God used an artificial structure in order to establish his young Church. They met together daily in the temple courts and from house to house, devoting themselves to the apostles teaching, fellowship, breaking of bread and the prayers.
In “real life” we simply cannot maintain this lifestyle and as we see in Acts they didn’t either, they got chased out of Jerusalem and went about living out the lifestyle of disciples and disciple-makers.
Our goal with the Dells LT is to spend this summer in a greenhouse growing together and then head back to real life in the fall as disciples and disciple-makers.
Wisconsin Dells
Well we’ve been up here in the Dells for about a week now working hard at getting this program off the ground. We’ve had most of our 32 students show up, got them moved into the motel that we rented out for the summer, secured a meeting space and a place for meals complete with second hand stove and two refrigerators and started in on training in evangelism and all the rest.
We told the students from the beginning “it’s an artificial system” – this is not real life. We have the opportunity to live close to one, another share meals, hear great teaching and receive extra training, work together, reach out together… just like they did early in Acts! In Acts persecution drove them out of Jerusalem, for us it will be school, work and different home churches – basically real life will return. God used that special “artificial system” early in Acts to get his church trained up and sent out. That’s our goal here too – let’s get people trained and sent back to their campuses on fire to make disciples.
Yesterday I took the 10 or so students who weren’t working to a park where we spent about three and a half hours spending time alone with God. Above is a picture of the Wisconsin River that runs along the park we were at. It was a beautiful spot!
Do the work of an Evangelist
2 Timothy 4:5 (ESV)
As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.
Paul is readying Timothy to be without him so he rapid fires commands at him here calling him to be serious, suffer, evangelize and fulfill his ministry. Some think that Timothy had the gift of an evangelist and they then exclude this as a command for all elders (or even believers as a whole). Others will go that distance and call everyone to this role of an evangelist.
We are obviously all called to make disciples in Matt 28, so I think there is a lot of room here to take this command and apply it broadly. Also Paul seems to imply that Timothy was a timid person (2 Tim 1:7). The timid are rarely thought of as those gifted as evangelists.
What do you think?
Should we all do the work of an evangelist? Why wouldn’t we?
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