When the church teaches about baptism, one of the things it often says is that baptism is the first step of discipleship.

I frequently taught this myself, but in recent years have come to discover that this is not exactly true.

When does Discipleship Begin?

Discipleship, I believe, begins the moment we are born, when Jesus, through the work of the Holy Spirit, begins us to draw us to Himself.

As we age, we learn about God, sin, righteousness, and judgment in a myriad of different ways. We learn about these through nature, our conscience, and if we have access to it, through the Bible. All of this, strictly speaking, is discipleship, since we are learning about who we are and what God has done for us in Jesus Christ. Along the way, some of us hear specifically about Jesus, and are persuaded to believe in Him for eternal life. Following this, we continue down the path of discipleship until we die. We discussed all this previously in the posts on evangelism.

In this way of thinking, discipleship is a life-long process; not something that begins once we believe.

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This is the final post in the series on tithing.

I decided I would close it out with some further resources to help you learn how to “tithe” from your income in the ways that have been suggested in this series…. that is, by personally helping people in need.

I mention a few books below, and I am giving away one of them away for free to someone on the newsletter list. I meant to have my next free ebook out by now, but since it is not ready, I will enter all newsletter subscribers into a drawing for a free copy of 101 Ways to Help People in Need by Steve and Janie Sjogren. I will select the winner of the book on Tuesday, so subscribe today!

Helpful resources for loving others

At the top of the list are some blog posts by Sam Riviera at GraceGround.com. He has written a helpful and insightful series of blogs posts on “Getting to Know Your Neighbor” and another series on “Being the Church in the Community” which are full of practical suggestions on developing relationships with people in your neighborhood, and looking for tangible ways to love and serve them. I cannot recommend these blog posts enough.

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When there is a need with millions of people involved, there are only two choices.

First, an organization can be formed which raises millions of dollars and throws money at the faceless masses, hoping against hope that some of it “sticks” and a few people are helped. The second option is that millions of people can go out and develop loving relationships with these millions of people with needs, so that love and service is partnered with financial assistance and education, when and where it is needed.

In the first instance, all that is usually accomplished is the mass of needy people become a mass of dependent people. Nothing really changes in their lifestyle or outlook. Millions of dollars cannot be managed properly to meet individual needs, or to provide any long term solutions. It is impossible.

In the second instance, where individual relationships are developed in the process of helping individual needs, the mass of needy people are transformed through loving personal relationships, in which they are coached and trained to make any necessary changes in their life, or just provided with the means, resources, and personal accountability to climb up to the next step. And in return, the people who serve and help others gain a sense of satisfaction, significance, and joy, because they have done something more with their lives than sign their name on a check.
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At the center of God’s Kingdom are relationships.

Relationships are the focus of His plan for accomplishing His purposes on earth. One of the greatest downfalls of the modern church era is the movement away from genuine relationships, and into the corporate model of the church where we think the most important thing is to increase our market share, and expand our influence through size, numbers, and a year-over-year increase in attendance and giving.

I would not be too surprised to see the day when a church has an IPO and begins selling stock to investors.

Robert Farrar Capon says it best when he concludes his analysis of the corporate church model by saying this: “The corporate model is, hands down, the worst thing that ever happened to the church.”

Yet we have adopted the corporate model because we think big churches can do everything better. We feel that big problems require big answers and big bank accounts to offer big solutions. And to get the big bank accounts, we need big donors, so we can pool lots of money to make the biggest difference in a big world of big needs.

Bigger is not always better

But as more and more churches are beginning to understand, this “big is better” approach does not work. At least, not for God’s way of doing things.

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