Category: Discipleship and Leadership

Everything Shamcey worked for, everything she believed and thought about her whole life came out in the open the moment she stood in front of the international audience and the big cameras during the Miss Universe beauty pageant few days ago. Her beliefs, her convictions, her idea of life and religion and commitment were unveiled in that single moment.

I’m not sure if Shamcey will ever have that time in her life again when millions of people all over the world will hang on to every word she said. Her answer rocked, not just the entertainment and the fashion world, but the consciousness of Filipinos and the Christians who are confronted with the question Vivica A. Fox asked her: conviction or compromise? Here is a woman who unapologetically gave an unpopular answer in front of the whole world.

Few of us will ever have that moment when our faith and character will be tested out in the open, with cameras and millions of people to applaud us. Many will be tested in secret, without anyone watching the choices they make. Some are tested with a plate of food (Esau), others with a woman in a bathing suit (David), and still others with a few gold coins for extra cash (Judas). The real question, however, is not whether you are tested in public or in private. It is whether you will pass or not, whether you are ready to give an answer that will satisfy the Ultimate Judge or just please the crowd.

We are not all beauty queens, and for most of us, our test may not even involve carefully crafted sentences with the right kind of accent. For most people, the test is not about giving sharp answers to a panel of judges but making silent choices in the face of trials on their daily grind where most of the battles of life are either lost or won.

And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation. Gen. 2.2-3

Even if you’re new to the Bible, you’ll definitely notice the redundancy of the word “rest” in those two consecutive verses in Genesis. God rested on the seventh day… God blessed the seventh day because that’s the day He rested. Why such strong emphasis on rest? With the magnitude of the work He did, don’t you think God should be a little more busy by that time?

Pastor Joey Bonifacio once mentioned that part of the reason why God created man on the sixth day and rested on the next is that He wanted Adam to see Him relaxed and approachable right after he opened his eyes. He didn’t want Adam to see Him buried with a thousand inter-galactic chores the first day humanity was awakened to consciousness.

He wanted to sit back, enjoy His creation and make Himself available to man, to walk with him in the garden and enjoy an unhurried friendship with him. Not that He is not available on some other days but to show humanity that He is available for casual conversations and coffee breaks. To set an example to us that resting is actually part of the pattern of life; that amidst the busy lives of endless work to do, there is supposed to be a time to sit down and enjoy the company of the people you love.

When we do discipleship, let us not forget that a greater part of it is on building godly, unhurried friendships, not to form groups that look more like multi-level marketing schemes or ad hoc committees. We’ve seen this in church many times before. People meet in small groups, discuss the word and run out of the door as fast as they can. Their goal is for each member to form his own group and to repeat the process for rapid multiplication. It is only out of godly politeness that we don’t call these disciples our “spiritual downlines.”

Slow down. As Joey Bonifacio often say, “slow is fast.” This is not church marketing, this is not a signature campaign for Jesus, this is life and we are meant to enjoy this.

The question of using too much humor in victory group meetings has been coming up a lot lately in our coaching sessions. “We are not clowns!” I insisted. But truth be told, I’m probably saying that because I am not the type of person who can crack a joke spontaneously, at least not in colloquial Tagalog. If I was a natural born jokester, I’d probably dislike my own advise.

My problem lies in the fact that whereas I could very well appreciate the place and value of humor in discipleship meetings (namely, to keep us awake), I am also well aware of our natural tendency to amuse ourselves to death if we are left to our own devices. Perhaps we have all seen discipleship groups that are dying precisely because the leaders had the mistaken notion that discipleship is all about fun and laughter. The Word of God and prayer were relegated to the backseat. I believe that somewhere, a line must be drawn. But where?

Today, Pastor Ferdie Cabiling of Victory Ortigas did a whole day lecture on preaching in our school. Naturally, humor was the first question I asked. I believe his counsel hits the heart of the matter: humor must only be used to illustrate a point and advance the flow of idea. Humor for the sake of amusement only distracts.

Leaders, when we exert more effort at amusing each other than doing the ministry of the word and prayer, we are wasting precious time that we will never get back. We may never have that same opportunity to reach a person with the gospel. May this sober us up of our mandate. As Benjamin Franklin once said, “do not squander time for that is the stuff that life is made of.”

And God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, on the earth.” And it was so. (Genesis 1.11)

This is a curious feature of God’s creation, each plant reproducing its own kind. Long before scientists discovered deoxyribonucleic acids (DNA) to dictate the genetic make up of reproducing organisms, God was already at work at nature, ensuring us that His creation doesn’t surprise us with weird mutations.

But more than the biological aspect of creation, God actually gave us one basic principle of discipleship: you reproduce the kind of person you are in the lives of those you disciple. Your spiritual DNA is replicated in the people you lead. The kind of culture you live out in front of them will be the kind of culture that they will pass on to their followers.

This is the tricky part. As a discipleship group leader, you are actually in the position to pass on either a bad DNA code or a good DNA code to the people you lead. Each according to its kind. Each leader leads according to the way it was modeled to him by his leader. Whether the next generation will continue to be passionate about reaching the lost is actually up to you now. The ball is in your hands.