Categories
discipleship leadership

Choosing Who to Mentor | Touchpoint

The more I read David Watson’s Blog, the more I am enjoying his insights.  He has some excellent words in a post about who to choose and mentorship/discipleship, and what he looks for before investing in someone.

His six points of evaluation are below:

  • Christ-like
  • Christ-centered
  • Character
  • Capability
  • Competency
  • Capacity
  • Chemistry

Read how he expands on these points here.

This is a great framework for leaders as they seek to reproduce themselves in ministry.  I continue to pray that God would use the men that I am investing in to advance His kingdom, and ultimately they would be faithful to reproducing reproducers (2 Timothy 2:2).

Categories
christianity discipleship

What motivates you to mission? | shawblog

My friend and colleague has written some fantastic thoughts on ministry to Muslims, which have broad applications for motivations for ministry.  Below is the concluding quip from a great post:

Passion for obedience to the basic commands of Jesus in response to His love for you. The 2 greatest commands of Jesus are very clear and simple: love God and love your neighbor. God has, in fact, fulfilled these commands already in Jesus (He loves God and He loves you). Is that enough to motivate you to passionate sacrifice for the Muslim world, ~87% of which has never met a follower of Jesus?

Litmus question: Do you require more motivation than the basic commands of Jesus to live sacrificially and missionally among Muslims? Can you articulate in your life how your understanding of the Gospel has motivated you to love Muslims more?

Read the rest here.

Although the post deals specifically with ministry to Muslims, it is a fantastic question to ask for every Christian as they engage in ministry.  Are my motivations driven by obedience to King Jesus, or something altogether different?

Categories
austin stone discipleship

Discipleship and Training | TheResurgence

I really like the Resurgence blog.  It always has great thoughts, including the one below on discipleship.

The primary context for training should also be the church in situ. I find it strange that this assertion should be so contentious when the weight of the biblical evidence is behind it. Timothy was trained in gospel ministry as he went about doing gospel ministry. Paul took him under his wing, mentored and tutored him, sent him off into various situations, and talked him through whatever problems he had to deal with. The task of training is equipping people to be better gospel ministers, and an apprenticeship model in situ is the vehicle best suited for that task.

via Discipleship and Training | TheResurgence.

I am thankful to be at a church who takes this concept seriously, both in reaching out and in pastoral training.  I am the recipient of some fantastic discipleship from Kevin Peck, and my current role is the product of in situ training for the pastorate.  It is a tremendous risk in the evangelical world for a church to not hire the formally trained, but to train those whom God calls from the body.  Praise God for churches and pastors willing to invest in training up leaders.

This was brought home again for me at our staff meeting on Tuesday, which recast our vision to be disciple makers (2 Timothy 2:2) as a team.  The thrust of Kevin’s talk was we do not have a “know how” problem, we have a “want to” problem.  Discipleship simply isn’t that complicated, it is a question of our willingness to obey.

I pray that God would keep me faithful and obedient to entrusting the Gospel to faithful men who entrust it to others as well.