Your Sunday meeting is discipleship 101. It is the very heart of your discipleship and training. You may find any other number of things helpful, you may think your church should be doing all sorts, but your primary point of discipleship is the weekly gathering of the saints around the Word with a focus on fellowship, prayer and the breaking of bread.

In the Christian world, we are never far away from someone – or several someones – loading us up with guilt about something or other we need to think about, do more of or that we aren’t doing but we definitely should because someone, somewhere else, does it and it’s really vital. It can, at times, get a bit overwhelming. As I argued a while ago here, give yourself a break and remember if it isn’t in the Bible you don’t have to do it.

But some things are in the Bible. One of those things is discipleship. Sure, the Bible doesn’t say exactly how we are to do it. There is more than one way to skin a cat (not that I have ever tried but I take it on trust). But there is no question that we are certainly called to do it. It is when we are called to do something in scripture that we are faced with a raft of people soon telling us exactly how we ought to be doing it too. Things that the Bible doesn’t expressly demand, but nevertheless have been deemed useful and helpful. But it is often a short jump from what is helpful and useful to an insistence it is the best way, and if the best, why would you want to do anything less for the Lord? That is, it becomes de facto biblical and, with it, something you really ought to do.

Well, let me give you a bit of relief. If you are meeting as a church weekly and you are teaching the scriptures, devoting yourselves to the Apostles teaching, then you are engaged in the task of discipleship. To put it in the form of a question: why does everybody overlook the preaching of God’s Word and the fellowship of his saints on Sunday when it comes to discipleship? It’s not as if the Bible hives off discipleship apart from the gathering of God’s people.

Read More