Five Foundations

The Apostle Paul described his initial ministry to the Corinthians with these word: "According to the grace of God which was given to me, as a wise master builder I have laid the foundation, and another builds on it." (1 Cor 3:10)

It is very important lay the right foundations in the lives of people who are newly saved. The right foundations can lead to years, indeed multi-generations, of established maturity in Christ. And as evangelicals perhaps we might be willing to admit that in far too many churches (and evangelism ministries) there has been inadequate provision made for the early discipleship of people responding to the gospel in our meetings.

This “Five Foundations” course is specifically designed to help people who respond to the gospel message, whether through some kind of “altar call” in your church, or any other way they present themselves. This course gives you a tool to help them take their first few steps toward a new life in Jesus.

The course is video-based. It has a short introduction video and then five full sessions. It can be run over a whole day, or over a weekend, or as a weekly session over five weeks, whatever works best in your context.

CONTENT OF THE COURSE

Jesus described the process of entering His Kingdom as a “new birth," and just like the normal birth of a human baby involves a series of dramatic things that all happen in a short period of time so that mom & dad can take their little one home, spiritual birth also has a complex of dramatic things that happen right in the beginning in order to give us the fullness of a new spiritual life. That is what these 5 sessions are all about. We’re going to look at how the Bible describes what we might call the “normal birth” of a healthy Christian baby — the kind of birth that sets people up well to grow to maturity quickly.

On the day of Pentecost, when asked what people "should do" Peter responded, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise (of the Spirit) is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.” (Acts 2:38-39)

In those words, Peter still describes for us today the normal entrance of a sinner into the Kingdom of God. It is these four things that God commands all people in the Gospel:

1. FIRST: The sinner must repent (the first word out of Peter’s mouth when they asked him, “What must we do?” was “Repent!”)
2. SECOND: The sinner must put his (or her) faith in Jesus for the forgiveness of their sins. Peter had just preached Jesus to them, and it was this that had brought such conviction on them -- they had come to believe that He was the Messiah. Then Peter said that they must express their faith in Jesus by being baptised IN HIS NAME (the one that they had killed!).
3. THIRD: Sinners are then immediately commanded to be baptised in water, “washing their sins away” (in the words of Ananias) “while calling on the name of the Lord” (“be baptized every one of you,” said Peter, “in the name of Jesus Christ”).
4. FOURTH: We are told to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit (we must be “baptised in the Holy Spirit”), because, as Peter said, the promise is for us. As we will see, this normally happened through the laying on of hands.

So: Repent, believe, be baptised in water, receive the Holy Spirit. This is the normal Christian birth, and each of those steps plays a significant role in people’s entrance into God’s Kingdom and their early progress in it.

THE FIVE "FOUNDATIONS" IN HEBREWS 6

We also see these foundations in Hebrews 6:1-3. There the writer has just been lamenting the immature state of the Christians to whom he was writing. In fact, in the verses just before these he even said to them “For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the… first principles of the oracles of God; and you have come to need milk and not solid food.” He told them they were “unskilled in the word of righteousness” and that they were babies! They needed to have the foundations of the Christian life affirmed to them again. He goes on to list those foundations, mentioning the same four that Peter mentioned, plus one more added — and that explains why this course is called “Five Foundations”:

“Therefore, leaving the discussion of the elementary principles of Christ, let us go on to perfection, not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, of the doctrine of baptisms, of laying on of hands, of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment. And this we will do if God permits.”

Indeed! This we will do!

In those verses we see these five foundations:

1. Repentance
2. Faith
3. Baptisms
4. The laying on of hands (receiving the Spirit)
5. "Resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment” (which is all about the HOPE of the gospel)

So, in this “Five Foundations” course, we want to help you to lay the right foundations in the lives of people responding to the Gospel in your church or through your ministry. We want to help these people understand:

1. What it means to repent of their sins (that’s session 1),
2. What it means to put their faith in the Lord Jesus (that’s session 2),
3. Why we should be baptised in water and what that’s all about (that’s session 3),
4. What it means to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit (that’s session 4).
5. And then in our fifth and final session, what that all means for their future (session 5).

So whether you use this course as a powerful way to prepare people for their baptism, or you use it in some other way within your ministry context, we hope and pray that it will be a greatly effective tool in your hands as a church or an evangelistic ministry.