Skip to main content

Discipleship ... the 'new' way!




I have been fascinated recently at the increase in attention given to what I have always taken/assumed to be the fundamental purpose of the ministry of the Church ... discipleship. In a recent article I read of five changes that the author believes the Church need to make.
  1. From Reaching to Making
  2. From Teaching to Modeling (from Leading to being Led)
  3. From Attending to Participating
  4. From Connecting to Transforming
  5. From Attracting to Deploying
An article that is worth reflecting on to see what changes could be made to any current practice.
At the same time I was somewhat amused by the initial comment ... "God is doing a new thing with Christians around the world and it’s finally coming to the United States. Of course, it’s not really a new thing, its actually an old thing. It’s called “making disciples.” A very godly man said to me recently "God is always doing the same thing differently!" So how is good doing this today?
 
I have been pondering this recently as I have been putting together materials to kick start what we trust will be a useful springboard to nurture the disciples life - called Engaged Discipleship ... this is of crucial importance to us as a missional organisation as I believe that we can only make disciples if we are disciples ourselves, committed to the process of growing in our own discipleship. There is little point sending people around the world to make disciples if those same people are not committed to the process themselves - and that includes me.
 
There are no end of resources, many of them excellent ... books, websites, media, courses, etc. I feel the missing link in many cases is the western pre-occupation with accomplishing things, completing a course, reading a book, ticking off another Conference to add to my growing CV - which misses the heartbeat of discipleship.
 
Here are my thoughts about the basic principles of discipleship - have I missed anything? Let me know what you think.
 
What is discipleship?
  • It is a deliberate lifestyle, not a course to complete.
  • It is not intended that we merely learn about Jesus. It really means that he is the curriculum for the course. What we see in Jesus is what we are to become. It is infectious – what we learn we are to be passing on, from the very beginning.
  • It is a change of behaviour as we encourage one another to act like Jesus.
John Stott sums it up as a call to be different from the world around us.

I'm looking forward to seeing how these trends to take discipleship seriously will affect the body of Christ - being missional is not simply about inspiring people to engage, it is about equipping them for the long haul, to enable them to be overcomers in this world, not giving up at the first hurdle they encounter.
 
The world needs a Church full of people like this ... full of disciples. 
Press on ...
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Feel free to add comments or ask questions:

Popular posts from this blog

Does God really lead us?

  Often as evangelical believers we talk about the concept of ‘calling’ explaining it along the lines of God speaking to his people, sometimes this is narrowed even to the experience of a special, select ‘few’ and limited in scope to those who are engaging in full-time Christian ministry. The following are some notes I prepared for a talk: Firstly, I would like to say that most Christians would believe that God communicates with his people, and that this may happen in many different ways. What is of utmost importance is that it does happen. We are in relationship with a Living God, who we call Father, and who communicates with us His creation and covenant people.   God communicates in a number of ways and one special way in which He leads and guides his people might be termed a vocation or calling and it’s this particular aspect of His communication I want to focus on.   So what is the calling? Who is called? And what are we called to? The whole i...
Post a Comment
Read more

Thoughts from a previous incumbent ...

In reference to 2 Tim 1:7 "For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of p o wer, of love a nd of sel f-discipli ne."   Norman Grubb decl are d that; "We are set in our day and generation to be overcomers, not to sail through calm seas but to walk on storms, to replace need with supply, to transform aspiration into realization. The language of defeatism, fear, lack and weakness is not to be in our vocabulary. "Let us go up at once and possess it, for we are well able to overcome it. As for these giants, they are bread for us," we say with sturdy Caleb.  We are to act as the men of faith of old; we are to visualize our goal in clear outline; we are to take it for granted that we shall reach it, for we have both the commission and anointing of God?   We lay our plans ,build our organisations, produce our written and verbal pronouncements,  prayer our prayers, do our work, not as those who will fail and fall by the way, but...
2 comments
Read more

Homes I have lived in #3

This year I am celebrating my silver wedding anniversary ... Just for something to do I have begun to sketch all the houses we have lived in during that time. So here is house number #3 On our return to the UK we were faced with the question that faces all people in transition, what next? For us, we were encouraged by our friends to investigate further training and opted to spend a year with Kerygma ministries. We joined with a group of some 20 other people from various different cultures and backgrounds to join the ministry led by Dr Bob Gordon, based at Drayton Hall near Norwich. We spent one year here, between September 1993 and July 1994.   Significant events that took place here included: Suffered reverse culture shock, as I grappled with the transition from life in a mudhut in Africa to life in the UK in a Manor House! (Struggled with the amount of money being spent on a sign that was being placed outside ...
Post a Comment
Read more