A Note from Michael Gossett | September 25, 2026

A Healthy Church:

A Church That Makes Disciples

My grandfather was an incredible man and I loved spending time with him. Every time my parents told us we were going to visit them, I would be so excited. Their house was nothing special. It was a 1,100-square-foot home on the south side of Atlanta in Riverdale, Georgia. The only reason the house even reached that size was that they converted their single-car garage into a den. I loved that house because I loved who lived there. My pawpaw would take me outside and show me how to shoot a Red Ryder BB gun, how to use a pocket knife (that I also cut myself with), and why squirrels were an acceptable target to shoot at. There are many memories that I have with him, but one I remember in particular in 1998. He told me, “There is nothing more important in life than loving the Lord and loving your wife.” I don’t know why I remember this moment in particular, but it would be one of the last conversations I had with him. Our visits became less active and he went to be with his Lord later that summer. 

Even though that was almost 30 years ago, I can look back and see how my grandfather made an impact in my life and many others. He was a motorcycle cop in Atlanta until he retired and was a part-time reverend. He raised my dad in church, who taught me to love the Lord and how to serve in the church. My dad still serves in the church today. This is how generational impact happens. That is how the Christian faith was always meant to travel, and it is exactly what Paul is guarding when he writes to a young pastor named Timothy. 

2 Timothy 2:1-2 says, “You, therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. What you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, commit to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.”

Inside these two verses Paul hands us the entire engine of how a healthy church keeps going long after our generation. He tells us where the strength comes from, what we have been given, whom we hand it to, and where the whole church is headed. 

Strength From Grace

Timothy is a young man pastoring in a hard city, the assignment in front of him seems to be too difficult, and Paul knows exactly how a man will try to shoulder a load like that. He grits his teeth and reaches down inside himself for a little more willpower. But Paul has a simpler solution rather than Timothy just beating his head against a wall. The strength for this work was never down inside Timothy. Paul points him outside of himself, up to the grace that is in Christ Jesus, and tells him to go there and be filled. We must understand this before we take one more step into disciple-making. Every ounce of energy you will ever have for pouring your life into another person comes to you as a gift from Christ. We give out of what we have first received from Him. A branch bears its fruit by staying joined to the vine, and the moment we forget that, disciple-making curdles into one more exhausting religious project we run on fumes. Be strong in the grace. The Lord makes this clear in John 15. We are the branches and He (Jesus) is the vine. We simply bear the fruit of the vine that is within us. This means that discipleship cannot be separated from our own connection to Christ Himself. 

This is why we say all the time in our church, we are called to Connect to Christ and His church, so that we may Grow in the likeness of Christ, and Multiply for His purpose. We never graduate from Connecting to Jesus and His church. This is the foundation by which we grow and multiply for Christ. Without being connected to Christ, we are relying on a strength that will not complete the task that God has given us. But this connection to Christ will grow and not remain silent. The Spirit of God is working within us, to move toward others.

Pass It On 

“What you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses.” Stop there a moment. Timothy did not invent his own message. He received it. He heard it from Paul, out in the open, in front of many witnesses, the same gospel and the same sound teaching that had been handed to Paul before him. Now that deposit belongs to Timothy to carry. A chapter earlier, Paul had charged him to guard the good deposit through the Holy Spirit who lives in us. 

Church, we have been handed something, too. If you belong to Jesus, it is because somebody passed the faith to you. A parent, a grandparent, a friend, a coach, a teacher, a preacher, somebody who cared enough to put into your hands what had first been put into theirs. What was handed to us was always meant to keep moving. It is a deposit meant to be invested and handed on to the next set of hands. 

Entrust It to Faithful People 

Now watch what Paul tells Timothy to do with it. “Commit to faithful men.” The word he chooses means to entrust. It is the way you hand something precious to someone you know will keep it safe. Paul uses specific words to describe the type of people that we should entrust this deposit to. Paul says they should be faithful and reliable. The kind of people who show up, who keep their word, who can be counted on across the long haul. Gifting is a wonderful thing, and Paul reaches right past it for something steadier. 

This is how Jesus himself worked. A. B. Bruce, studying the way our Lord trained the Twelve, observed that Jesus poured the bulk of three short years into a small handful of unremarkable men, and through those few he reached the world. Richard Baxter, pastoring the town of Kidderminster, would not settle for preaching at his people from the safe distance of a pulpit. He went house to house and sat down with families one at a time to teach them the faith personally, and that little English town was turned upside down. Disciple-making has always been slow, unglamorous, up-close work. It looks like a few names, an open Bible, a kitchen table, and a long string of ordinary Tuesdays. 

It is this kind of investment that will cost you more than just handing off information. When Paul described his own ministry to the Thessalonians, he told them he had shared with them not only the gospel of Christ but his very own life, because they had grown dear to him. That is the shape of real discipleship. A younger believer needs to see your actual life up close, your prayers and your failures and your plain daily walk with Jesus, near enough that the faith rubs off the way my grandfather's faith rubbed off on me.

Who Will Teach Others Also 

Here is the phrase that changes everything. Paul does not stop at faithful men who will keep the faith safe. He says faithful men “who will be able to teach others also.” Read that last phrase slowly, because a whole strategy for the church is folded up inside it. Count the generations in this one verse. Paul taught Timothy. Timothy is to commit it to faithful men. Those faithful men will teach others also. That is four generations of Christians in a single sentence, and the chain is built to keep running long after every name in it has been forgotten. 

Church, this is where addition becomes multiplication. A church can gather a big crowd that leans on one preacher, and it will only ever add a soul at a time. A church that raises up ordinary saints who then raise up others begins to multiply, the gospel traveling from elbow to elbow, generation after generation. Calvin understood this in Geneva. He built a school to train young men and sent them out by the hundreds into France and beyond, many of them walking straight into danger, and through that incredible work of multiplication, a whole continent was changed. The candle that lit your soul was lit from another candle, and it is now your turn to light the next one. 

So carry the whole of it home with you. The strength comes from grace. The message was handed to you, you entrust it to faithful people, and you look for the ones who will be able to hand it on again. This was the last thing Jesus said to his church before he ascended, to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them and teaching them to obey everything he had commanded. Paul is simply showing his son in the faith how that command actually gets carried out, one faithful life poured into another. 

Somewhere in your life is a younger believer God is asking you to take by the elbow. You do not need a seminary degree or a platform to do it. You need what Paul asked of Timothy, grace to draw from, a gospel to give away, and the plain faithfulness to keep showing up. So let me ask you the question this whole passage is asking. Who is your Timothy? Who is your one?

This coming Sunday we move into Luke 16:14-18, and the title is, “Kingdom Authority.” Luke tells us the Pharisees were lovers of money, and they were standing off to the side scoffing at Jesus. He turns and exposes the game they were playing, dressing themselves up to look righteous in front of people while God was reading their hearts the whole time. Then, Jesus presses further into their hearts, and prayerfully into ours as well this Sunday.

Come Sunday ready to let Jesus be Lord over the corners of your life you usually keep for yourself. I will see you Sunday at 9:30 or 11:00. 

You are loved and prayed for!

Michael Gossett