Trevin Wax provides four reasons to connect the dots of the Bible’s larger storyline.
- To gain a biblical worldview
- To recognize and reject false worldviews
- To rightly understand the gospel
- To keep our focus on Christ
Without a vision the people parish. 1 Corithians 14:8 “Again, if the trumpet does not sound a clear call, who will get ready for battle?”
Connecting multiple points is essential for making the right trajectory. It’s not enough to know what you’re aiming at. To hit you must put in proper sight the medium that will achieve your goal. The same is true connecting the dots in the Bible’s storyline. Without doing it, we run the risk of missing the target the Bible has laid out for us. We may think we know what the kingdom of God is because we have a general idea of what a kingdom is in our culture. But is the Kingdom the bible sets forth in its pages. Connecting the dots becomes the means to make sure we are going with it rather than getting blown off course.
A number of years ago I read Bill Hull’s book, The Disciple-making Pastor. He was the first to introduce me to the importance of the Bible’s larger storyline.
To many pastors have a microtheoloyg of the church. They understand the church in bits and pieces. Because they ahve not pieced together the larger picture, their goals and programs are short-term and shortsighted. In a 1981 speech at the University of Illinois, Dr. Francis Schaeffer lamented concerning the micromanaging of the Christian faith, “Christians have understood the turth of Christinity in bits and pieces.”
The local church piece, the personal salvation peice, the social action piece, the cross, discipleship, evangelism, the famil, the gits of the Spirit are like parts of a puzzle strewn about in our minds. So few Christians have the big picture as to God’s objective. Jus as Christian commit themselves to pieces of the puzzle rather than the big picture, pastors fall into the same trap.
Pastors need to concentrate on specific areas of their giftedness and calling. But in order to take the church to full maturity in iminstry and mission, they must also communicate the big picture. The failure to understand and place the church into the larger drdemptive drama has made the church less than it was meant to be.
Without the larger picture, pastors think of the church existing for itself. The church becomes an idol. Commit yourself to it, build it up, make it the focal point of the Christian experience. The focus is the ministry of the church to the church. Such pastors achieve success when the church populace is satisfied, their felt needs met, and they enjoy a good reputation with other churches..
This is an indictment as to the limitaitons of the local church thinkiers. Dedication to the church itself is not enough. Whether we make it the development of a model ministry, disciple making at the heart of the curch, the Great Commision, or church planting around the world, none of these by themselves is big enough. What is? I will now propose the larger philsophical gridwork that the dsicple-making pastor uses to filter his thinking and focus his work.
Jesus employed four majory hooks onto which we could hang the big picture. They are the essentials for building convitions in disciples. For the disciple-making pastor, Jesus modled how to motivate and teach people by the use of the larger objective.
Jesus provided His followers with an objective that would require all they had for as long as they had. But even then they would not have reached the finish line. His larger objective would require the repeated passing of the baton from generation to generation the four hooks are:
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The kingdom is the model
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The cross is the means
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The commission is the method
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The coming is the motive
1. The Kingdom is the Mission
2. Christ is the Means
3. The Cross is the Moment
4. The Cross is the Model
5. The Church is the Movement
6. The Commission is the Method
7. The Coming is the Motive
