This past Sunday I started a new teaching series on discipleship called “The Pathway To Discipleship”. There are four parts to this series: The Call of Discipleship: Come and Follow Me; The Habits of Discipleship: How We Become More Like Jesus; The Costs of Discipleship: Take Up Your Cross Daily; The Commission of Discipleship; Go and Make Disciples.
The word disciple appears 261 times in the New Testament, with 233 of those times in the Gospels. The other 28 times it appears in the Book of Acts as the Church is getting started and missions are expanding around the world. One of the interesting facts is the word “Christian”. The word Christian only appears 3 times in the New Testament. It appears that the favored term for followers of Christ is “Disciple”. Jesus is our Rabbi, our teacher and we are his students, his followers, his disciples. Each of us has in some form or fashion heard Jesus say “Come, follow me”. The Pathways to Discipleship include “getting saved” as the starting point, the first step or as we call it, the first base. To be a fully devoted follower of Christ includes more than just becoming a Christian. It is becoming a follower of Jesus. The four weeks of March will be given to going deeper into what that means.I love the idea that we are becoming disciples who make disciples that make our community and world a better place to live. One way we do that is through our support of James Island Outreach. We just received our annual report from James Island Outreach Executive Director, Scott Graule. Last year, in the middle of the pandemic, the James Island Baptist Church family gave financial contributions of $4950.00 to JIO and 7470 pounds of food contributions and has volunteers who serve regularly. Think of that…you gave almost 4 tons, literally, almost 4 tons of food to help the underserved.
Thank you for being such a generous church family all during the year. We are currently working with Ukrainian Churches and ministries to find ways we can financially bless them. We are planning to give to SEND RELIEF, The Southern Baptist agency that handles relief work; Samaritans Purse who is always on the ground and always at ground zero; the local church pastor that Mark Livengood works with (as soon as we can find a way to safely get him the funds); and then another ministry that several of our church members are connected with.
Check out www.SendRelief.org if you are interested in getting a prayer guide or following updates on relief efforts.
See you Sunday, good Lord willing!
Pastor Tom
