Discipleship
See Lives Transformed
Why did you go into ministry in the first place? Most likely you wanted to make disciples, see lives changed, see the Kingdom of God advanced. You wanted to see transformation.
Churches and ministries only grow as well as the disciples they develop. It’s time to go back to the basics with a focus on discipleship. We can help you create a simple, relational, yet focused system that can help you get traction for making disciples at all levels.
Loving God
If we know God, we love God. If we are loving God, we keep his commandments. Love is more than a feeling or an emotion. It is a commitment lived out in our actions and our behaviors. If we know God and we love God, then we serve God. We become tied into what's on...
Knowing God
By very definition, God cannot be fully comprehended by the human mind. He is that much bigger and greater than us. Yet throughout history, God has been making himself known to us as far as we are capable. He met Moses on the mountain and spoke to him "face to face,...
Shamelessly plugging my wife’s blog: Child Centered Spirituality
Some of you know my wife, Janet. What you may not know is that she has been writing a weekly blog for almost a year now about how we can nurture the spiritual development of children. Check out: Child Centered Spirituality. Her premise (backed by plenty of research)...
A discipleship assessment retreat
When we were in the beta testing phase of our discipleship assessment instrument, Tad Blackburn, pastor with The Vineyard Church, decided to try out the assessment in a retreat setting. He shares here from his experience: When we started with the discipleship...
Dimensions of Discipleship Guides
Looking for resources for your small group ministry? We have a new set of discipleship guides available… one guide for each of the 8 areas shown here on the tree of discipleship. (You can double-click the tree to enlarge it if you'd like.) Designed to be interactive,...
Discipleship changes everything
Lately I’ve been thinking through how Jesus made disciples, based on my observations of scripture. I’ll post one insight per day here. You can find all of them by searching “How Jesus made disciples” on my blog. Jesus assumed discipleship to be holistic in nature,...
Observations about how Jesus made disciples
Lately I’ve been thinking through how Jesus made disciples, based on my observations of scripture. I’ll post one insight per day here on my blog. You can find all of them by searching “How Jesus made disciples” on my blog. Idea: this might make a good sermon...
Making disciples and raising children
Jesus treated different people differently. As we look through the stories in scripture, we see he didn’t recommend the same course of action to everyone. Rather, he treated them according to what they needed in order to move forward. Why should the way we make...
The importance of discipleship relationships
Once we have a clear sense of where we need to grow, now we need a relational context for that growth. There is no substitute for intentional discipleship relationships. During some seasons those are one-on-one relationships. During some seasons they are peer or group...
Discipleship pitfall #1: All head
When we over-emphasize knowledge in our approach to discipleship, we end up with a classroom approach. Discipleship is a checklist of things to read and know. It’s curriculum-based and doesn’t take into account where God is currently working in the life of an...