Discipleship Essentials (eBook)

A Guide to Building Your Life in Christ

Greg Ogden (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2019 | 1. Auflage
256 Seiten
IVP Bible Studies (Verlag)
978-0-8308-7394-4 (ISBN)

Infos

The Essential Workbook for Spiritual Growth We grow in Christ as we seek him together. Jesus' own pattern of disciple-making was to be intimately involved with others and allow life to rub against life. By gathering in twos or threes to study the Bible and encourage one another, we most closely follow Jesus' example with the twelve disciples. This workbook by Greg Ogden is a tool designed to help you follow this pattern Jesus drew for us. Working through it will deepen your knowledge of essential Christian teaching and strengthen your faith. Each week contains the following elements: - a core truth presented in a question-and-answer format - a memory verse and accompanying study - a field-tested inductive Bible study - a reading on the theme for the week - questions to draw out key principles in the readingThis material is designed for groups of three. It has also been used successfully as an individual study program, a one-on-one discipling tool, and small group curriculum. This expanded and completely updated edition includes a new guide for leaders. Jesus had a big enough vision to think small. Focusing on a few did not limit his influence. Rather, it expanded it. Discipleship Essentials is designed to help us influence others as Jesus did-by investing in a few.

Greg Ogden (DMin, Fuller Theological Seminary) recently retired as executive pastor of discipleship at Christ Church of Oak Brook. Prior to that he served as director of the doctor of ministry program at Fuller Theological Seminary. Now based in Monterey, California, he lives out his passion of teaching about the disciple-making mission of the church.

Autor

Greg Ogden (DMin, Fuller Theological Seminary) lives out his passion of speaking, teaching, and writing about the disciple-making mission of the church after spending twenty-four years in pastoral ministry. Most recently Greg served as executive pastor of discipleship at Christ Church of Oak Brook in the Chicago western suburbs. From 1998 to 2002, Greg held the position of director of the Doctor of Ministry program at Fuller Theological Seminary and associate professor of lay equipping and discipleship. Greg is also the author of Essential Guide to Becoming a Disciple, Transforming Discipleship, Leadership Essentials (with coauthor Daniel Meyer), and The Essential Commandment. He is a partner in the Global Discipleship Initiative (GDI), which trains, coaches, and inspires pastors and Christian leaders to establish indigenous, multiplying, disciplemaking networks, both nationally and internationally.

Textauszug

CHAPTER ONE

LOOKING AHEAD

MEMORY VERSE: Matthew 28:18-20

BIBLE STUDY: Luke 6:12-16; 9:1-6, 10

READING: A Biblical Call to Making Disciples

Making Disciples

ORE TRUTH

What is discipling?

 

Discipling is an intentional relationship in which we walk alongside other disciples in order to encourage, equip and challenge one another in love to grow toward maturity in Christ. This includes equipping the disciple to make disciples who make disciples.

 

1. Identify key words or phrases in the question and answer above, and state their meaning in your own words.

2. Restate the core truth in your own words.

3. What questions or issues does the core truth raise for you?

EMORY VERSE STUDY GUIDE

Jesus’ mission statement for the church is to make disciples. These pivotal verses (Matthew 28:18-20) are commonly referred to as the Great Commission.

 

1. Putting it in context: Read Matthew 28. What key events precede Jesus’ giving the Great Commission, and how would they have affected the disciples?

2. The memory verses are Matthew 28:18-20. Copy these verses verbatim.

3. What do these verses teach us about Jesus?

4. Why does Jesus stress his authority (v. 18) as a backdrop to his command to “make disciples”?

5. What do the action words of “go, baptizing and teaching” tell us about how disciplemaking is to be carried out?

6. When is a disciple made?

7. How have these verses spoken to you this week?

NDUCTIVE BIBLE STUDY GUIDE

Jesus always lived with a view to the end of his earthly ministry. The preparation of a few who would carry on his ministry after he ascended to the Father was ever before him. This Bible study focuses on the training and transference of ministry to his selected disciples.

 

1. Read Luke 6:12-16; 9:1-6, 10. What do you suppose Jesus included in his all-night prayer? (See the reading here for some ideas.)

2. What can you learn about Jesus’ strategic purpose for the selection of the Twelve from 9:1-6?

3. What power and authority was given to the disciples? What power and authority can we expect to receive from Jesus today?

4. What was Jesus’ role with the disciples after their return (9:10)?

5. What questions do these passages raise for you?

6. What verse or verses have particularly impacted you? Rewrite key verses in your own words.

EADING: A BIBLICAL CALL TO MAKING DISCIPLES

When Jesus commanded his disciples to “go and make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19), he spoke the mission statement for the church. Jesus told his disciples to do what he had done during his three years of ministry. Jesus made disciples by selecting a few into whom he poured his life.

JESUS’ METHOD OF DISCIPLEMAKING

What was the strategic advantage of having twelve men who would “be with him” (Mark 3:14)? There are many reasons, but two seem most relevant.

Internalization. By focusing on a few Jesus was able to ensure the lasting nature of his mission. We might wonder why Jesus would risk others’ jealousy by publicly selecting twelve from a larger group of disciples (Luke 6:13). Why didn’t Jesus simply continue to expand his growing entourage and create a mass movement? The apostle John captures Jesus’ caution when people clamored to him because of the marvelous signs: “But Jesus on his part would not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people and needed no one to testify about anyone; for he himself knew what was in everyone” (John 2:24-25 NRSV).

Though Jesus ministered to the needs of the crowds, he knew they were fickle. The same ones who shouted “Hosanna” on Palm Sunday were shouting “Crucify him” five days later on Good Friday. Knowing the whims of the throng, Jesus built his ministry on a select few who would form the superstructure of his future kingdom. Disciples cannot be mass produced but are the product of intimate and personal investment. A. B. Bruce summarizes this point: “The careful, painstaking education of the disciples secured that the Teacher’s influence on the world should be permanent, that His Kingdom should be founded on deep and indestructible convictions in the minds of a few, not on the shifting sands of superficial impressions on the minds of many.”1

Multiplication. Just because Jesus focused much of his attention on a few does not mean that he did not want to reach the multitudes. Just the opposite. Eugene Peterson puts this truth cleverly: “Jesus, it must be remembered, restricted nine-tenths of His ministry to twelve Jews, because it was the only way to reach all Americans.”2 Of course, you could substitute any nationality here, which is exactly the point.

Jesus had enough vision to think small. Focusing did not limit his influence—it expanded it. When Jesus ascended to the Father, he knew that there were at least eleven who could minister under the authority of his name, an elevenfold multiplication of his ministry. Robert Coleman captures the heart of Jesus’ methodology when he writes, “[Jesus’] concern was not with programs to reach the multitudes but with men the multitudes would follow.”3

PAUL’S APPROACH TO DISCIPLEMAKING

We see that the apostle Paul adopted the same goal and methodology in his ministry that Jesus modeled. Paul’s version of the Great Commission is his personal mission statement. “We proclaim [him], admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone fully mature in Christ. To this end I strenuously contend with all the energy Christ so powerfully works in me” (Colossians 1:28-29). Paul is so passionate about making disciples that he compares his agony over the maturity of the flock to the labor pains of a woman giving birth: “My dear children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you” (Galatians 4:19).

Following Jesus’ method, Paul invested in individuals to make disciples. He too had his sights on the multitudes, but he knew that solid transmission of the faith would not occur as readily through speaking to an audience. Paul encouraged Timothy to use a personal style to link the gospel to future generations when he exhorted him, “And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others” (2 Timothy 2:2, emphasis added). Paul envisioned an intergenerational chain of disciples linked together through personal investment. Contained in this verse are generations in the discipling network, creating the following path: Paul ➞ Timothy ➞ reliable people ➞ teach others.

We know Paul lived out this admonition, for his letters are filled with the names of those to whom he gave himself. Paul replaced himself in the battle with soldiers like Timothy, Titus, Silas (Silvanus), Euodia, Syntyche, Epaphroditus, Priscilla and Aquila. They accompanied Paul on his missionary journeys, were entrusted with ministry responsibility and became colaborers in the gospel. Paul attributed the change in their lives to the impact of the message of Christ in his life on them.

The Bible teaches us not only the message of our faith but also the method by which that faith is to be passed on to future generations. We are called to do God’s work in God’s way. The manner in which the Lord works is incarnational: life rubs up against life. We pass on Christlikeness through intimate modeling. Paul said, “I urge you to imitate me” (1 Corinthians 4:16) and “You became imitators of us and of the Lord” (1 Thessalonians 1:6).

DISCIPLEMAKING TODAY

Disciplemaking ensures that the gospel is embedded deeply in the lives of mature believers who serve as links to the future. Discipling then is a relationship where we intentionally walk alongside a growing disciple or disciples in order to encourage, correct and challenge them in love to grow toward maturity in Christ.

This book brings together three ingredients necessary to produce maturity in Christ. Relational vulnerability means honest, self-disclosing and confessional relationships that give the Holy Spirit permission to remake us. Second, the centrality of truth is emphasized when people open their lives to one another around the truth of God’s Word and the Lord begins to rebuild their lives from the inside out. And third, mutual accountability is authority given to others to hold us accountable to mutually agreeable standards—“iron sharpening iron.”

We will not make disciples through methods of mass production that attempt shortcuts to maturity. Robert Coleman clarifies the challenge: “One must decide where he wants his ministry to count—in the momentary applause of popular recognition or the reproduction of his life in a few chosen men who will carry on his work after he has gone.”4The irony is that focusing on a few takes a long-range view by multiplying the number of disciples and therefore expands a church’s leadership base. Though adult education programs and small group ministries are good tools to produce maturity, without the focus of small discipling units a solid foundation is difficult to build. Keith Phillips’s chart compares the numeric difference between one person a day coming to Christ and one person a year...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 15.1.2019
• Reihe/Serie: The Essentials Set
• Verlagsort: Lisle
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Religion / Theologie ► Christentum ► Kirchengeschichte
• Themenwelt: Religion / Theologie ► Christentum ► Pastoraltheologie
• Themenwelt: Religion / Theologie ► Christentum ► Religionspädagogik / Katechetik
• Schlagworte: Bible verse • Christ • christian discipleship • Christian formation • church small group • Discipleship • Discipleship Workbook • follow jesus example • group of three • group study • how jesus made disciples • inductive Bible Study • Jesus • jesus discipleship • leaders guide • Making Disciples • memory verse • micro group • new believer • one on one discipleship • one-on-one discipleship • one on one discipling • scripture reading • small group • small group curriculum • Study guide • Twelve Disciples • Workbook
• ISBN-10: 0-8308-7394-5 / 0830873945
• ISBN-13: 978-0-8308-7394-4 / 9780830873944