Category: discipleship

Discipleship and Ministry

I’ve been spending some time lately reflecting on my ministry and the coming season. As my role has continued to change and our church has continued to grow, the pressures have changed and my time is increasingly spoken for. In addition, it seems like there is always a person or a task that needs immediate attention.

The ministry of Jesus and Paul have been speaking wisdom to me lately in the difference between discipleship and ministry. Although both men spent copious amounts of time ministering to both the masses and individuals alike, they never departed from a focused investment in a small group of men. I am noticing in myself the ease with which I get lost in ministry–the crowds crowd out my discipleship.

The conclusion for me has been, at bare minimum, I need to be investing in a small group of people on a weekly basis, and inviting those individuals more frequently into my life and ministry. The commitment to discipling a group, and not simply leading several ministries, provides for me accountability, as well as a continued perspective to the challenges our body faces in pursuing the vision God has given us.

God’s word to me has been this: don’t let ministry replace discipleship–it’s the road to failure.

discipleship

Manhood | Matt Adair

I just watched Matt Adair’s talk from the Fight Club 09 conference, and thought it was an excellent sermon on corrections to our perspective of Jesus and biblical manhood.

I’d encourage you to give it a listen:

http://www.fightclub09.com/home/medi/

It is session #4.

discipleship

Discipleship | Repost Set 2

Post author By Todd Engstrom
Post date July 24, 2009
No Comments on Discipleship | Repost Set 2

As I’m on vacation, I’m reposting some links to things I have written in the past on this blog. Below are links to the series I wrote on Discipleship:

If you have good resources on Discipleship, let me know in the comments!

discipleship

Discipleship | Wrap Up

Below is a link summary of the series I just finished on discipleship:

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed writing through my discipleship philosophy, and hope it has been beneficial to you as a reader. It has certainly provoked a number of good thoughts and given me ideas for organizing and implementing discipleship relationships into the future. If you have any questions or would like access to any resources I have, just shoot me an email.

discipleship

Discipleship | Part 5

In this post, I’m going to focus on the basic tools I use to teach people.

Tools

Doctrine

Systematic Theology by Wayne Grudem has been especially effective for believers who need to grow in the understanding of God and worship of Jesus. I hope to compile a typical “plan of attack” and the resources I have created to help facilitate the processing and application of truths learned in this kind of study over the course of this summer.

Life/Character

I use the REAP tool along with the ESV Study Bible Reading Plan to encourage daily study and application of the Word. I also have liked using SHAPE (we use a modified form of the book) to help and individual have an understanding of their story of God’s redemption in their life and the gifts He has given them to use for His glory. I think the next tool I will use is the Galatians Study by Tim Keller which focuses on the centrality of the gospel in all of life.

Skills

This has been more of the “gut feeling” stuff for me. From a pastoral/ministerial standpoint, most of my development is in feedback and coaching on how to handle a particular issue. Probably the one thing I belabor the most is ingraining the idea of “asking the right question”. Maybe I’ll write a whole post on this idea in the future…

I also like to teach the skills I use to organize life from the Vision level down to the hour by hour practice level. I teach things like Mindmapping to organize thoughts and projects, developing a productivity system modified from GTD, how to use tools like Mint.com or Quicken for managing and examining finances, and utilizing web tools for information management and research.

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I’d really love your feedback/input here…what tools have you found useful in developing people in these three areas?