D. A: Discipleship Is Not A Continual Experience

Discipleship is about engaging in the Word, following and obeying Jesus and going out to make disciples. An essential element in being a disciple is to be open to learning, to be teachable. It is a mindset to be continuously adopted and cultivated. For us to disciple others, we must be a better disciple ourselves. When making disciples, we are instructing others to be willing to be a discoverer. It applies to both spiritual growth as well as personal development, openness to new techniques, ideas and methods in all aspects of life. Our spiritual learning comes from delving into His

While the goal of Christian education and discipleship is spiritual formation of the new believer into a true disciple who makes other true disciples, this concept has been watered down in the American church today by emphasis on programs instead of progressive spiritual growth in every member’s life. There are many

A church whose pastor and others in leadership have failed to put in place a proactive plan for discipleship for Believers is usually a “growing” church — growing stagnant, growing cold, growing spiritually immature Christians, and eventually, many growing closed. Patte said, “There is much at stake in accepting or rejecting the challenge of discipleship…” When a pastor or a church makes a conscious decision to make discipleship of Believers a primary focus in their

2 – Disciple-Making – Discipleship is the “critical, perhaps even the central, element of mDNA in Apostolic Genius…” (page 113) He ties true discipleship to developing Christ-like character.

Jesus then goes from speaking to His disciples specifically, to calling out to the whole crowd, in which He goes from speaking plainly to once again speaking in metaphors and riddles. Within this passage Mark uses the words of Jesus to reveal the true cost of discipleship. He tells the crowd that if anyone chooses to come after Him then the condition of that decision is that they must take up their cross and follow Him. So one must ask: What does it mean to deny yourself? What does it mean to take up your cross? And when you follow Him where are you going? So then one must put this into context by looking at what has not yet happened in Mark. When Jesus denies Himself, He is essentially denying the human instinct to self preserve through a fight or flight response. When Jesus picked up His cross, He was deciding to be rejected, tortured, mocked and falsely accused on His way to Calvary where He died for the sins of all. Therefore, if you want to go after Jesus, you must be willing to commit to sharing the gospel with others at all costs, you must be willing to tortured, mocked, and falsely accused and you must also be willing to die, not necessarily for anything that you have done, but so that others can reach salvation. Historically, during this time period, the cross was a well known style of execution in Rome, and so although one reading this might see this as simply a metaphor, it is actually a foreshadowing of reality, which can be seen in the fact that all the

Each of these phases incorporated Jesus as leading by example and with each new phase, a higher level of commitment is necessary. The goal of this demonstration is that through your example, they will learn and use your tools to translate into being successful leaders themselves.

Christ is the central person in Christian discipleship. Without Christ, Christianity would not exist and there would be no followers of Christ. To be true followers of Christ, believers must be willing to learn of the ways and teachings of Christ. Christ is central to Christian discipleship because He is the teacher of His disciples. Through the Holy Spirit and Word of God, Jesus Christ calls His disciples to Him and then

When someone think about Jesus Christ being the center of discipleship there are two things that comes to mind; change and commitment within the disciple. One day Jesus Christ was walking by the sea of Galilee when He saw Simon and Andrew fishing; he said to them, “Follow me and I will make you fishers of men” Matthew 4:19 . The next verse show them immediately dropping their nets and followed Jesus Christ. The actions of Simon and Andrew is described best by Putman, Harrington, and Coleman in the text book Disciple Shift. The text breaks Matthew 4:19 into three key elements; which are “Following Christ, is being changed by Christ, and is committed to the mission of Christ”. It is the intent of this paper to show the importance of Jesus

So discipleship can be summed up; to follow, to learn, to preach, to believe, to serve. All factors are

Just what is theology? This question can have a wide variety of answers, from irrelevant facts about God thought up by men centuries ago, to complicated theories discussed by scholars. Typically, the average 21st century man does not consider theology as relevant. Unfortunately, nothing could be further from the truth. Theology by definition has the characteristics of both expounding the truth, and impacting the believer with that truth (Himes, 2011). Therefore, theology and the church are intricately combined, in that the church embodies the revelation of God, and is reality, not theory (Himes, 2011). A personal practical theology must begin with revelation, not the individual (Himes, 2011), and proclaim

The church is in need of major renovation when it comes to making disciples. The concept of making disciples to follow the Lord Jesus Christ seems completely foreign to the church today. In order to achieve the desired goal of making disciples for Christ, training others to go out and proclaim gospel, and helping others to train people to disciple one another, one needs to go back to foundation of the Word of God. It is in God’s Word where multiple examples are found of how to make disciples to follow Jesus Christ. It is my desire to see more people in the church have a passion for discipleship. Therefore, this paper will examine in detail how to make disciples in a ministry context. This will be accomplished by examining the 5 V’s of discipleship—vision, values, views, vehicles, and verifiers. It is my purpose to examine each area in order to have a detailed plan of discipleship that will be used in my own ministry context to make disciples for Christ. I hope that this plan can and will be used to train others in the church to make disciples, and disciple one another, for the glory of God.

Follow-up is essential to fulfilling the command of Christ to make disciples of all nations. It is the bridge between evangelism and discipleship Waylon Moore once said, “There is no continuing New Testament evangelism without follow-up. They are God’s ‘two-edged sword’ for reaching men and making them effective disciples for Christ.” The sad reality is that, according to Alvin Reid, “churches have neglected follow-up. We have left a generation of baby Christians stranded, unsure of how to grow.” As Christians, our follow-up plan must be well -developed, one that’s biblically and theologically sound, and we must be actively engaged in follow-up.

Matthew 9:35-38 (NIV) reads, Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.” Through the lens of this text God reveals to us the heart He has for His people in a lost and suffering world. Jesus points out to his disciples what we should find significant today, and that is

This five-step process begins by creating a definition for what it is we are addressing as disciples. It’s important to ask the question “what is…” because it helps us distinguish from other topics that are closely related. For example, if we are talking about what discipline is, we would want to distinguish if we are speaking about the punishment of a child, the act of training in a habitual manner, or a branch of knowledge. Our world is a very complicated, intricate, and interwoven place. Though people often want things to be straightforward, they’re not always that simple. It’s important to define exactly what we’re talking about in order to understand the topic as clearly as possible.

was owed a great sum of money by one of his servants. The king let the