Leading Discipleship Formation for Mission in the Love of Christ

I am very blessed to have a friend and fellow Union High School of Manila 76 batch mate who have shown genuine       concern and love to the church he ministered.  He is a layman but have done so much that he deserves none the less to be called minister of the gospel.  I am referring to my dear friend and classmate Earl Canlas of the Methodist Church.

I am going to post some very important concerns on leadership that Mr. Earl Canlas has written and posted in Facebook.   Earl has given me permission to post his writings.  He wrote, ” I am writing for the renewal of churches. Go on, Gene. I have pledged this year to flex all that I can to bring this force of renewal to all levels, to all circles, and all churches that will find use for these posts”.

To all my friends and Unida pilgrims, I am inviting you to come on board to be with me on the road less traveled.

Leading Discipleship Formation for Mission in the Love of Christ

It seems like a dead end. Why is the church that we grew up in not growing as good as it should? Pews are getting to be less filled on Sundays. Something isn’t being done in our churches.

Less and less lay persons are involved in active witnessing ministries. And Sunday preaching is a shot in the dark. Nobody is sure what the preacher is talking about and what it means to living our witness to others and society as brothers and sisters in Christ. In many churches, meeting about the latest problem under church council discussion just continues the old divisions among the members. So what’s new?

How do we go about developing leadership and discipleship formation for mission? How does this express the basic power of the love of Christ that makes the churches truly church and real body of Christ, not the usual political church fronts? Questions…questions…questions…and more questions. And it is rightly asked in our churches because we can see that something other than that which is vital to its life and part in Jesus’ mission and ministry is regularly happening. Where is this all leading to? And would anybody explain who is in charge?

I am praying God will correct our church out of love, not judgment. And may there be renewal. If we can’t leave it to the clergy to make it happen, then so be it. The early Wesleyan model better expresses the priesthood of all believers when Methodist society members served as leaders in formative discipleship patterns in the class/small groups. I think we all owe it to God for the church to better do its mission and ministries. I ask, “Bakit ko susuportahan o pagtatakpan ang kakulangan ng performance ng clergy sa ating Diyos?”

If clergy can no longer fill the shoes of leadership, it never was perhaps intended that they keep wearing those shoes in our church. Our history as a Wesleyan renewal movement in England and early church beginnings in the USA involved lay ministries that we no longer have in great proportion as in those early years. Restart natin ang Wesleyan class movement?And let’s do it in the cell growth process pattern that made it a propagating, sustaining, and renewing force in society.

I really get worried when Sunday School is integrated into the worship time because nobody attends it at earlier hours of Sunday. The original Sunday School movement opened and sustained classes where there were no churches. It was part of gospel witnessing strategies of the growing Methodist ministries. It was part of expanding frontier areas in the settlement of early American territories. We would kill our pastors if we expanded in the manner of cell groups and Sunday schools without support from more members of the church in active gospel witnessing ministries.

We have to redevelop expressions of our church as a priesthood of all believers. That was what it had when it was but a renewal movement.Those were fast expanding ministries in the past. And many new churches or renewal movements have used the same strategic ministries with great success in church growth.

Is it a dead end? Or do we move into new beginnings? Our church abandoned its best practices a long time a go. And its leaders have to answer questions what we are waiting for doing something else? Or do we sing the old lines of a song, “Where is the love…?” It was not even a gospel song, but it reminds us of a vital question for our church. Yes, where is the love? And where are we headed, brothers and sisters? Something has to happen….

From Values 101 & Church Leaders 101 – Post No.5 written by Earl Canlas