Transcript
Ben Fallon: In today’s episode of Ask Paul Tripp, just like last episode, we’re going to feature three more archived answers from Paul. These three have a common thread of church and discipleship. The first question is, “What’s the point of going to church?”
Paul Tripp: The first question is, “What’s the point of going to church?” Paul Tripp: Well, I can tell you for sure, Paul Tripp loves Sunday morning. I love the anticipation of that drive to Epiphany Fellowship in the northern part of the center of Philadelphia. I love what I’m going to get there and I love it because I know I need it. I need two things that are so important, such an important part of corporate worship. I need to be taught again and again and again. I need the biblical story applied to my story, so I live with a God-story mentality.
Now, I need more than just abstract teaching. What I love about the teaching in the church is I’m taught by a pastor who is with us, who walks long-term with us, who knows us, who can speak those truths with a specificity to people that he knows and he loves. And there’s a tenderness and compassion and a passion for us to get that because he lives with us. I don’t think anything replaces pastoral preaching. Books don’t replace that. The internet doesn’t replace that. Conferences [don’t] replace that. I know I’m loved by him. He speaks out of that love. We are known to him and that pastoral preaching is a beautiful thing.
I need corporate worship. I need to be reminded of the truths of the gospel in that worship. But I need something else. I need to hear my brothers and sisters sing the gospel into my ears. I need my dull heart awakened by their voices again. There are times in corporate singing where tears will fill my eyes because I hear my brothers and sisters singing those truths that are my life. Truths that I can be distracted by and forget I’m like everybody else. I drag into Sunday morning service, all the cares and frustrations and trials of life. I have an easily distracted and forgetful heart. I can be identity-amnesiac.
It’s a beautiful thing to hear brothers and sisters sing truth into my ears and to watch my heart get awakened once again. You need corporate worship. You need pastoral preaching. You need corporate singing. You need that and those are things you’ll never get by yourself. Those are elements of what God has designed his church. You should be there on Sunday morning and you should be there again and again and again. You need it and so do I.
BF: In addition to corporate worship on a Sunday, most churches offer small groups— or men’s or women’s bible studies. This question relates to those: should I join a small group? Here’s Paul’s answer:
PT: I think the reason small groups are important is although corporate is terribly important, it doesn’t provide for me everything I need as a child of God on my pilgrimage. That journey between the “already” of my conversion and the “not yet” of my home-going, that journey is through a deeply fallen world that does not operate the way God intended. And that journey is me still struggling with the remaining presence of sin.
Here’s the function of the small group. I have come to understand and I believe that scripture clearly teaches that my walk with God is a community project. I need hands on me and one of the clear reasons I need that is the dynamic of spiritual blindness. Sin blinds and guess who it blinds first? I have no trouble seeing the sin of my wife, my kids and my children, but I can be surprised when mine is pointed out.
And so, as long as sin lives inside of me, there will be pockets of spiritual blindness. I would like to think that no one knows me better than I know myself, but that’s a delusion because there are inaccuracies in the way I view myself, so I need a company of people that I hang with regularly that get to know me. They get to know my strengths and weaknesses and who know the themes of my struggle, that hear things about my marriage and my parenting or whatever, where the application of the word of God, the ministry of the word of God becomes even more personal, more intimate.
I love Colossians 3:12-17. It talks about the body of Christ and it says, “15 Let the peace of Christ rule your hearts.” That’s people who are getting their identity vertically and not horizontally. “16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.” That means you’re a student of the word of God. Now, listen to this. “So that you can teach and admonish one another.”
This is not written to pastors. This is written to the whole body of Christ. Teaching means, “I need people who will help me think about life biblically in places where I’m not.” Admonishment means, “I need people to help me to see myself with biblical accuracy, so change would take place.” And so, the purpose of the small group is that that more personal teaching and admonishing that is meant to be the function of the body of Christ would take place.
I have those people in my life that have been near me and have heard me and seen me operate, who can now speak with greater wisdom into me. That’s a gift. That’s a blessing. That deeper intimacy, you will not find in the larger gathering of the church. I think that gathering is terribly important and I’ve said that already, but I think you could go there and be virtually unknown. The small group is where the church is shrunk and continues to do in a more personal, intimate way the things that the church is meant to do because every one of us, for all of us, our walk with God is a community project.
BF: And lastly, after addressing corporate worship and small group discipleship, Paul answered the question, Should I find a mentor? Here’s his answer:
PT: So I want to put this question of one-to-one discipleship in its big context. So on Sunday morning, in the gathered worship of the church and in preaching, we experience the formative discipline of the church that so together, we’re all formed with the same theological gospel worldview foundation. That’s getting us all on the same theological gospel tracks.
In the small group and in one on one discipleship, you have the corrective discipline of the church. Now, here’s what happens. In the small group and in individual discipleship, you have that formative foundation, now applied in correcting ways to my individual life. We do that together with the small group. That gets a little more intimate. It’s a little more personal and correction takes place there.
But the most intimate of those is the one on one, where it’s a person with a person. This person now is getting to know me, getting to know me at heart level, seeing the gaps of my understanding of the things of God and the inconsistency of my living. In its most powerful, that one on one discipleship is able to identify the contradiction between my confessional theology and my functional theology. That’s what discipleship is about, so that I would function in the way that is consistent with what I say I actually believe. I’m learning how to live as a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Now, you can’t argue that I need one of these in my life. That, “Man, if I’m just faithful on Sunday, I’ve got it nailed,” because each one of these contributes an element that is needed in the life of every believer. We all need that formative foundation. We all need corrective and protecting relationships. And we all need discipleship, which brings our living into more consistent commonality with our theology.
All those are God’s gifts to us. All those are necessary and all of those together are needed to contribute to a life of long-tern spiritual health and fruitfulness.
BF: Paul said in the opening line of his first answer, “Well, I can tell you for sure, Paul Tripp loves Sunday morning!” So much so that he wrote a year-long devotional about it. It’s called Sunday Matters: 52 Devotionals to Prepare Your Heart for Church and you can find that at PaulTrpp.com/Sunday. Now, if you want to learn more about discipleship and mentorship, or as Paul referred to it in his answer, “corrective discipline,” we have an entire teaching series on that subject. It’s called Your Walk with God is a Community Project. You can find that resource in the video series on PaulTripp.com/Store.
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