WANG CHUNG Everybody have fun tonight

On the edge of oblivion
All the world is Babylon
And all the love and everyone
A ship of fools sailing on
—Wang Chung, 1986

They were a New Wave group. As usual, Christianity is twenty years behind philosophy, the arts and popular culture, because we need a "new wave" now.

How do I know? We fail at praxis.

Praxis is the act of translating an idea into action. It is theory put into practice. It is the mojo in your Sensei's dojo. Wait. You missed that. It is translating the kata (formal exercises) into kime (an explosive attack). For the Christian, it is turning orthodoxy (right belief) into orthopraxy (practical service). I detest the word "suck,” but we suck at that.

So let me give you something you can pray about. A week from today a group of twenty people will be in Philadelphia. We will meet at the church pastored by Herbert Lusk II.

Talk about praxis! Rev. Lusk played for the Eagles and was known as "The Praying Tailback." He gave up pro football, left the NFL for the ministry, and took a struggling inner city church in 1982. They have gone from 17 members to ministering to over 2,000 people every Sunday.

Anyway, pray. Because next weekend we will do a discipleship conference for his leaders. First he said 70. Now it's over 200.

This is a big deal. Our discipleship conferences are not about imparting information. They are about transferring life. That's praxis.

I can see you don't get this, so let me break it down. When Jesus met with his homeboys for three and a half years, he took them through seven stages.(1) But discipleship is not about a program. Remember: praxis. So what we did was to boil those seven stages down into four biblical goals. Then we connected those goals to sixteen basic lessons about the faith. But it's not about a curriculum. Remember: praxis. So what we do in a conference is teach interested believers at other churches how we use those lessons to accomplish the four goals of discipleship in the life of someone else. That's praxis, because it means that every believer becomes a minister.

Whoa! That's not your daddy's Oldsmopile. They don't have to go to seminary. They don't even have to wear a tie or walk in front of a pulpit. And yet they fuse the only two eternal elements in this planet’s periodic table: the word of God and the souls of people. They put one into the other with the goal of causing kime. And when you get down to it, this is the key element in fulfilling the Great Commission (Matt 28:18-20).

How'd we miss that, all these years? Okay, four biblical goals that will take you from belief to behavior, doctrine to duty, orthodoxy to orthopraxy.
The Biblical Philosophy of Discipleship
Get established in
1. The Word of God
2. The fellowship of believers
3. The structure of the church
4. Ministry with us

I'm going to stop there with the instruction, because you've already lost your compassion.

Pastor Herb Lusk does not measure the success of his ministry by how many members he has under his ministry, but by how many people his ministry serves. He founded People for People Inc. (PFP) in 1989 as the community development arm of Greater Exodus Baptist Church. In 2000 they developed a credit union. In 2001 they started a Charter School. Today they operate one of the most successful job skills training programs in the city. Pray for this church.
www.gebch.com/
Pray for our team and the weekend discipleship conference. Pray for me as I preach there on Sunday.

Let's start New Wave Christianity. It's not just talk; it's truth. So don't just talk about it—be about it!


1. Wilson, Carl. With Christ in the School of Disciple Building. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1978).