The Tree Trimmers

The Thursday before Easter Weekend a crew of tree-trimmers arrived on our compound to take down two trees and to trim eight others. Most of the trees were not difficult but there was one tree that presented a challenge for them. The tree had been left for a long time without being trimmed. It had grown very tall and big at the top.


Tree-trimmers here don't have all the modern equipment we find used back home. Here all they have is a chain saw, machetes and ropes. Most of the limbs are chopped off by the machetes. When I was home I could hardly stand to watch as they would climb high up the tree and start cutting the limbs off (sometimes very big ones). See the challenging tree? Needless to say our yard looked like a jungle for a while. But because people use wood here for cooking, our workers on the compound will make good use of it and it will quickly disappear from our compound.


Trimming of these trees reminded me of how we grow as Christians. God sometimes has to come along and do some trimming on us. It is easy to have some things grow as part of our lives that aren't pleasing to God. John 15:1&2 says "I am the true vine and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful." Even though pruning is hard we should want God to prune us because of our desire to bear more fruit for his glory. Here are some of the piles of wood that were trimmed off of the trees. These reminded me of how many things the Lord has trimmed from my life and that there is still more trimming needed.


As the trimming was finished we were thankful that no one was injured and that the work was accomplished. We are looking forward to the trees growing back to be even more beautiful than they were before.

PRODUCING DISCIPLERS

The men in the pictures are pastors that I have been helping to become producers of reproducers (disciplers).

This is the goal of The ECWA Discipleship Ministry Team for the people we meet with each week. The reason we focus on this is that we believe that a true disciple isn't one that just learns to love God but he also learns to love his neighbor, just as Jesus spoke about in Matt. 22:37-40. Loving your neighbor involves sharing the gospel with unbelievers and helping believers to become disciplers also. If we only emphasize the verticle relationship with God without the horizontal relationship with our neighbor, I think Jesus would say we are leaving something out. This is the essence of what Jesus said to the lawyer, when He was asked, "what is the greatest commandment"?

This is why in churches around the world Christians are not bearing the fruit that God desires for them to bear. How are things in your church? We certainly see this in the church in Nigeria. Because of this churches spiritually are many miles wide but only an inch deep. They are filled each Sunday with babes in Christ but not true disciples.

It is the desire of the ECWA Discipleship Ministry Unit to see this change. The key is to teach people what it means to be a true disciple of Jesus. Jesus said in John 15:8 "This is to my Father's glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples." A true disciple will be fruitful in his own spiritual life and in the lives of others as he helps them learn how to follow Jesus.

How long does it take to produce disciples who reproduce disciplers? It is not something that will be accomplised in a few months or by a one week long conference, as is often thought. But rather it takes one or more years of discipling and equipping someone so they can reach that point of being an effective discipler. It involves establishing a close interpersonal relationship with them.

Here is an example of what I am talking about. In the mid 90s I spent four years discipling a young man. During that time he began to disciple others. Today he is pastoring a church of about 800 people and he is producing disciplers who in turn are busy discipling others in their church.

Maybe you've been reading this and wondering if you are a true disciple. If not, maybe you can find a discipler (your pastor or a mature believer) and ask them to disciple you. Make sure it is someone you see making disciples.

Any comment or interaction will be most welcomed.

ECWA Church District Discipleship Conference

March 1-3, 2007 three of the discipleship ministry staff went to a city about one and a half hours from Jos for a discipleship conference with the district's pastors and elders. About 60 people attended. We had to divide up into three groups. One was for a Hausa language group, one was for an English group and the other one were people who had already done Equipping The Saints (ETS) Book One-A. This group did ETS One-B. Each of us had to teach about seven hours a day. The Lord gave us some rather cooler weather than normal, which was a blessing, and a nice place to sleep.

The exciting thing resulting from the conference, besides seeing their eyes begin to open up to how the Lord can use them to make disciples in their local churches better, was seeing their desire for us to come back monthly to meet with them and carry them on for further training. So every first Monday of the month, we are going to travel there and back. We will have about 3 hours with them. This hopefully will encourage them to follow through with what we taught them and we can keep doing more training and mentoring with them. Please pray for this to bear the fruit that the Lord desires.