Thought Exercise on Disciple Making

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From Dropout to Disciple-Maker

Author

Keywords

Scripture

Ephesians 2:1-10, Psalm 40:2-3, 2 Corinthians 5:17, Luke 15:20, John 1:5

I (Josh) know a young man named Mark who was on the brink of self-destruction. He partied away his first semester of junior college and was later kicked out of school. He was devastated by his loss an...

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A Life of Discipleship

Author

John Ortberg

Keywords

Scripture

Colossians 1:28, Romans 12:2, Acts 11:26, Luke 9:23, John 17:3, Matthew 28:19-20

Jesus didn’t tell his friends, “Go into all the world and make Christians.” But he did tell them to go into the world and make disciples. In fact, the Bible uses the word disciple 269 times. As Dallas...

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Now You Do It: A Good Parent Enables the Child

Author

Mia Levetan

Keywords

Scripture

1 Corinthians 3:2, Hebrews 5:12-14, Luke 10:25-26, Deuteronomy 6:7, James 1:22

[M]y husband, Nick, tells a story of when he was a teenager riding his bike with his friends, and his chain came off his bike. Nick took the bike to his dad, who said, “I'll fix it, you watch”. Hi...

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Sharing Through Showing

Author

Bobby Harrington

Keywords

Because I was raised in England, drinking tea is a central part of my cultural identity! Whatever the situation—a celebration, a welcome, a crisis, an afternoon break—the response of a good Brit is to...

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The San Francisco Sheep

Author

John Ortberg

Keywords

Scripture

Matthew 10:null

While teaching on Jesus’ sending out of the disciples in Matthew 10, pastor John Ortberg uses the analogy of sports teams to describe the absurdity of Jesus’ description of the disciples as “sheep.” b...

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The Origin of Rituals

Author

Ronald Rohlheiser

Keywords

Once upon a time there was a rabbi who, whenever he wanted God’s presence, went to a special place in the woods, lit a fire, said some prayers, and did a dance. Then God would appear to him. When he d...

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Discipleship is like Learning a Language through Immersion

Author

Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

Keywords

Scripture

Matthew 28:16-20, 2 Timothy 2:1-2, Luke 9:23-24, Mark 8:34, John 13:34-35, Colossians 1:28-29, 1 Corinthians 11:1, 1 Corinthians 4:14-16, 1 Thessalonians 1:6-7, Hebrews 6:11-12

One of the fastest ways to learn a language is by immersion . This term can mean a few different things, but the basic idea in all of them is that you are exposed to that language in your social inte...

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Discipleship Begins with Active Listening

Author

Adam S. McHugh

Keywords

Scripture

1 Samuel 3:9-10, Deuteronomy 6:4-5 , Matthew 4:19-20, John 10:27, Luke 11:28, Psalm 85:8

The interplay between listening and obedience expresses itself in our lives all the time. Sound has the ability to “command” us, to summon a response in us, forcing us to take notice. Unlike visual ...

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Discipleship Takes Time

Author

John Ortberg

Keywords

Discipleship

Scripture

Acts 4:13, 2 Timothy 2:2, Proverbs 27:17, Matthew 28:20, John 15:4, Luke 6:40, Mark 3:14

The act of “being with” someone requires patience and sacrifice. It means putting the other person’s wants and needs above our own and being willing to invest as much time as it takes to make the pers...

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The Art of Followship

Author

Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

Keywords

Scripture

Colossians 3:16, Philippians 2:5-7, John 13:34-35, Matthew 11:29, Mark 8:34-35, Luke 9:23

Editor’s Note: The following illustration came from one of my own (Stu’s) sermons, as I was trying to help the congregation make a paradigm shift from the church as a building, to the people of God: ...

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A Literal Kind of Following

Author

Keri Wyatt Kent

Keywords

Scripture

John 15:null

A rabbi’s followers, known as his talmidim in Hebrew, went everywhere with him, not just to hang on his every word and learn theology from him. They followed him everywhere so that they could mimic wh...

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The Laboring Crew

Author

Paul W. Powell

Keywords

Many churches today remind me of a laboring crew trying to gather in a harvest while they sit in the tool shed. They go to the tool shed every Sunday and they study bigger and better methods of agricu...

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Taking Learning Very Seriously

Author

Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

Keywords

In ancient Judaism, discipleship was taken very seriously. It was taken so seriously that eager disciples would ty to follow their rabbi (teacher) everywhere they went. Why? Because they wanted to see...

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An Invitation

Author

Dallas Willard

Keywords

Scripture

Matthew 11:28-30, Psalm 62:1, Isaiah 30:15, Romans 12:2, Galatians 5:1, John 15:4, Hebrews 4:9-10

He invites us to leave our burdensome ways of heavy labor—especially the “religious” ones—and step into the yoke of training with him. This is a way of gentleness and lowliness, a way of soul rest. It...

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The Disciples’ Time with Jesus

Author

John Ortberg

Keywords

The act of “being with” someone requires patience and sacrifice. It means putting the other person’s wants and needs above our own and being willing to invest as much time as it takes to make the pers...

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The Christian Life is a Learned Craft

Author

Richard Plass and James Cofield

Keywords

Discipleship

When we speak of Christian living as a learned craft, we have a particular image in mind, that of an apprentice serving for years under the tutelage of a master. This is what my (Rich) grandfather did...

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People or Programs?

Author

Rebecca Manley Pippert

Keywords

Evangelism

I remember being with a Christian student on a beach during an evangelism training week. Bob and I met several religious skeptics and began talking about all sorts of things. Eventually the conversati...

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Spiritual Disciplines and Who We are Becoming

Author

John Ortberg

Keywords

Spiritual Disciplines

God’s primary assessment of our lives is not going to be measured by the number of journal entries…The real issue is what kind of people we are becoming. Practices such as reading Scripture and prayin...

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Disciplining Daily Deeds

Author

Kyle David Bennett

Keywords

Scripture

James 3:13, Hebrews 12:11, Proverbs 4:23, Philippians 4:8-9, Colossians 3:17, Romans 12:1-2, 1 Timothy 4:7-8

We can learn a thing or two about discipleship and the discipline required of a disciple from our fourth-century monastic brothers and sisters. Like them, we do basic, ordinary activities every day. W...

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The #1 Disciple

Author

John Ortberg

Keywords

Scripture

Matthew 6:25-34, Galatians 1:10, Philippians 2:3-4, Matthew 23:1-12, 2 Thessalonians 1:11-12, James 4:1-10, 1 Peter 5:1-11

Harold Kushner wrote about a very bright, driven pre-med student at a very competitive college. While traveling in the East the summer before his junior year, he met a guru who said, “Don’t you see yo...

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Following Can Be Harder than Leading

Author

Adele Ahlberg Calhoun

Keywords

My experience with following indicates that it can be even more difficult than leading. Following requires humility, risk, attention, awareness and guts. It means serving someone else’s agenda and fol...

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Discipleship Should Fuel Fascination

Author

Samuel Whitefield

Keywords

Beholding beauty produces fascination, and fascination is the best way to transform a person. Consider a young man in love. Parents, professors, mentors, and friends can plead with a young man to chan...

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The Danger of Discipleship

Author

Eugene H. Peterson

Keywords

Discipleship

Scripture

John 15:5, Matthew 7:24, Romans 12:1-2, Luke 6:46, James 1:22, Colossians 2:6-7

The great danger of Christian discipleship is that we should have two religions: a glorious, biblical Sunday gospel that sets us free from the world, that in the cross and resurrection of Christ makes...

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Discipleship at Ground Zero

Author

Mindy Caliguire

Keywords

One of the first Bible study groups I ever attended was at the Sigma Chi fraternity house at Cornell University. We were a hodgepodge of academics, sorority girls, fraternity boys, star athletes, matu...

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Our Faith

Author

C. S. Lewis

Keywords

Scripture

2 Corinthians 3:18, Galatians 2:20, Romans 8:10, Ephesians 3:16-17, 1 Corinthians 15:49, Ezekiel 36:26, Philippians 2:13, 1 John 4:13, Romans 8:29

Our faith is not a matter of our hearing what Christ said long ago and “trying to carry it out. The real Son of God is at your side. He is beginning to turn you into the same kind of thing as Himself....

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By Their Work You have Been Threshed

Author

Augustine of Hippo

Keywords

In this excerpt from a sermon on the Lord’s Supper delivered by Augustine of Hippo to a group of Catechumens, (a Christian believer preparing for Baptism) the great bishop compares the process in whic...

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Following Jesus Requires Real Commitment

Author

Bradley Long

Keywords

Scripture

Proverbs 3:5-8, Matthew 22:37, Romans 12:1-2, Luke 14:26-27, Deuteronomy 6:5, Luke 16:13, Mark 12:30, John 14:15, Matthew 16:24-26, Luke 9:59-62, Matthew 6:24, Hebrews 11:13-16, Hebrews 10:38-39, Matthew 6:33-34, Matthew 10:37-39

What are you willing to do for love? An instructor for the Perspectives on the World Christian Movement course shared with a class the major hang-up he had to get over before asking his wife to ma...

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Defining What it Means to “Follow”

Author

Keri Wyatt Kent

Keywords

Following

Jesus made it fairly simple, at least to start. He said, “Follow me.” The word follow, diluted by our culture, begs for a biblical definition. In English, you can follow the directions (or not); you c...

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An Attitude of a Servant

Author

Millard Erickson

Keywords

Servanthood

Scripture

Philippians 2:3

What he was attempting to instill in his disciples was the attitude of a servant: humility and a willingness to put others ahead of oneself. In that culture, washing the feet of others would symbolize...

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Following: Harder than it Looks

Author

Adele Ahlberg Calhoun

Keywords

Scripture

Luke 9:23, Isaiah 58:11, Psalm 25:4-5, Proverbs 16:9, John 10:27, Matthew 4:19

In her book, Invitations from God, Adele Ahlberg Calhoun shares a great analogy of the difficulty of faithful discipleship: it’s not always easy to follow: Recently I had to follow another car to a ...

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