Discipleship – Salisbury Baptist Church

The Missing Key

1st December 2024

The Church, particularly in the West, seems to have lost the key to how discipleship is achieved. The true meaning of discipleship has been misunderstood many times in church history, particularly in understanding the Great Commission. While some believe discipleship and evangelism are separate activities, the original Greek text reveals that making disciples happens through preaching the Gospel taught with depth and substance. The power of transformation comes not because of programmes and human genius, but through the power of the Gospel itself - this is the real 'missing key' that Jesus gave His church. Just as a missing key contributed to the Titanic's fate, having the wrong interpretation of discipleship can lead the Church astray from its primary mission.

The Missing Application of the Gospel is to Makes Disciples

17th November 2024

Making disciples is not separate from preaching the Gospel - they are one and the same process. The evidence from Matthew and Mark's Great Commission accounts reveals that genuine discipleship occurs through deep, sustained exposure to Gospel truth rather than through a shallow initial conversion followed by different teaching. When churches focus on teaching the Gospel thoroughly and repeatedly, rather than seeing it merely as an entry point, their converts are far more likely to remain strong in their faith. This understanding shaped the early Church's approach and remains the Biblical pattern for creating lasting disciples.

The Narrow Gate of Discipleship

17th November 2024

The Christian life was never meant to be an easy path needing only minimal commitment. Jesus taught that the gate to true discipleship is narrow, and few find it. While salvation is freely given through Christ's work on the cross, and not based on one's own good works, it leads nonetheless to rigorous training and transformation resulting in upright living. Many churches today have widened the entrance to attract the crowds, but this compromises the deep discipleship that Jesus and the Apostles established which is aimed to produce righteous living. The Lord's design involves both grace for salvation and training for godly living—a narrow but life-giving path that produces lasting spiritual fruit.

Steps to the new beginning

31st December 2023

"I think a New Year's resolution often is when we come to a place of realising we need to make a decision as to direction. And we don't need to necessarily carry it all out or know everything about it, but we sometimes do need to take one step. And if I can help you today to take a step, an important step that the Scriptures help us to see is a part of what it is to be a disciple of Jesus."

Being called to a particular ministry

10th December 2023

"Tonight we can look at a place where there actually is a snippet of the same material that was said by Jesus up the mountain, recorded in Matthew... And what it is about is discipleship, because it's about the calling of his disciples. In particular, to appoint twelve of those that he'd called to be apostles. And so what we're actually looking at here is Jesus seeking to call people into ministry involvements. To be an apostle was a specialty of serving Christ."

Have this mind in you that was in Christ Jesus

3rd December 2023

"this is the beginning of the Beatitudes, as Jesus is actually teaching those closest to him, the twelve disciples, and maybe some others that came with them. He's teaching them about what it is to be a real disciple. And there's eight things that he says, and up until where we've come to so far in the exegesis, the exposition of these, they're all positive. They're things that are shown in the life of a person who seeks to be under the kingly rule of Jesus. And so anyway, here we have Jesus teaching the disciples. And that's what the Beatitudes are all about. But as we come down to about verse 20 or so, you'll discover that there's a reversal."

Paul’s method of discipleship

12th November 2023

"And no better way to find out how Christianity has been set up by God than to go back to the beginning of the first apostles, Jesus and the apostles. And to go back to the beginning of the first apostles, Jesus and the apostles. And the things that he told them to do. And so as a part of tonight we will be looking at the Great Commission."