Don’t let TikTok disciple you

Last week wasn’t normal.

I spent time with young men aspiring to pastoral ministry. I sat in meetings on budgets and administration. I sat at the bedside of a church member close to death. I walked with two different marriages in crisis. And I poured into leaders from our church, planning what’s next.

All of that was normal.

What was abnormal is that I didn’t have to write a sermon this week.

I mention that because I tell our church all the time: the local church is God’s plan to reach the world and to make you the person he’s calling you to be. That plan is centered on the local church for a reason. The local church is not TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, or YouTube. It’s not an internet preacher, your favorite blog, or a Christian website.

There’s a lot of religious content online. Some of it is good. A lot of it is garbage.

But even the good stuff can’t disciple you because the internet doesn’t know you.

God’s plan to make you like Jesus runs through the local church because the local church is your family. You might attend a church where the preacher doesn’t know your name. But someone in that church should.

There are a lot of jobs that fall under the title “pastor.” But before anything else, a pastor is a shepherd and shepherds should smell like sheep. You can

It’s easy for a talking head on the internet to dispense advice. It’s easy because that relationship comes with zero accountability and zero expectation. Nothing is required of you, and nothing is required of them.

That’s the deeper problem: discipleship is an incarnational process. Jesus taught his disciples how to live by living his life up close to them, in the mess of their days. Local churches make disciples the same way by teaching and modeling what it looks like to follow Jesus, in person, over time.

You can’t get that from a screen. And you shouldn’t try. You can learn things online, but you can’t be discipled there.

Find a church that loves Jesus and preaches his Word. Plug yourself into it. You’ll never regret it.