“And Jesus came and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.’” (Matt. 28:18-20)

From beginning to end, the Gospel of Matthew is all about Jesus’ identity and authority as the true king of heaven and earth. He proves this preeminently through his death and resurrection. But he applies his authority by commanding us to go into the world and make disciples all nations. These are our marching orders as his church—to help people turn away from sin and follow Christ.

Anytime we help someone meet Jesus or grow as a follower of Christ, we are making disciples. Anytime God’s people open his Word together, pray together, and share life in and around his gospel, we are making disciples. From gathered worship to small groups to one-on-one relationships—at every level and in each relational context, where the gospel of Jesus is brought to bear on people’s lives in a transformational way, we are making disciples.

Each level of relationship is an important part of the disciple-making process. But too often the most critical level is the most absent in the church—life-on-life discipleship. It’s simply too easy for most of us to hang out at the surface in large and small group contexts, always learning but not always applying. There’s something powerful that happens when we seek Christ together in the context of friendship and spiritual mentorship. In fact, if disciple-making isn’t happening at this most basic level—one life investing spiritually in the life of another—it’s probably not happening at other relational levels either.

Part of our vision at Westgate is to cultivate a pervasive culture of life-on-life discipleship aimed at fostering maturity, equipping for gospel service, and passing the faith on to the next generation (2 Tim. 2:1-2; 3:10-17). We believe this vision for spiritual multiplication is critical to our overall vision to be a gospel-centered community living each day on mission for Christ. Without a consistent practice of intentional disciple-making, we will only ever be scratching the surface of spiritual maturity or missional activity. We need to be changed by the gospel, even as we help others be changed by the gospel. Investing personally in each other through the Word, prayer, and intentional mentoring is vital for this to happen.

For these reasons, we’re excited to provide special training and mentoring in personal disciple-making during 2015. There are five specific offerings we’re looking forward to in this regard.

First we are inviting the congregation to gather on the last Sunday evening of each month to pray for our mission. We have a role in making disciples—planting and watering—but God is the one who causes the growth (1 Cor. 3:7). We need to be praying faithfully, consistently, and expectantly for God to bear fruit for his gospel in and through us. These prayer times will not be focused on praying for our own needs or problems (those are important and we want to keep praying for them in other venues). But these prayer times will focus explicitly on our mission as a church—praying for the lost; praying for opportunities to love, serve, and share; praying for revival here in the MetroWest. Because mission and discipleship are ultimately God’s work, we must begin with prayer.

The second offering is our 2015 preaching series, “The Gospel for All of Life.” The gospel, or good news of Jesus, is not only what saves us; it’s also what changes us. As we seek both to follow Christ and help others follow Christ, our greatest need is for the gospel to impact every part of our lives. So instead of working through one specific book of the Bible this year, which is our normal course, we’ll be looking at many different passages in order to explore and apply the practical realities of the gospel to everyday life—the gospel in me, in the church, at home, at school, at work, in the public square, and to the ends of the earth.

The third opportunity is Discipleship Coaching with Pastor Brandon and Pastor Bruce. We don’t just want to talk about disciple-making, we want to help you do it by doing it with you. Starting in early 2015, we will be forming triads (or groups of three) that meet biweekly to help you grow as a disciple and equip you to make disciples, as you learn how to invest spiritually in others for the sake of the gospel.

The fourth offering is our 2015 Life on Mission Conference on March 20-22, which will focus on the theme of spiritual multiplication. We have two great speakers, both of whom have a passion for seeing churches grow and flourish in intentional disciple-making: Bland Mason will join us again from City on a Hill Church in Boston/Brookline, along with Godwin Sathianathan from South Shore Baptist Church in Hingham.

Finally, Mark Bauer will be teaching a class during our C.E. hour called, “The Characteristics of Christian Discipleship.” The aim of the class will be to help build a radical discipleship among us through a framework of visible characteristics that include Christlikeness, nonconformity, maturity, simplicity, balance, and others traits. The course is based upon John Stott’s The Radical Disciple.

Of course these five opportunities are neither the only thing we’re excited about, nor the only thing happening in the name of disciple-making at Westgate. There are so many people hard at work, contributing through so many different ministries—from music to Christian education to outreach to prayer—and each one plays a special part. Our prayer is that everything about our lives, relationships, and ministries would flow out of and point back to the gospel of Jesus, and that God would be pleased to make his beautiful name known in and through us in the year ahead.

Please join us in that prayer, and consider how you might be a part of what God’s doing at Westgate in 2015.

Your servants for Christ’s sake,

Adam Anderson
Mark Bauer
Dave Brown
Bruce Daggett
C.J. Godfrey
Brandon Levering

Our preaching focus for the year ahead, the Gospel of Matthew, is already underway. If we are to live as a community centered on the gospel of Jesus and partnered together on mission for Jesus, it’s a good idea for us to take a close look at Jesus—who he is and what he died in his life, death, and resurrection to establish God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven, and what role he calls us to play in announcing and advancing his kingdom.

In Matthew 13 Jesus tells a number of parables about the kingdom of heaven. Here are two of them from vv. 31-33:

He told them another parable: "The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all your seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and perch in its branches."

He told them still another parable: "The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into a large amount of flour until it worked all through the dough."

I love those pictures. God takes something seemingly small and insignificant; he plants it deep in the soil, buries it deep in the dough, hides it away. You can’t see what it looks like or what it will become. It doesn’t happen over night—it follows God’s time, not ours. But if God is the one doing the work, that small seed grows into the largest plant in the garden; that little bit of leaven penetrates the whole loaf. God gives growth to his kingdom. Even when it feels like it’s been a long time since we’ve seen anything, or it seems like nothing’s ever going to happen; if it is God’s kingdom we are serving, and not our own, he will bear the fruit of changed lives. He will spread his glory and his rule in us and through us, as we cling to him. It requires faith, humility, and prayer. And it requires patience.

But patience is not the same as inactivity. The response is not to sit back and wait, but to charge forward for the sake of the gospel, giving everything we have. Jesus says later in ch. 16: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.” (16:24-25).

God must do the work to grow his kingdom and change hearts and lives; but he calls us to lay our lives down for the sake of his kingdom. To follow his pattern of self-giving love, taking up the cross and following him, that through our love and sacrifice and the declaration of the gospel of his grace, he might bear much fruit in and through us. And so we trust God with patience, yet we also press ahead toward the vision he’s given us—to be a gospel-centered church living each day on mission for Christ.

Looking Back

I’ve already highlighted for those in our congregation some of what God did in 2012 by way of a letter last December, but I want to give thanks again for some of the early progress we’ve seen in moving toward our vision, and for the effort, love, and sacrifice that so many have put into it.

• We updated our web and print communication with a new website and a new logo.
• The Taskforce on Student and Family Ministry brought forth several recommendations to help those ministries come into closer alignment with our vision. We’ve seen the fruit of some of that, including a new curriculum, a revitalized Junior high ministry, new leadership in our high school ministry this year.
• God provided Sarah Detweiler as our Director of Music Ministries and Drew Halberstadt as our Associate Director of Music Ministries.
• We’ve taken steps to improve our hospitality toward newcomers in our worship service and through greeters and updated info.

There is much to be thankful for, and many people to give thanks for.

Pressing Forward

And yet we press ahead, keeping the gospel at the center; embracing our identity in Christ as a family of worshipers, learners, servants, and missionaries; embracing our mission to make disciples for Christ by evangelizing non-believers, establishing new believers, and equipping growing believers to make more disciples of Christ; and by living out our vision amid the normal rhythms of life: celebration, listening, eating, blessing, working, resting, suffering.

One of my prayers for Westgate during 2013 is that God would move us to finally make a pivot in the direction of our ministry efforts. What I mean by that is this: my sense is that during the previous few years we have turned our gaze toward living on mission, toward ministering beyond these walls, while continuing for the most part to walk in the same direction as before (with most of our ministries focused inward). There are all sorts of reasons for that, including many things God needed to do in our hearts and relationships to prepare us for mission. But I believe it’s time for us to actually pivot our bodies and take the first few steps in this new direction, the direction of our vision—to be a gospel-centered community living each day on mission for Christ. That doesn’t mean we value community or discipleship less; it means that our community and discipleship will become more aligned with God’s purpose for them—to make much of God by making disciples of all nations.

I was personally very encouraged by the conversations we had as a church this past month. The feedback we received was extremely helpful, both for understanding where we’re at, but also what it will take to move forward. I learned a ton during that process, but some of the key things I learned is that:

• We want to do this—people want to be partnered in living on mission.
• We have lots of ideas for ministries; we don’t have a problem coming up with ideas.
• But we lack a simple and clear system for helping us move that direction.
• We’re still learning what it means to apply the gospel not just to a non-believer so they can come to faith, but to fellow Christians to help them grow in their faith.
• We want help learning how to do that—how to bring the gospel of Jesus to bear on all of life for all people.

Goals for Spring 2013

It’s in light of all of this that I want to trace (in general terms) what we see as some simple but very significant goals in helping us take steps in outward ministry this spring:

1. To provide one new outward-focused ministry at a congregation-wide level.

2. To provide one new outward-focused ministry at a smaller group level.

3. To begin identifying people who might serve as part of an outreach team (or perhaps ‘mission mobilization’ team) to help guide, resource, and mobilize our missional efforts.

The clear answer to our first goal is the Alpha Course that’s going to be launching next month. You’re going to be hearing more about Alpha tonight and over the next few weeks. It’s an outreach ministry that God has been using around the world, and it’s a simple yet strategic opportunity for us to step out at a congregation-wide level to reach people for Christ.

We’re still praying and discussing what shape the second goal will take. But we know we want to equip and mobilize people to share life together around the gospel on mission for the gospel at a smaller group level. That might mean forming some new expressions; it might mean repurposing some of our home fellowships. We’re looking for God to guide us in these things.

The third goal is something I’d like to see in place by the fall, but something we will be actively praying about and begin forming as the season moves forward.

Next Steps

What I want to ask of us as a congregation is this:

• Next Wednesday marks the beginning of the Lenten season, the 40 days leading up to Easter Sunday. We want to commit this season to prayer for God to bear the fruit of his gospel in and through us. If we do not ground our missional efforts in prayer, we’re wasting our time. God has to do the work. And so during Lent we want to seek him to do it.
  
  As a help, we’re using the prayer guide, Seek God for the City again this year, which helps us pray specifically for God to renew Christ’s life among his people, to bring the light of his gospel to many, to reveal Christ’s glory to all peoples, to establish righteousness in our cities, to bring his peace in relationships, and to welcome God’s transforming presence. We’d like to pray as a church through this guide. You can pick up a copy this Sunday, or download it as an app.
  
  
• Second, after Easter begins the season of Pentecost, the fifty days between Christ’s resurrection and the pouring out of the Holy Spirit on the church, when they went public with the Great Commission. We want to commit that season to embracing a gospel intentionality in our lives and relationships, and preparing to go public in new ways with the gospel come Pentecost Sunday, May 19. We’ll have more details to come, but as we launch our congregation-wide outward ministry during Lent, so I’d love to see us launch some new expressions of smaller group-based outward ministries at Pentecost. We’re seeking God to see what he will do.

This is an exciting season in the life of our church. A season for us to begin living in a fresh way Paul’s vision in Philippians 1:27: “Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel.”

May God be pleased to do it among us for the sake of his glory.

In Christ,
Pastor Brandon

As the New Year approaches, we want to take the time once again to praise God for what he has accomplished in the year behind us, as well as look with expectation for what we pray he will do in the year ahead.

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First of all, we want to stop and marvel at the grace of God revealed to us in the gospel. As we’ve seen this year in Matthew, Jesus Christ is the true King of heaven and earth. He is the one who has “all authority in heaven and on earth” (Matt. 28:18), who is making right all that is wrong in this world, who lovingly laid his life down on the cross to make us his own. And he calls his followers to announce to the world that there is only one King of heaven and earth, only one kingdom that will rule in the end, and that there is no greater treasure than being included in his kingdom, and no greater terror than to miss out.

Second, we want to give praise to God and say thank you to all of you for the countless hours of faithful service that have been offered through our various ministries this past year. God has blessed us with a loving, caring, generous, and sacrificial congregation. I couldn’t be more thrilled as a pastor.

Third, we want to give praise to God for the service that our pastoral intern, Tom Morris, provided through June, and for bringing Lawrence Klingsheim to our staff as our new Student Minister.

We also want to give thanks for how God has led us closer toward our vision in the last twelve months. We began the year by asking the question, “What will it take for our experience of ‘church’ to be less like something we go to, and more like something we are—a family of missionary servants empowered by God’s Spirit to make disciples for Christ?” Through the January preaching series and several congregational meetings, we discerned three key steps for 2013, which saw varying degrees of progress as the year unfolded:

1. To provide one new outward-focused ministry expression at a congregation-wide level. God answered this initiative with the Alpha Course, which ran from March to May, and provided an opportunity for many people within and outside the church to explore the Christian faith more carefully in a warm and non-threatening environment. For 2014 we are set to offer a similar type of event, using the “Christianity Explored” curriculum, at the home of Steve and Natasha Hope.
   
   
2. To provide one new outward-focused ministry expression at a smaller group level. The goal here is to help reconnect gospel-shaped fellowship and gospel-driven outreach, and live it out not just in the building we gather to, but also in the towns we live and work in. We offered training through the “Living on Mission” workbook and the “Missional Communities 101” workshop in April. From there, Pastor Brandon met with some of our Home Fellowship leaders over the course of several months to explore the idea of repurposing our Home Fellowships to embrace a more missional identity. Our exploration helped us shape a new plan for 2014, that will also involve the creation of new groups (see more below).
   
   
3. To begin identifying people who might serve as part of an outreach team (or perhaps ‘mission mobilization’ team). This initiative also remains in progress, and will develop hand-in-hand with the previous one.

LOOKING AHEAD>>

As we look ahead to 2014, we want to continue to give focused attention to God’s call for us to live on mission for Christ, not just as we gather, but as we scatter. And so we’re starting 2014 by revisiting the question we asked at the beginning of last year, through a January preaching series on 1 Peter 1-2: “Real Church: It’s not what you go to; it’s who you are.”

• January 5: Real Faith (1 Pet. 1:1-12)
• January 12: Real Community (1 Pet. 1:13-25)
• January 19: Real Worship (1 Pet. 2:1-10)
• January 26: Real Mission (1 Pet. 2:12-25)

After January, we’ll return to our series through the Gospel of Matthew, continuing our exploration of who Jesus is and what it means to follow him as King.

We also look forward to two outward-facing ministry efforts in early 2014:

1. Community Group Initiative
   
   Returning to the second initiative from 2013, we’re seeking God to begin a movement of smaller community groups among Westgate that live out gospel-centered community and mission in the towns and neighborhoods where we already live and work. We’re calling this the Community Group Initiative. In early 2014, Pastor Brandon will be looking to recruit, train, and mobilize leaders, who in turn will recruit and launch new community groups in the fall of 2014. Stay tuned for more details.
   
   
2. Life on Mission Conference: March 21-23, 2014
   
   As we’ve been discussing, the call to make disciples of all nations is not just for those who go overseas. We want to see every member live as a missionary, for whom every sphere of life is their mission field. And so as a parallel to our fall Missions Conference (where we emphasize the missionaries and agencies we support), we’re starting an annual spring Life on Mission Conference, where our goal is to equip and mobilize our own people for living each day on mission.
   
   The theme for our inaugural conference is Gospel-Centered Mission, and our speakers are Jared Wilson and Bland Mason. Click here for more details.

We count it a privilege to serve and seek the Lord together. May he be glorified in and through us in the year ahead.

Your servants for Jesus’ sake,

Westgate Church Elders
   Adam Anderson
   Dave Brown
   John Cuozzo
   Bruce Daggett (Associate Pastor)
   C.J. Godfrey
   Brandon Levering (Lead Pastor)

“You are worthy . . . you purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation.” (Revelation 5:9)

The theme for our 2015 Missions Conference is “Unreached People Groups” – to remind us that God’s heart is for every tribe nation and language, and the job is not finished until everyone has heard. We look forward to hearing about how God has been growing His kingdom – from here in the Greater Boston area, to the rest of the world.

Our conference kicks off on Sunday, October 18th with Rev. Paul B., a well-known speaker, author and teacher at Gordon College. Paul’s ministry focuses on mobilizing young and old for cross-cultural ministry, here and around the world. After the service, the conference continues with our annual luncheon at the home of Steve and Natasha H. (in Natick) where we’ll hear from some friends serving in Africa and their plans for when they return.

Throughout the ensuing week, the youth, Bible studies, and home groups will be participating in a number of engaging activities. See the conference brochure for more details. As always, even if you are not a regular attendee of one of these groups, we encourage you make a special effort to contact the hosts and get to know our missionaries and the organizations we help support.

The conference continues the following weekend with a full schedule of events on Saturday and Sunday. Saturday night, October 24th, at 5:30 pm is the annual Missions Banquet. This year we will be providing a main dish and salad, with a potluck for sides and desserts. The banquet program includes an update from youth who went on mission trips this summer, Beth G. as the featured speaker, and a few songs in different languages sung by our children! Our goal is for this evening to be family friendly, so we will stay in fellowship hall for the program and be finished by 7:30 pm.

The sermon for our final Sunday morning service will be from Brad G., who is with Frontier Ventures (formerly US Center for World Missions). Brad and Beth have served in North Africa doing church planting among unreached peoples. Brad is presently the editor of the International Journal for Frontier Missiology (ijfm.org), a periodical dedicated to advancing the understanding of ministry among unreached peoples of the world. Following the service will be a coffee hour with display tables featuring several of our missionaries and organizations.

During the week, you’ll also have an opportunity to pledge your financial support for missions. Each year, the Missions Board uses the pledges received during and after the conference to plan the annual Missions budget. We hope you will prayerfully consider making a pledge toward Westgate Missions in 2016. Pledge cards will be available during the Sunday morning services and Saturday evening banquet, or anytime at the church office.

We hope your experience at our Missions Conference this year will provide you with a renewed sense of God’s call to spread the gospel. And we look forward to seeing you during the conference!

In Christ,
Westgate Missions Board

For questions or comments, contact Gary W. or Nancy B.