Friday 23 March 2012

Making Disciples that Last

Being discipled is key to growing as a Christian and even growing as a church and yet we as a Church in Britain are relative under or un- discipled.  It was therefore a real encouragement to be asked to speak at Yorkshire Training yesterday on Making Disciples that Last.  In the hour I had with the 35 or so that were there I couldn't go into depth about lots of things but I did want to try to get them thinking about how they were discipled, their assumptions about discipling others, how churches can encourage discipleship and how it would change the way we do evangelism.  Next week I'm going to blog post some of my notes from the session with some additional thoughts, I'd love some feedback and your thoughts.

We began with some questions to help us think about who we had been discipled by and how much of it had been deliberate or by osmosis and the lessons we had learnt.

  1. How did you learn to pray?
  2. How did you learn to read and understand the Bible?
  3. How did or are you learning how to parent?
  4. What has influenced your thinking on marriage?
  5. How did you reach your conclusions about the gospel and giving?
Why not stop and actually think about those before you read on?

For those who grew or grow up in Christian families so often we pick up and assume the patterns of our parents both for good and bad.  For those who read we learn how to do some of those things and have convictions formed in us through books and authors.  I am hoping the Bible plays a significant part in it.  But what about other people, have we seen these things modelled and taught to us in terms of discipleship by someone who we know and love and see these things being wrestled through in a gospel, cross carrying way?

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