Discipleship : A Curriculum For Christlikeness

In summary, McRaney noted that the witness “should prayerfully and persistently pursue the presence of lost people, then proclaim and persuade at the prompting and in the power of the Holy Spirit” (p. 73). The next several chapters

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

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

In the midst of the Information Age, period linked to communications and data technologies, Christian educators are searching for new methods to cultivate the Christian transformation in believers’ lives. Conversations defined as the natural exchange of thoughts, information, feelings, and ideas expressed by spoken words, provides a pedagogical framework in response the necessity of personal growth and community change. Miller’s article proposes the “conversations” as a mechanism of learning that seek out for a process of teaching, acknowledging, growing, transforming, and changing in the Christian’s lives.

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

sacrificed his life for the man. He had a lot of faith in Jesus that

The first area D.A. went into detail with was that “Discipleship is not a continual experience.” Throughout the beginning of D.A’s Christian life he believed discipleship was continually experiencing God, but he later learned different. He learned that there are skills and things to develop. Once you develop in studying scripture and spiritual disciplines you begin growing in Christ and ultimately in discipleship.

For me, this is how a disciple should prepare a new convert for Christian maturity. Once you can discern that such convert can grasp the basic precepts of Christian living, then comes the leading of

McGrath strongly advocates throughout this paper that we must bring the Christian mindset to our everyday lives, serving as witnesses and to be the “salt and light” to the world.

Think back to the person who taught you the gospel. Imagine what your life would be like if someone didn’t care? What about the person that taught that person the gospel? The person who baptized me lived a life that can be summarized by sincerity, love and passion for Jesus the preaching of Jesus and living like Jesus go hand in hand. Paul himself wrote of this in Philippians 1:21. Think of the lives that you can help change by choosing to live for Jesus. Unfortunately, there are times that we allow the fear of what friends think or say, apathy, etc. to interfere with our example to not just the lost but also believers of the church (1 Timothy 4:12). How can we expect to reach lost souls if we don’t take a stand for our belief, convictions, and don’t choose to live a life of love, honesty, sacrifice, etc? Do we say one thing but completely practice another? If there is one thing that many Christian’s are good at and really know how to do, it’s blending in. We fade into the crowd and try not to look or act different from anyone else. However, it’s when we choose to live contrary to the world that we really make impacts in peoples lives. People would much rather see a sermon and than hear one preached. We must strive to be the type of people that when others want to know what Christ was like they don’t have to look any further than

Discipleship starts with the heart, it is to have Christ at the center, to have His love, His Holy Spirit fill you, and guide you. To have Christ as the centrality

While emphasizing Scripture, Christian tradition, and most important element – the triune God – are the core foundations of mission and spirituality, I now make a connection to the cultural aspects of Christian spirituality. There are two kinds of “mission spirituality,” which exists in each of missionary disciple. Encountering mission spirituality is the way to embrace and practice the relationship between microcosm and macrocosm in community building for working at the margins. Considering the explanations of Gittins, following is my application and connection to the two kinds of mission spirituality.

Attention Getter: Jesus commanded us to make disciples of all nations. He didn’t say, “make converts of all nations” or, “make people think God probably exists”, He said “make disciples.” Making disciples doesn’t mean convincing people God is cool or even that He exists, it means sharing the sacrifice of Jesus with them, and impressing on them the love and life of Christ to the point that they themselves desire to continue the process of sharing the gospel. Making disciples requires the knowledge of *being* a disciple, and there are disciplines required to actually becoming and living as a disciple of Jesus.

There are 3 major concepts regarding being a disciple and making disciples: (1) Win, (2) Grow, and (3) Send. These are the most important stages of discipleship. The first one is winning of souls into the body of Christ. Winning represents the fact that there is a loser – Satan. Being in unification with the Holy Spirit, the disciple wins souls by telling the good news through evangelism. Prayer is the first step in effective evangelism to win the lost souls. John 17:20 says, “Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word” (KJV). Through prayer we offer ourselves for the lost, just as the Bible stated in John 15:13 “Greater love hath no man than this that a man lay down his life for his friends” (KJV). The next stage is growing or developing disciple maker candidates. The disciple maker must build relationship,

Discipleship can be defined as submitting oneself to the control of the Spirit in order to become progressively and holistically conformed to the image of Christ for the reconciliation of all people and things into right relationship with God—the triune God. It doesn’t look the same in every situation. Discipleship is based out of relationship, horizontally, being between people, and vertically, being between God and His people. Relationships with people cannot exist without relationship with God. And God is love. Therefore, discipleship is all about love. Love is never passive, but it is a verb, which always is a response through an action. Love is active.