Discipleship in the Local Church with Bev Chao Berrus
In this episode, Hunter chats with Bev Chao Berrus about discipleship in the local church and how God designed it for our spiritual good! Disciples are made within the context of the local church, and God himself gives us this example in the pages of Scripture and throughout the history of the Church. Friends, we pray this conversation is a helpful resource as you seek to come alongside the women in your local church and grow together in godliness!
We loved hearing Bev’s discipleship stories, and we’d love to hear more!
If you have a good discipleship story to share, please record a 30-60 second voice memo and send it our way at info@journeywomen.org.
INTERVIEW QUESTIONS
Why is discipleship in the local church important?
Where do we see this in Scripture?
How does one-on-one discipling build up the entire congregation?
How can we foster the kind of discipleship culture we yearn for within the local church?
What encouragement do you have for women who can’t find someone who is interested in spiritually investing in their lives in their local congregation?
What if you don’t “have someone” to disciple you?
What joy have you experienced as you’ve invested in younger women in your church?
What joy have you experienced as you’ve been discipled in your local church?
NOTES & QUOTES
Discipleship is important in the local church because the local church is important to Christ. The local church is important to Christ because the whole Church is important to him. The Church is his bride, his body.
We are his treasured possession, and this has been his plan from the beginning. And if you grasp that as a believer, you really understand what the Bride of Christ means to him. It will show itself in your commitment and your participation in a local church. So that's what I wanna make clear to people is I think we often pull apart, I used to do this all the time. I would see my Christian life as a buffet of things like.
I am individualizing a custom plan so that I can grow, and I made faith about me at the end of the day. Wanting to grow is not bad, but when you look at the big picture plan that God had from the beginning, we see it in Exodus 19, all the way until 1 Peter–the realization of that plan is that priesthood and holy nation and treasured possession are the blood-bought people of God.
Discipleship in the local church is so important because this is how the great commission is fulfilled. So it's in the context of the local church that disciples are made. And that's not by, you know, you, that's not your idea or my idea. That's the idea and the design laid out by the great architect himself, God.
All the what's come with a why. And when you read Ephesians, you see a lot of times the why we do discipling. So Ephesians 4 is such a great chapter to look at because it has a lot of what's, like how to reflect the gospel in our life. But then it gives you a lot of the why.
Yeah, do you have anyone to disciple me? Because I've never had anybody disciple me. And without any hesitation, he said, you know, we don't have, no, I specifically asked for an older woman. I said, I never really had an older woman disciple me. And he immediately kind of turned it on its head and said, well, we don't have a ton of older women here, but if you stay and you grow, you can be one of those women.
What I did not realize is that he planted an acorn, and that acorn became an oak tree in my life because that has now set the trajectory for how I've thought about life for the last 20-something years.
“Lord, help me become the kind of older woman who has been such a help to me.”
Discipling is a big part of the engine of the local church. And oftentimes, we think that the staff and the leaders of the church are the engine, but it's actually the congregation doing this work of discipling that is the engine of the local church that fulfills that command from God to both proclaim and protect the gospel.
We are the ones who've been called to this work, not just the leaders of the church. And so, a great way to start is to pray. Just pray, Lord, if you have someone here for me who could disciple me, then provide. I've seen him provide greatly. But also pray, Lord, open my eyes to the church's needs and soften my heart so that I'd be willing to stand in the gap and be there to point others to you. That's what discipling ultimately is–pointing people to Jesus. It is not pointing people to ourselves. Maybe that's the first barrier that we need to get over, “I'm not prepared,” but you know who is, Jesus is.
Prayer is a great place to start and then some kind of small way of taking initiative.
It's just a simple call to disciple. That's how we change the world is by teaching each other, reminding each other that we follow Christ and we observe all that he commanded.
Be the older woman that you yearn for.
If there are other women in your local church, that's a great place to start. Finding a way to regularly enfold them into your life so that you can both do spiritual good to one another is not a loss. It is not a loss. It may not be your ideal, but if you do have that, that's still God's gift to you.
The discipling goal is to fulfill the great commission. And so we've got to have an eye towards upward and outward, right? This is about proclaiming Christ and living lives that reflect the gospel, lives that match the message that we proclaim.
Karen Ellis says, “We’ve got to have our do match our say.”
You know what I marvel at is you and I are sitting here because a whole bunch of people were faithful to this command. At the start of the church, all the way for thousands of years, we're sitting on the shoulders of giants, and we're sitting on the faithfulness of so many believers who took these commands seriously and then were faithful with it, with the Holy Spirit's help.
I think that really effective discipleship is discipleship that is modeled after the way that Jesus lived his life.
SCRIPTURE REFERENCES
Exodus 19, 1 Peter, Matthew 28, Titus 2:3-5, Ephesians 4
RESOURCES
Titus: Displaying the Gospel of Grace by Hunter Beless and Courtney Doctor
Discipling: How to Help Others Follow Jesus by Mark Dever
Growing Together: Taking Mentorship Beyond Small Talk and Prayer Requests by Melissa Kruger
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
What could you do to help your church create or maintain a culture of discipleship?
What are some specific ways you can “be the older woman that you yearn for”?
What are some specific opportunities you might be able to use to disciple others in your local church?
Do you have a “good story” of discipleship in the local church?
In what ways are you “eating the fruit” of someone else’s faithfulness?
What might you do or implement based on what you learned in this week’s episode?
RECENT CONVERSATIONS
IMPORTANT NOTE
Journeywomen interviews are intended to serve as a springboard for continued study in the context of your local church. While we carefully select guests each week, interviews do not imply Journeywomen's endorsement of all writings and positions of the interviewee or any other resources mentioned.
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