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What is The Path of Discipleship in Your Church?
“What is the path of Discipleship in your church?” This is a question I get a lot. My response is usually that the path of discipleship at The Jouney is not knowledge driven with an appeal for people to serve at the end, but service driven with the knowledge that people need provided along the way. There is a huge difference between the two.Knowledge is a very dangerous thing. In 1 Corinthians 8:1 Paul told the Corinthians “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.” When we teach a class at The Journey that is knowledge based, we let people know that if they sit through 3 hours of Bible teaching and leave without acting in a different and more loving way as a result of the class, they have become less spiritually mature as a result of their attendance. They would have been better off if they had stayed home and taken a nap!
What is the path of discipleship in your church? Do you challenge (and give opportunities) for people to serve and provide the knowledge they need along the way, or do you give them knowledge and training and then try to convince them to serve at the end?
“If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.” - Jesus (John 13:17)
P.S. You might want to check out he sermon series “Fully Engaged: The Power of a Committed Life.” It helped us challenge those attending The Journey to act out their faith in a deeper way.
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# 1 | Author: tomrawls
05/30/08 3:13 AM | Comment Link |
Hi Nelson,
Here at proclaimers Church we know you as an old friend - (www.proclaimerschurch.com. Every member of my team has a “personal growth plan” - we work out of “healthy systems” and we’ve broken 500 in the last 6 month! Thanks for everything.
I spoke to my core team just wednesday on the need for us to strategically and intentionally disciple our people via their team involvements - we are working up a system this next week for email delivery to every departmnet leader to intentionally commence this kind of informal/formal training through teams - we see that serving on teams in the place where discipleship takes place - thanks for the confirmation.
Your awesome nelson - love you heaps and thanks for being so powerful in your practical teaching.
Tom Rawls
Senior Minister
proclaimers Church
http://www.tomrawls.com