discipleship(5/8)
How to offer bible lessons
I’ve been so intimidated at the prospect of teaching my children about Jesus and the Bible. There are so many facets to consider: age-relevant methods, following their interests, not overloading them with instruction, choosing a topic, where to learn together, etc. One of the resources I’ve borrowed from a friend (thanks Natalie!) called Godly Play: An Imaginative Approach to Religious Education by Jerome Berryman has been a useful tool to organize my priorities and envision how a lesson might play out.…
Discipleship models often protect against growing up emotionally
The spirituality of most current discipleship models often only adds an additional protective layer against people growing up emotionally. Because people are having real, and helpful, spiritual experiences in certain areas of their lives–such as worship, prayer, Bible studies, and fellowship–they mistakenly believe they are doing fine, even if their relational life and interior world is not in order. This apparent “progress” then provides a spiritual reason for not doing the hard work of maturing.…
Real life is an endurance test
Real life–as distinguished from romanticized, sentimentalized life–is largely an endurance test, a “long defeat.” Hope based on empirical evidence of human goodness or human perfectibility is not true hope; it is only optimism or “positive thinking” and cannot stand up to the actual situation. True hope is the hope-against-hope of which Paul speaks in Romans 4:18; that is to say, it is based on a promise from a sphere beyond this one.…
Suffering undertaken for a higher cause
θλῖψις can be translated “apocalypic suffering” because it refers to the affliction suffered by the servants of God in the ongoing conflict with the “world rulers of this present darkness” as Ephesians calls them (6:12). This is not ordinary suffering that comes willy-nilly to everyone. This is suffering that is voluntarily undertaken for the sake of a higher cause. The entire Ring saga could be described as a tale of apocalyptic affliction endured so that the united kingdom [βασιλεία] of Arnor and Gondor can be restored to its rightful ruler.…
We want to see four or more generations of leaders
[At a leadership gathering] we want to see four or more generations of leaders present, or we have failed. So, we say to leaders we work with, “Tell me about the people you are mentoring, and tell me about the people your mentees are mentoring.” There is always an expectation of four generations, minimum. All good leaders are intimately aware of the two generations below them and the generation above them.…
True DMM methodology is about discipling people to obey Jesus
True DMM methodology is about being disciplined in educating, training, and mentoring people to obey all the commands of Jesus, regardless of consequences. The results are not quick. They only appear to be so because of exponential growth. When we truly engage in the process that leads to an observable DMM, we typically spend two to four years discipling and developing leaders. But because of the replication process due to leaders being taught to obey God’s Word by making disciples and teaching them to obey, in this same two to four years as many as five more leaders emerge.…
Stages of faith development
How does a person’s faith develop over the course of their lives? In broad categories, what distinct stages might a person move through in their development? These are the kinds of questions that Faith Development Theory tries to answer. Jessie Cruickshank offers a three-part video series (Part 1 here) where she explains the six stages of faith development. She does a ton of work making James W. Fowler’s research coherent and applicable to disciple-making.…
Evangelism is making disciples
In our attempts to define evangelism, sometimes we can make it so narrow that it’s no longer connected with the holistic mission of the Church. Overnarrowing has affected both evangelists and “regulars”. Evangelists have decided that their sole focus is to scatter seeds of the gospel far-and-wide but leave discipleship to whatever church community an interested person happens to walk into. Much of their work is misspent because they don’t get close enough to their hearers to understand their pain or misconceptions.…
Train your team for your absence by taking them everywhere
The key to training your team for your absence is to take them with you wherever you go, having them shadow you like a disciple would a rabbi.
Christ never commanded his disciples to plant churches
Christ never commanded his disciples to plant churches, because it’s not what He wanted them to focus on. Focusing on the church to be planted leads to church starting, whereas focusing on the Great Commission itself leads to church planting.
Discipleship done biblically is always in community
I think a lot of these things rest in the issue of discipleship… Discipleship done biblically is always in community. It’s never just one-on-one. I think that’s a big mistake that Western individualists make. I’m sure that Jesus did one-on-one with his people, but you never get a view of it anywhere in the scriptures. It’s always in groups. (in answer this question from Josh Johnson, “Can we as people caught in the walls of the church, can we reorient ourselves into a place where we can have true, authentic community that’s not just a Sunday gathering?…
Apostolic gifts focus on one mission in two directions
There are at least two flavors of apostle focus in Acts. The first mobilizes the existing faith community towards multiplicative disciple- making. The second catalyzes networks outside the faith community for the same purpose. Jesus spends most of his life on earth on mission to Israel. He invests in 3-12-72 disciples, equipping them with everything they needed to go and do likewise. Peter follows his footsteps by staying in Jerusalem and mobilizing fellow Israelites in a disciple-making explosion that expands throughout the region.…
Distribute mentorship among everyone
When it comes to mentorship, everyone gets to play. Bradberry and Greaves assess “too many leaders assume that developing your people is a manager’s responsibility (pg. 68).” Their assessment falls short of reality; however, for not only leaders, but all members of an organization assume managers are solely responsible for the development of their direct reports. There is some truth the member’s assumption, for no manager worth their pay neglects the development of their team, and management by definition is “the art of getting things done through people (Clegg, Kornberger & Pitsis, cited in Ideas on Management, emphasis added).…