Getting Started in Discipling
Theme for this Week: Disciple Making
Ken Fong
Saturday, February 2, 2002
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Q. How do you move beyond talking about discipling to doing it?
A. I was praying about this some years ago. And God opened it up to me that South Central Los Angeles is a mission field. So I've been going down there once a month for about eight years to an untouched groupdrug addicts and the liberal Asian-American activists who work with them.
Some have told me, "Rev. Fong, we expected you to go away after three years. But you keep on coming back." And I bring lay people with me.
We have a completely committed group who moved into South Central Los Angeles three years ago. They had a vision to start making friends with the people. Now they're tutoring kids in the neighborhood, and they've opened the opportunity to everyone in our church. We have people in their seventies who are captivated by the whole thing. They are seeing these revolutionaries actually living out their values.
Give us an example of how it works.
When they're sitting at a small table teaching about Mary Magadalene to a group of women and they ask, "How many of you have been prostitutes?" and all the women raise their hands, suddenly the pretense is gone. My church members from the L.A. suburbs say, "We can minister to this crowd because they're the people that Jesus liked to hang out with."
They become friends. It's changing them. It's changing me. I'm not just teaching discipleship, I'm learning discipleship.
Ken Fong is senior pastor of Evergreen Baptist Church in Rosemead, California.
Adapted from: Leadership (Spring/00) by permission.
2002 by the author or Christianity Today International/Men of Integrity magazine.
Click here for reprint information on Men of Integrity.
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Lord, I want to follow you so closely that others are tempted to fall into line.
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