It is commonly said that if aim at nothing you will hit it every time. The aim of biblical discipleship begins with understanding the nature of a disciple. What is a disciple of Jesus Christ? How do you define that? Without definition, there cannot be direction; without direction, there cannot be devotion. So last Saturday [...]
Archive for the ‘Discipleship’ category
Revisiting Discipleship (Definitions Matter)
May 21, 2012Revisiting Discipleship (As You Yourselves Know)
May 18, 2012I’ve been hanging out in 1 Thessalonians this week for devotional meditations, and one of the things that surfaced after multiple readings is how often Paul employs the phrase “as you yourselves know” or simply “you know.” When you take a look through his letters, I believe it can be argued that the majority of [...]
Revisiting Discipleship (The Three I’s)
May 14, 2012Revisiting discipleship, I have found three “I’s” that shape the methodological convictions of a robust commitment to disciple-making. Let me explain them briefly. Intentional The goal for every Christian is Christ-likeness. Therefore everything we do in the church corporately and in our investments individually should intentionally be driven with that purpose/goal in mind. In Galatians, [...]
Revisiting Discipleship (Fruit That Remains)
May 9, 2012With the missional emphasis in the past decade, there has been a renewed emphasis in defining the mission of the church. The Great Commission is all about making disciples, but how do we do that? Within the missional genre of literature, there’s a growing stream of resources revisiting the practice of disciple-making, and I’m encouraged [...]
Gospel-Centered Spiritual Formation: Spiritual Disciplines
May 4, 2012So far in this series, I have provided a little background, the triperspectival framework, and the role of gospel forms in the development of the diagram I created to illustrate what I’m calling gospel-centered spiritual formation. Role of Spiritual Disciplines in Gospel-Centered Formation Now we have come to the role of spiritual disciplines in gospel-centered [...]
Gospel-Centered Spiritual Formation: The Gospel Forms
April 26, 2012At the conclusion of my last post about the triperspectival framework, I mentioned the role of gospel “forms” in the diagram I created to explain gospel-centered spiritual formation. Before I jump into the perspectives individually, I want to explain what I mean by gospel forms and how those forms overlap to give greater gospel focus [...]
Gospel-Centered Spiritual Formation: The Triperspectival Framework
April 25, 2012In my first post, I provided a little background to the development of this paradigm I’ve created, called gospel-centered spiritual formation. I argued that the literature on spiritual disciplines largely does not factor in the gospel, and gospel-centered literature has yet to address the role of spiritual disciplines in the life of a gospel-centered Christian. [...]
Gospel-Centered Spiritual Formation: A Little Background
April 23, 2012I never heard about spiritual disciplines until I took a class on it while in college. In those early years of my spiritual development, I was directed to books like Richard Foster’s Celebration of Discipline, Donald Whitney’s Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life, and Dallas Willard’s The Spirit of the Disciplines. As a lifelong athlete training [...]
The Outworking of the Gospel [Roots Reading Initiative]
January 4, 2012Last week, we finished the first installment [Nov/Dec 2011] of the Roots Reading Initiative focused on the mission of the church. In this installment, we read What Is the Mission of the Church? by Greg Gilbert and Kevin DeYoung (November) and Everyday Church by Steve Timmis and Tim Chester. With each week, discussion questions are made [...]
The Discipleship Downline
November 29, 2011Make » Mature » Multiple Disciples. 37 years to reach the world for Christ.
Downline Builder | Discipleship
November 21, 2011This has to be one of the most creative and cool resources I’ve seen in a long time as it relates to the church. I can see how this web-based application could serve churches in numerous ways. Check out the Downline Builder by Downline Ministries. HT: GCD While we’re on the topic of discipleship videos, [...]
Triperspectival Church Structures
November 7, 2011I’ve come to find that healthy churches make disciples in multiple venues, namely church gathered (large group), church scattered (small group), and life-on-life (one-on-one). From a triperspectival approach, church gathered focus on the normative perspective (prophetic), church scattered focuses on the existential perspective (priestly), and the life-on-life focuses on the situational perspective (kingly). Church gathered [...]
Gospel-Centered Discipleship Website Is Live
September 21, 2011The new Gospel-Centered Discipleship website is live. Spearheaded by Jonathan Dodson and Winfield Bevins, this website is going to provide a wealth of theologically rich and practically relatable resources on the crux of the Church’s mission, viz., the work of making disciples in and through the power of the gospel. As their website explains, “GCD [...]
J.I. Packer’s “Three Facets of Faith” or Triperspectival Catechesis
September 2, 2011J.I. Packer, in his excellent book, Grounded in the Gospel: Building Believers the Old-Fashioned Way, unpacks the practical out workings of the “the glorious Gospel of our blessed God” in what he calls the “three facets of faith.” Here is how Packer explains it: “The essential content of the Faith, then, includes first of all [...]
Gospel-Centered Discipleship: Great New Resource!
July 6, 2011At the very heart of the church’s mission is the call to make disciples. At the very heart of the Christian faith is the gospel of Jesus Christ. It makes sense then that these two passions ought to become the focus of our lives. Not only that, we should seek to understand how the gospel [...]
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