Get on my Shoulders - Mike de Vetter

Building a culture that unites and releases every generation to build God’s Kingdom.

Mike is Associate Pastor at Rediscover Church and author of 6 children’s books and a children’s album. He has a passion to see the generations growing together on the discipleship journey.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Now you've seen the topic of my message.
It is not a practical session inthe sense we are not going to
practice gymnastics. We will not be doing practical
demonstrations of this, but the thought concept is to get on my
shoulders to give a generation an understanding or a sight or a
vision of something that maybe we have gained in our lifetime

(00:20):
and let them see something that maybe we didn't see when we're
when we were their age. My name is Mike.
I am married to Amy. We have three wonderful
children, Rosie, Josiah and Zoe.I had a bit of a plan when we
were naming them. I didn't tell this plan to Amy
until right at the end, but we have Rosie, Joe, Sire and Zoe.

(00:44):
So just makes it nice and simple.
In my middle age and getting older, when I forget their
names, I can just call Rojo Zoe and it's easy as anything.
So you're picking up the accent?This is not an English accent,
this is a New Zealand or a Kiwi accent.
We have come all the way from New Zealand in a place called
Fang at a everyone give that a go on three Fang at a 123.

(01:09):
Perfect. Let me tell you a little bit of
my journey and our journey and what brought us here because
it's a part of what I want to share today and this thought of
getting on my shoulders or beinga part of raising a generation
of disciples. 25I was 20, maybe 24 years old and we were youth

(01:32):
pastors in a little town called Kaitaya.
So in New Zealand we we were living 22 hours north of
Auckland, our biggest city, maybe 2 million people.
Fangre was about 55,000 people and, and we became youth pastors
of an Anglican church in a town of 4000 people.

(01:52):
We were new in our journey, justnewly married, and we had this
youth ministry of about 12 youngpeople.
The church was amazing, so generous and, and, and gave us
the opportunity to work with these young people.
And I remember going to this conference, there were 1000
young people at this conference.And here I was with our 12
leaders and I was so excited about the conference and the,

(02:14):
the the people on stage were standing to just declare and
prophecy over all these youth leaders of these these
ministries of hundreds and thousands.
And you're going to be preachingacross the world and going to be
doing all of these things. And there I was as a 2223 year
old. And in my heart I was saying,
God pick me. I know no one's ever been in

(02:35):
that place before where you wantthat prophetic word and you're
looking for that prophetic word.I'm like God, God, I need that
word. The problem was it was purely
egotistical. It was all about me.
Like it was purely about my ego and about what I wanted and what
I longed for to satisfy that bitof me.

(02:57):
And I remember having one of those conversations with God.
I've never heard his audible voice, but I know the impression
of God speaking into my heart. And I felt these these words
from God. Mike, it's not about you.
It's about those you lead. I wept and wept and wept in the

(03:18):
middle of 1000 people moments after I I prayed that prayer and
said God, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry for wanting it to
be about me. The person on stage stopped
prophesying over all the youth leaders and it says we're going
to pray over some of our young people.
And so they just pulled these four young people out of the
crowd, You, you, you and you. They all came up on stage and

(03:42):
three of them were from my youthministry.
Now maths was not my strong point at school, but I think
statistically in a crowd of 1000people to pull up three of my
12, I think that's somewhere like 40% of our youth
ministries. So you told my my maths was bad,
maybe 25% of my youth ministry that God would put those three

(04:04):
young people up on stage. And the prophecies, one of them
is now youth pastor, another one's a lawyer, sorry, a doctor,
and another one went into the police force serving the Lord
today. And I just wept and wept and
wept to say, God would I get, could I give my life to getting
others on my shoulders that it wouldn't be about me, but it

(04:26):
would be the legacy that maybe Icould leave and, and the seeds
that I could sow and plant into the next generation.
You know, I was thinking about the eternal reward for our
efforts here on earth. And you don't you know what the
measurement currency is. All I can see in the Bible is
well done, good and faithful servant.

(04:49):
Part of our journey today and this conversation is also around
where do we find ourselves in the place of discipleship.
Some, we probably don't have many senior pastors.
If you do, you're in trouble because you're supposed to be in
the business meeting. But many of us will find
ourselves in various capacities within the church, and numbers

(05:11):
aren't always helpful, but maybeyou're number two or three or
four or whatever it is. I think when we can own the role
that we've been given and walk faithfully with that, maybe God
gives you one person to disciplethroughout your whole lifetime
and you were faithful with that one.
That's what's going to be rewarded in heaven.

(05:33):
And so this is a journey of being faithful to what God's
called us to. I spent so many years trying to
fit other people's shoes, tryingto preach like Boyd Ratnaraja.
I just can't, won't even try. But knowing who I am now and
ministering out of that grace empowers me to then empower
others to do the same. I've been on a journey of

(05:58):
discovering what discipleship isabout.
And as I captured these thoughts, I was so impacted by
Matthew 1128 to 30. Come to me, all you who are
weary and heavy laden and I willgive you rest.
And I thought, how do I capture this the best way?

(06:20):
And so I love music. So I wrote a song.
So I'm going to, we can listen, it's a new song, but come and
sing it with me. This is only a couple of weeks
old. So this is my heart.
This is our heart for discipleship.
It's a song called Come. You can just stay seated if you
like. Lord, I come to you now and I

(06:55):
lay it down. Everybody, every fear at your
feet I bow. And you say calm when the burden

(07:24):
is heavy, when my soul's feelingweary, and I'm losing the fire.

(07:45):
And you say, come, and you placeyour yoke upon me, for your ways
are received, and you birth in his life.

(08:12):
You see, walk with me, work withme, find your rest in me.
You see, walk with me, work withme, find your, rest me.

(08:43):
And you say calm when the burdenis heavy, and my soul's feeling
weary, and I'm losing the fire. And you say calm, and you place

(09:17):
your yoke upon me, for your waysare easy, and you've buried in
his life. Thank you.

(09:50):
Joshua, 28 to 10. Quite possibly one of the most
tragic verses in the Bible. Joshua, son of Nun, the servant
of the Lord, died at the age of 110.
And they buried him in the land of his inheritance in Timnath,
here in the Hill Country of Ephraim, north of Mount Gash.

(10:13):
After that, a whole generation have been gathered to their
ancestors. Another generation grew up who
neither knew the Lord nor what He had done for Israel.
The reality of our call to discipleship is if we do not
disciple the next generation, that could be the result.

(10:37):
A generation could be raised up that does not know the Lord or
the things that He has done. And discipleship is not a
program that we can tack on to our church programs.
Discipleship has to be the heartbeat of our church.

(10:58):
Matthew 2819 to 20 wasn't age specific, it was generational.
It was international. Go into all the world and make
disciples of all nations, teaching them how to obey.
How do we build biblical and practical discipleship that

(11:21):
connects children and youth and young adults and adults and
seniors into the heart of God? What would it look like if we
could have a church where everybody would have the
opportunity to be discipled and also be able to disciple others?

(11:43):
Let me ask a question. By a show of hands, how many
people are being discipled by somebody right now?
OK, couple of hands, how many people are intentionally
discipling someone right now? That's great.
Now my heart would be that everyhand would be raised.

(12:06):
But, but, but can I, can I just talk around the language of
discipleship? Because quite possibly
discipleship is happening. But it's a word that we're a
little bit afraid of When we talk discipleship, sometimes we
think, oh, but a heavy shepherding, you know, I'm
discipling that person. All that sounds a little bit
heavy, but actually discipleshipin its essence is following what

(12:31):
Jesus did. What did Jesus do?
He got down on his knees and he washed the feet, feet of his
disciples. He loved them.
He put up with them when they weren't.
You know, how many times do I have to put up with you?
He says that was Jesus loving and living and doing life with
his disciples. I've asked a number of people

(12:54):
over the last 10 months, what, what does discipleship look like
for you? Most of the time they screw up
their face and say, oh, I don't know how to disciple.
I don't, I don't disciple anyone.
I say, well, actually you, you probably are without even

(13:15):
realizing it. But what needs to happen is it
needs to become intentional. So the journey is to find out
what it is to be a disciple. So let's quickly look at the
biblical mandate for multi generational discipleship.
God's heart for generation. Psalm 145 For one generation

(13:36):
shall commend your works to another, and shall declare your
mighty acts. Deuteronomy 6 six to seven the
these commandments and press them on your children talk about
them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road
Modern day as you sit at the dinner table as you drive in
your car, disciple your children.

(13:59):
I believe discipleship is alwaysmeant to be intergenerational.
God's design is he with the Israelite people as they would
tell the stories. Remember what God did in that
moment. I remember as a, as a child, my
father, he, he did his very bestin discipling me.

(14:20):
And there were some absolutely memorable moments.
I remember once we paced out thelength of the ark.
So we walked to a field and we paced out, we worked out what a
cubit was. And then we, we marched out and
we worked out the length of the ark and I stood at one end and
he stood at one end and we went,wow, that's incredible.
I think we built the Tabernacle out of popsicle sticks and rags

(14:43):
and things like that. And then he also forced us to
sit down in front of Francis Schaeffer, A theologian who at
11 years old, I, I just couldn't, I couldn't handle
Francis Schaeffer, as amazing asit was.
And yet somewhere in as an 11 year old, I remember him talking
about a Plumb line. I can still remember it now that

(15:06):
there was a Plumb line and he was standing with a wall.
But I am thankful for a father who discipled me.
Where you're sitting just just grab 122 or three people.
I want you to ask the question, where is discipleship seen

(15:26):
within the context of our churchthat is intergenerational.
Let's just take two minutes to have a quick chat.
Where do you see or do you not see it?
Is it not apparent? Let's go 2 minutes.

(16:57):
Now I realized 2 minutes is definitely not enough time for
maybe you can take this conversation into the the next
part of this week. What I'd also love us to do in
this moment is to think, begin to think, who's the one person
or who? Who are the two people that God
is putting on my heart that I might be able to disciple.

(17:20):
I might be able to find and say,you know what?
I feel like I could give something and add something to
them, get them on my shoulders, give them a little bit of
wisdom. You know, we're right here in
the middle of this transformational moment as a
movement. We were talking about the APIs
graces. What would it look like if some
of our apostles began to disciple some of our younger

(17:41):
apostles and prophets to prophets?
Imagine what that would look like.
We're all the stumbling blocks that we've had over our our
lifetime of trying to work it out and understand it.
Imagine if we started to grab 5 year olds and 10 year olds and
15 year olds and recognize graces upon their life and begin
to train them and equip them, not waiting till they get to 20

(18:05):
or 30 or 40 or 50 to understand it.
So maybe just begin to jot down names of people.
So if it's not me, maybe it's someone else they could grab a
hold of that person. We've been in this role for
about 9 months now. Bit of a crazy ride to get here.
13 months ago we came over here to attend what we thought was a

(18:29):
trip of a lifetime. We were going to spend some time
with with Mark and Nita and the church.
And I've been in conversations with Mark on Zoom for the last
five years. There was something in his life
that that I just knew I, I needed in my own life.
And so I haunted him down, I chased him.
I took every available diary opportunity.

(18:53):
And New Zealand is 12, sometimes11, sometimes 12, sometimes 13
hours different to the UK. So there were some mornings I
was I was taking a call, a Zoom call with Mark at 1:00 in the
morning on Sunday morning and I'm preaching that morning.
But but I took the moments when they presented themselves.

(19:13):
And so we were supposed to come over and spend some time and I
spoke at the Kids and Youth leaders Limitless conference.
And he picked us up from the train station, Amy and I, and
picked us up. And he said, it's been an
interesting week. I've been nominated as GS for
Elam. And Amy looked at me in the back
and said, what's GSI said, Mr. Boss?

(19:36):
So she said, wow. And then Amy gave me this look
and she doesn't give me this look too often.
That look, which was, is that world about to change?
Often when we have I think there's more prophetic and and
Amy than she probably realizes. But there was something in her
that said, I think this is what we're supposed to do.

(19:56):
We spent a week with with Mark and Lita and and by the end of
the week. We didn't know what was going to
happen. We didn't didn't even know if he
would get the votes. We didn't even know whether the
movement would want him in that wrong.
But we said to Mark, we said we don't know what this would look
like, but whatever you need, we're in.

(20:18):
So when we found out that he'd he'd got the job and the votes
came in, I sent my resignation letter to my my boss.
So I was, we're pastoring a church with Stephen Rebecca
Green, a campus of 500 plus people, an amazing church.
We've been there for 9-9 years. But there was a sense that God

(20:40):
was doing something and that we're supposed to be a part of
it. And so we we went on this
journey and for me that the get on my shoulders is not just
generation down. Sometimes we can do that up as
well. And, and in the parable of the
talents, when you think about it, a talent I believe is about

(21:02):
20 kilos. It's actually a weight.
There's a, there's a weight. And so I'm going to go and
hazard a guess that Mark might be a 5 talent kind of guy.
So Can you imagine the, the, thepicture I have is he's carrying
100 kilos of weight. So I'm saying, what can I do to

(21:23):
take that weight off you? How can I be faithful in in my
role to serve you and what you do?
And so they get on my shoulders can be up and it could be down
and it can be to the side. It's it's that that desire to
love and serve. And this is the heart of a
disciple. What can I do to make your life
better as I yoke myself to Jesus?

(21:47):
How do I make a difference in your life as well?
So what are the what are some ofthe barriers and the challenges
we have to overcome when it comes to discipleship?
I think one of the biggest ones is the generational challenge
like never before. It feels like in society we have
siloed all of our generations and we don't trust each other.

(22:11):
If we're really, really honest. I think it's getting better.
I feel like in the last five or six years, I've seen a longing
to cross those generational barriers and those gaps to try
and connect. But I saw it.
There was a season where it's like youth and young adults and
everyone's got their own programand we don't, we don't mix them

(22:31):
and we don't bring them together.
And the generations don't talk to another one because Because I
don't trust you and you don't trust me.
You're too old, you're too young, you don't understand me
and you're not experienced enough.
That's the reality. And we even did that in church.
We saw that in the corporate world, but we also saw it within
church. We, we, we don't trust that

(22:53):
person because you're not old enough yet, or we don't
understand that person because you're just too old.
I think that's a big challenge to overcome.
My dream would be that in churchI could have a 70 year old man
walk up to my 10 year old daughter and have a

(23:13):
conversation. Now as I say that, there's a
whole lot of people going safeguarding, safeguarding,
safeguarding. Which leads me to my next
challenge to overcome because when we enter a, an intentional
discipleship process, there are some people I don't want to
disciple others and have access.And there are some people that

(23:37):
would love to disciple. And I'd say at the moment, no.
So we have to, even as a church,there has to be a process that
we have to enter into to help protect that discipleship
process. One of the things we've done in
our church, and I didn't call itdiscipleship because we're not

(23:58):
all ready to take on that word discipleship, but we did student
lunches. So we put up AQR code.
If you're a student and you likefood scan in here.
They were like the phones were out really quick.
Just Bing, Bing, Bing. I mean, they're eating noodles
and baked beans. And so you could get a home
cooked roast at somebody's place.

(24:19):
Would you, would you like that? So we got a whole lot of
students sign up. Then we had a whole lot of, we
had another QR code that says, if you would like to host
someone in your home and, and, and bless them, host one of our
students sign up. So I think we had about 35
students sign up. We had about 25 hosts sign up.
And then I gave the task to one of our team and she said, well,

(24:42):
how do I put them all together? I said pray.
I said just ask God, look at these names.
She said, I don't know them all.I said, that's OK, I don't
either. I'm new here.
And so she, she prayed and she, she put pairings together and
she, she said, I'm not sure about that person.
I said, no, no, they're not going to have any students.

(25:04):
Sorry. They're not quite ready for
that. In fact, it wouldn't be good for
them to be so. So we we were able to administer
that connection point and then we gave a simple task.
We said, when you have that mealtogether, this is what I want
you to do. If you are the student receiving
the meal, I want you to ask the person, what's the biggest

(25:25):
challenge you've gone through and you walk with Jesus and what
did you learn from it? And then I asked the person who
was hosting. I said, ask this question of the
student, what is your holy discontent?
What is that thing that would make you want to flip tables
like Jesus did to change something in society?

(25:48):
What a conversation that took place.
Now, it's not going to surprise you that I didn't have to do a
second round of lunches before they were making secondary
invites. Trust has been built, but these
are some of the the hurdles we have to overcome because we
can't be churches that are just LED from the front.

(26:11):
We have to have everybody in their place doing what they're
called to do. I am never more alive than when
I am discipling someone else. I remember the first probably
seven months here, just just trying to work out the role and
you know, what does Mark do and what do I do and, and how do we

(26:31):
work that out together? Lots of new relationships to
form. And I found myself just
struggling, but I didn't realizewhat was missing until it dawned
on me. I'm actually not discipling
anyone. I'm doing a lot of admin.
I'm, I'm, I'm doing a lot of preaching, I'm doing a lot of
organizing, but I'm not discipling anyone.

(26:53):
So I reached out to a group of people and I, and I went a bit
different to what I had in the past.
I've discipled young men before and it's been such a, an
exhilarating moment. But this time I went into
generational. So the oldest guy is 70 in my
discipleship group and the youngest is 17.

(27:13):
Now the now the first time we had our, our discipleship
meeting, we, we met online and Ican see the 17 year old looking
around the screen going, what amI doing here?
And I can see him looking aroundthe room.
And I said, you're here because what you are facing and your

(27:37):
generation I never had to face. I wanted to kind of introduce
myself today. Hi, I'm Mike and I identify as
an apostle teacher. We're in a complex world right
now, right? For a 17 year old to be growing
up and trying to filter through the world's ideologies and all

(28:00):
these social agendas that how dowe navigate that stuff?
I said, I said, you're here in this room because we need to
learn from you and what you carry.
And you might need some wisdom of some older ones that might
have gone before you. Like I see him just kind of puff
out his chest. He's like, all right, I do
belong here. It was crazy last night sitting

(28:21):
here worshiping with 2000 peopleand you know where my heart was?
It was in our discipleship groupthat was meeting online at 8:00
and I was looking at my phone. They're already online.
Something that's attached to me now.
I'm so passionate about seeing that group get over the line.

(28:42):
But what was awesome is I, I wasn't leading the group last
night, but it win it win a hit anyway because already we'll put
leadership in place. Anybody can step up.
Anybody can lead. Anybody can be a part of that.
We've got some heroes in this place.
Is Roger Rowland in this place? Oh, actually, he'll be in the
he'll be in. He loves the business meeting.
How many people know Roger Rowland?

(29:03):
Anyone know Roger Rowland? Look, a few hands there.
He's a person that has blessed and loved and served generation
after generation. I've got one of my heroes in the
faith sitting on the front row. Bob Lawson led the national
leadership for New Zealand for many years.

(29:26):
Pastor pioneered incredible works of God.
This man has been so faithful tome even when I didn't deserve it
sowed into my life. The amount of times he has
poured himself into us. We had him up and he visited and
he blessed our kids like you wouldn't believe.
I want to say thank you. Thank you for being a hero to me

(29:49):
and to thousands and thousands of others.
I'm sitting on your shoulders today because you let me.
Yeah. My life can't exist for for me.
It's got to be for someone else.It's got to be for that, that
next generation. We've got an 80 year old.

(30:11):
Her name's Brenda. She's a prayer warrior.
Love that woman. When we first arrived, she said
how can I get involved? I, I love the young people.
I, I asked a little while ago ifI could help and do a Bible
study with the kids, but the youth pastor didn't get back to
me. I'm like, I am so sorry.
It shouldn't have been the case,but she's a part of our small

(30:34):
groups now. She she helps out with our youth
ministry. Boy, she's got some stories to
tell. 80 years old, still going strong.
She's like Caleb. I'm as strong as I was.
Yeah. Come on.
Give me my mountain. I was talking with a pastor.
And Exeter. Exeter.

(30:55):
Sorry, Exeter. And he was saying we've got some
changes in our church and it's all about the youth and the
young people. I said and and how what do you
think about that? Is is that good?
He says, yeah, well, some of theolder folk are a little bit
feeling like they don't fit anymore.
I said we're kind of going in the opposite direction.

(31:16):
I'm employing older people and I'm trying to leverage the
wisdom that we have in that older generation.
It's like you're not put out to past you yet.
You've got more time because you're not being paid to work
anymore. It's like, how about now all
that wisdom you've got? You pour that into the next
generation. Why do we think that when

(31:37):
somebody stops getting paid, thevalue goes down?
I think we've got to reach up tothat generation.
I reached up to a man in our congregation.
I said, I want you to disciple me.
Will you disciple me, please? He says.
I don't know if I can. I said yes, please.
I need what you have as a as a grandfather, as a father, as a

(32:00):
man of God. He's passed the church as
before. I said I need what you have and
I want to, I want to learn and grow from you.
Resistance to change is another hurdle we have to overcome.
The language of discipleship hasbeen replaced, I think, by

(32:23):
leadership, mentoring. Well, good things, but but I
think we've got to bring discipleship back because
there's nothing like discipleship, because the very
essence of being a disciple is one who makes disciples.
To be a leader doesn't necessarily make another leader.

(32:45):
To mentor doesn't necessarily make a mentor.
But to be a disciple in its veryessence is to become like Jesus
who made more disciples. And so I've been, I've been
talking to my own children. We've been talking about
discipleship in the home. And my 16 year old Rosie, I, I

(33:05):
said, who do you want to, to disciple you?
She went through a list of all these different people and she
said, I, I, I think this person,I said, I think that'd be great
for you, serves in youth and only been saved maybe three
years. But boy, she loves the Lord,
loves the word of God and our Rosie loves the word.

(33:26):
I said, would you reach out to her?
So, so we, I gave her the numberand you know what was amazing
that as I gave Rosie her number,a conversation was going on with
this girl, this young woman and her friend in their flat.
They were talking about discipleship.
It was kind of the theme that we've been talking about.

(33:48):
I said who would you like to disciple?
And this person says, well actually the person I really
liked a disciple is and no word of a lie, as she's saying that
sentence thing on her phone comes a text from Rosie.
This person, Rosie reached out and said, I love the way you
live your life. I love that you love Jesus.

(34:10):
Will you teach me? Will you, will you, will you
show me how to become more and more like Jesus?
Now Rosie's got a great mum, butshe's also got another
significant other in her life who is now discipling her.
Rosie says Tuesdays are my best day.
I get to hang out with Ruth and I and she, she's in the middle
of having to do GCSE and all of the challenges and, you know,

(34:32):
making new friends and she's gotsomebody that's discipling her.
But we've got to start talking about it.
One of the things we did as a asa staff team and as a eldership
is I asked for a hot list. I said, I want you to give me
the, the names of the people that you think could disciple
someone else. I thought could we find 80

(34:53):
people in our church that, that,that would, would, would be able
to disciple someone who came to came to faith or somebody who
just needs to be disciple. They might have been a Christian
for 20 years, but they just needdiscipleship.
They need to be walking with somebody.
And so everybody sent in their separate lists and then I
compiled them and I, I put it inbold and different colors with

(35:13):
people who were, were, were mentioned multiple times.
And I've got a list now of 185 people in our church that we
would be able to trust to disciple someone in this next
season. So when I'm setting goals and
and dreams for next year, I'm not saying could we see 200

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salvations. The dream and the goal for me is
how many people would be prepared to disciple someone
over the next 12 months. That's our dream, that's our
goal. Could I get 80?
Could I get 100? Could I get 185 people that
would say yes, I'll disciple someone.

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So when somebody walks down the aisle to give their life to
Christ, I know for certain that that person will not be left on
their own, but they will have somebody that will walk with
them, work with them, help them learn what it means to follow
Jesus, and build a culture that hopefully could grow beyond.

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So how do we do this practically?
I'm going to move through a few SEC sections here.
We need to design design services, bring it into our
programs in such a way where allthe ages are celebrated.
And it's hard, right? It's complex to bring children

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into our programs and our Sundayservices and give give everybody
that that, that equal weight. But one of the things we do is
we release our children. Recently we've been getting our
children to get up and and pray a prayer, pray over our parents,
pray over our adults. Once a month we do an all age

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prayer where we have children and families and we all come
together and we pray together. Roger Rowland leads this and one
of the one of the sessions we did, we prayed for all the
missionaries around Elam. So we got all the names of all
the missionaries. We placed them all around the
church and we went on this treasure hunt.
We had to find people from all the different continents and so

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all these different missionaries, about 60-70 of
them were scattered around the church.
And then when we got and we found that profile of the person
and the country they were from and which continent they were
from, we asked God, what are youwanting to say to that person?
So on the sheet of paper we would write a prophetic word or
a picture or, or something like that.

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All of those words were capturedand, and gathered and, and Roger
sent it off to to Marty Davidsonand all of those missionaries
received words from children andyoung people and adults.
Do you know how many emails we've got back from these
missionaries saying that word was just what I needed.

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My 10 year old daughter was there and she got a word for
somebody that said you've been spat on.
She said, I see this person being spat on.
We wrote that you've been persecuted for your faith, but
God wants to encourage you and say don't stop, don't quit.
This person says, I was right atthat point of can I carry on in

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this? And I got this word.
Do you know how encouraging thatis for me to say that to my my
10 year old daughter? You listened and you heard from
God. I already see a prophetic grace
on her life. I see her seeing things and
hearing things and I'm trying tofoster that.
I'm trying to develop that. The other thing we need to do is
we need to begin to release discipleship into our homes,

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empowering discipleship and families.
Deuteronomy 6 train a child up. You're wherever you go, bring
the word of God into your conversations with your
children. We've got little things that we
do on a on a daily basis. We've got a prayer chair.

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So we've got a 16 year old, a 12year old and a 10 year old
before we leave at my, my young or my boy, middle boy, he's 12
years old. He likes to be out the door at
754. He's quite detailed.
And so prayer chair, we ring thebell and everybody comes from
wherever they are in the house and we all gather around and

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we're in a circle in the huddle and we pray into the day.
And sometimes we'll do the prayer go round and everyone has
to pray for the person next to them.
Then we pray and then we, we have a child or a chair,
whatever it is. It's like, you know, ace that
test on three 123 ace that test,you know, be the light, shine
the light. It's just a simple thing that we

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do every day. Best, worst and funniest, a
great thing to do over the dinner table.
What was the best part of your day?
What was the worst part of your day?
What was the funniest part of your day?
Great tool for discipleship to find out how your kids are
doing. Your kids, they're not always
full with the language, especially young boys.

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How was your day? But what was the best part of
your day? What was the worst part of your
day? I got into playing football.
All right, OK, let's talk about it.
Well, somebody said this or somebody did this.
But discipleship is something that can happen in our homes.
But but how many of us struggle with that?
I think many of us do. So we're going to start doing so

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Wednesday night is our family night as a family.
We've, we've made a commitment. No, nothing in our diary gets in
on Wednesday night. That's, that's our family night.
The Davida 5:00 we, we study theBible.
We, we play some games, we have some fun.
That's our night. But we're thinking, how can we
then help other families learn and grow in that capacity?

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So Jason and I, the kids extraordinaire, we're going to
be doing an online family night where our family is going to
host a family night and then give the the families a pack so
that we we could all gather together and those can do it
online and some in person. And then we give a pack for the
next month and say, go away and do these family nights in your
home so that you can grow and disciple your own children as

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well. There's lots of other thoughts,
but I think serving together is a great, great way.
Some of you may know the story of the pop up church.
We got this building this massive.
I think Jason became a project manager, not necessarily the the
job description he signed up for, but I think he oversaw the

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laying of 16,000 carpet tiles. But do you know, we had families
come in laying carpet tiles, 8 year olds, 5 year olds.
We just said you just pick your colour and pattern and go for
it. It's quite those with a more of
an OCD kind of framework. They just have to walk through
church like this. It's like I know there's carpet

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there, but I will not look at it.
But I think the hard and if I can just close with this and
maybe we can just pray together as we as we finish.
Is it discipleship is something at the heart of it is
relational. It was a guy who came into
church early on. When we arrived, guy called

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Connor, lovely young man and Godjust said I want you to disciple
him. He was there every week, front
row, just just so passionate about Jesus.
Then one day he wasn't, I was like, ah, it's strange, he's
normally there. I flicked him a text, said hey,
how you doing? Heard nothing from him.
Two days went by, still nothing back from him.

(43:00):
I said, hey, how you doing? Send him another text, still
nothing. Friday I'm calling him.
Hey, how are you? Haven't seen you.
Still nothing. Sunday comes.
Still haven't seen him. No one else knew Connor was
missing, but I did because God had said he's yours to look
after. Sunday comes again.

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Two weeks in a row. He's not at church, so this time
I'm calling him. Have you gone under a bus or
something? I'm.
I'm coming to find you Call me now text me.
I've got to know that you're OK and I was I was about to get in
the car and go find him and he takes me back.
He says, oh, I've been really busy.

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Can we catch up so that that next night we called on the
phone and she's Mike. There's some stuff you don't
know about me is I got a pass before I met Jesus.
He said, I've actually got a little girl in a relationship
that that I, you know, before I knew Jesus, I just didn't know
any better and I've got this girl and I didn't know how to

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tell you. I wondered if when I told you,
you would think listen me and I just wept on the phone with him.
I said thank you, thank you for helping.
Thank you for telling me. It's so helpful to know your
story. He says I haven't been able to
get into work. I'm supporting my mom who's,

(44:28):
who's got multiple children and,and, and most of my money is
going to her and I, I, my bills are all out of control and I
just, I can't afford to get intochurch.
I said, send me your bank account.
He says, what for? I said, because I can help.
So I'm going to put some train money in for the next month.

(44:48):
He says, you can't do that. I said, yes, I can.
I, I said, I said that's not going to be difficult for me.
This is my pleasure, my blessingto pour into your life.
And it wasn't much, but it was. He says no one has ever done
this for me. I said, but one day you'll get

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to do this for someone else. I said, I'm putting an
investment in now because you'regoing to get other people on
your shoulders one day. And you know what, He's back.
He's on the front row. Got a message, got a message
there last night as as we were worshipping and, and Connor was
in the group with, with Russ Russ is 70 years old.

(45:32):
He was leading the group last night.
He didn't know how to work the technology.
So I got somebody else to set upZoom and, and so we got it all
working. But but I saw this exchange of
conversations between Connor andRuss and Tandy and the others
and, and kind of say thanks guys.
So appreciate it. You know, what's great is I
wasn't in that room. I wasn't in that conversation,

(45:52):
but the discipleship is now getting wider and it's
strengthening. But what it takes is each one of
us, if each of us could just go away from here with one person,
two people, three people. The numbers not not a prop.
It's not the issue. It's will I invest myself
relationally into somebody's life.

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Tell you what, when you commit yourself relationally into
somebody else's life and you sayI will be there, I will drop
everything for them. Now Andy Stanley says I do for
one what I want to do for all. You're probably going to think
I've got 100 people that I couldthink of.
You're not going to be able to do 100, but maybe you can do
one. Maybe you can beat 2, and maybe

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there's someone else who can do one or two or three.
I'm excited that I've got 185 adults, young adults that I
believe could disciple someone else.
Now, what would happen if each of them took one or two or three
or ten and then replicated and duplicated that?

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Friends, I think it's time for us to take discipleship as a
language back into our conversations.
Go and ask the question, will you disciple me?
Go find someone and ask them, Will you disciple me?
If they don't know what that even means, just say let's just
read the Bible and pray together.
I haven't given you tools for discipleship today.

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It's really more of an activation conversation.
Would you go and find someone that would disciple you?
And then would you go and disciple someone else?
Jesus said, go unto all the world, make disciples of all
nations. What does discipleship look
like? Come to me, yoke yourself to me.

(47:38):
Jesus said, find your rest, yourrhythm, all of that and then
teach someone else to do the same thing.
So first of all, I have to be a disciple of Jesus.
Out of that will naturally flow this heart to make disciples of
others. Would you bow your heads for a
moment, take 30 seconds to maybethink of someone that you know

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needs to disciple you? Well, you know you need to
disciple. And would you just have a
conversation with Jesus right now?
Say, Jesus, I want to be yoked to you and discover what it's

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like to walk connected to you, burdens I carry brought to you.
Jesus, you are the heavy lifter in this relationship.
You carry what I can't. So from that place of a
disciple, Lord, would you use meto help someone else learn what

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it means to be a disciple of Jesus?
God, would we be courageous to reach up and down through the
generations, to reach out for the wisdom of those that have
gone before us, to draw on the energy and the passion of those
younger than us and collectivelyfind that wisdom and that

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strength of your body and unity together.
Lord, help us to admit to being disciple, making disciples in
Jesus name, Amen. Amen.
Thanks everybody. God bless you all.
I think that's it. Next session starts in 15

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minutes. Drew Andrew Davies I think is
doing a session here, but God bless you.
Enjoy the rest of your afternoon.
Thank you.