Ha ha! Good observation.

See how difficult it is to truly forget everything you know about church? Maybe since the “body of Christ” is a Pauline metaphor, we could simply talk about “being Christ” to the world. Most everybody loves Jesus and what He stood for, and many often wonder why “Christians” don’t live and act more like Christ, whom we claim to be following.

So anyway, I guess we could approach it that way.

Other than that…great post!

And the genius with letting the disciples “aks questions along the way” is that they will generally ask questions that they need to know in order to continue serving. This will not only enable them to serve more effectively, but will also give them excitement, and immediate practical application to what they are learning. Both of these things, of course, makes what they learn much more memorable.

Remember the disciples? They had seen Jesus pray and realized that it was one of the secrets of His power, and so one day they come to Jesus and basically said, “How can we pray like you?”

Jesus didn’t sit them down on day of the “Jesus discipleship program” and say, “Okay, today we’re going to learn how to pray, and tomorrow how to study your Bible.” No. He just went out with them and ministered with them and when they realized that prayer was so essential, they came to him to learn how to pray. And I guarantee that they began to practice what He taught.

Good post. I think I read some stats recently that churches which have the baseball diamond (four bases of fellowship, discipleship, ministry, evangelism) find a lot of drop off in between discipleship and ministry, and even more drop off between between ministry and evangelism.

So let’s say 100 new people join the church (fellowship), maybe 70 of them will sign up for discipleship classes. Of these 70, only about 10 will join the ministry team (10% of the church does 90% of the work), and of these 10, only 2 will enter the evangelism program.

I like what you present here, since it seems that all aspects of discipleship will be taking place simultaneously. It’s not first join, then learn, then serve in the church, until you are finally ready to share the gospel. Instead it’s, let’s go serve and share from day one, and you can ask questions along the way.

Good to hear from you!

I like your comment. I smiled as I read it becuase it reflects some of the confusion we are all facing about what to call ourselves and how to describe who we are and what we do. I struggle with this terminology all the time.

I couldnt agree more with your thoughts on ministry. The more I study the church… I mean the assembly… and the officers of that assembly… I mean the minstries of that assembly, the more convinced I am that we have really rendered ourselves highly ineffective and very inefficient in our efforts to fulfill the great commission. I pray the light continues to come on for you as it does for me.

I am open to nearly anywhere, and I have considered many different places, from here in Texas or Oklahoma, to New Zealand (came really close to that option, but then we learned that we can’t adopt and move to New Zealand…).

I am still leaning most heavily toward the Northwest United States, partly due to demographics (one area I am seriously considering is only 10% “churched”) and partly due to how God has wired me and my family.

As to your second question, I definitely want it to be missional/organic. My greatest temptation right now is to go with something “safer” or more recognizable and familiar, but every time I consider it, I discover some core value of mine that I would have to compromise. Please pray that I stay true to what God is teaching me!

Just curious about your church planting plans. Why Montana? Where else have you considered? Are you thinking about a missional/organic type of plant?

Brad