Succession Planning (Lent 3-2019)

Jesus knew that heading to Jerusalem meant heading to His death. He knew it was going to be hard on His disciples and that they’d feel lost without Him. They must be prepared! Of course, He’d been talking about this very thing for a while now, but those “simply humans” couldn’t understand right now. He knew that.

But He loved His disciples and therefore, wanted to use every moment that remained to train the disciples to lead after He had returned to His Father and to lead to the next generations. There was much work to do and initially there would be very few to do it. That few would be decreased dramatically before there would be an infusion of many more.

Jesus endeavored always to train them up, send them out, bring them back and do a debrief. That way He could train them in an ongoing way, overcome any problems that arose, and answer any questions they had. He knew that ministry can be confusing and it’s good to have friends. It gets lonely and it can be dangerous, so He sent them out in pairs.

Luke 10:1 After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them two by two ahead of him to every town and place where he was about to go. 2 He told them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field. 3 Go! I am sending you out like lambs among wolves. 4 Do not take a purse or bag or sandals; and do not greet anyone on the road.

Their welcome would be every bit as risky and uncertain as was His own. Some would embrace the message His disciples brought, but others would reject them and become unworthy of peace they came to bring. Peace that was painful—as peace often is–and would be bought with a price, a price so high that no man who is simply human could ever afford to pay.

Think about it:

Why is it important to have succession planning for a mission that spans longer than any worker’s season?
In what way does this make mankind more dependent upon God?
If every task could be accomplished by one able-bodied person, would God even be necessary for the work to happen?

Father God, we thank You that Your plan of redemption is taking centuries to accomplish. We thank You that in Your wisdom, You chose to save many generations and not just a few. We thank You that we are building upon the faithfulness of generations of evangelists from 2000 years ago and beyond! We thank You, Lord Jesus for not leaving us alone, but for asking the Father to send the Holy Spirit, this beautiful gift of Yourself to lead us and guide us after You left the earth! We praise You that the Holy Spirit can indwell many believers simultaneously and so multiply Your fruit upon this earth. May the words of our mouths bring glory to You and salt to the earth. Be glorified in us today! Amen!

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Lent 2013 looked at The Letter to the Romans: Paul’s Masterpiece to reclaim foundations of our Christian heritage and began February 13, 2013.
A very special and ever popular offering was Lent 2014’s Be Still and Know that I AM God which can be obtained through the archives beginning in March 2014.
Lent 2015 began on February 18, 2015 with a series entitled With Christ in the Upper Room: Final Preparations. We explored what is often called “The Upper Room Discourse” found in John chapters 13-17.
ReKindle, the Lent 2016 series, began on February 10, 2016 and encouraged us to rekindle our spiritual lives.
Light: There’s Nothing Like It was the 2017 Lent series and explored this metaphor often used to portray Christ. It is archived beginning March 1, 2017.
Lent 2018, we explored the questions of Pi and Chi (the Greek letter beginning the word Christos, which means Christ, Messiah, the Anointed One). We asked and answered the questions “Why?” from the movie Life of Pi as we discovered the uniqueness of Jesus Christ in a world of many faiths.