Tag: Care

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Simple Discipleship Book Review by Jeff Bush

By Dana Allin

  • Discipleship is more of a journey than it is an event. 
  • Making disciples is the primary task to which Jesus calls us.
  • Many churches know that making disciples is a core value of the church, and will even put it in their mission statement, but are failing at doing it.
  • Discipleship, which is helping others love Jesus more, has too often been overcomplicated.
  • A reason we’ve failed in making disciples is because we do not have a clear, Biblical understanding of what a disciple of Jesus is to look like. 
  • If the church helps people love God with their heads and hands, yet not with their hearts, they’re doing a great disservice.
  • As churches, we sometimes confront discipleship as everyone needs to grow in the same areas, but that is not always the case.
  • We are not only saved by grace, but we continue to grow in grace as disciples of Christ.
  • Discipleship is so much more than dispensing information. A big misconception is that the more information we have, the more transformation will occur.
  • True discipleship is about being transformed.
  • Discipleship transformation does not happen at a microwave speed.
  • To disciple, a person should know you care for them and they’re not just a project. 
  • True growth takes time and intentional effort.
  • A mistake in discipleship is feeling you have to be a mentor, which is one who has more experience. It is good to see yourself as a coach, which doesn’t mean you are better than the other person, yet you are drawing out the best of the other person.
  • Clarify your goal as where you want the person to be after completing discipleship.
  • Be careful as you give advice. Do not try to offer solutions for everything they ask, rather ask questions questions that will help them think through what they need to do.
  • If you can help disciples, think for themselves, they will be better prepared to disciple others in the future.
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Organic Church Book Review by Jeff Bush

By Neil Cole 

  • We expect people to come to church, when the Great Commission commands us to go to them. 
  • God did not expect for us to go to Him, He came to us. 
  • Since we are the light of the world, we should not be running from darkness but running towards darkness to lighten it up. 
  • The key to starting churches that reproduce spontaneously is taking Jesus to the lost people.
  • We should not be interested in starting a regional church, rather making Jesus available to a whole region.
  • Lower the bar to how church is done and raise the bar to what it means to be a disciple of Christ. 
  • The gospel says go, but we seem to stay. The gospel says take the good news to the lost, but we wait for the lost to come to us.
  • Someone said that we shape our buildings, and then our buildings shape us. A church building should not confine God’s work.
  • Church worship is much more than what we do weekly for one hour. The only time God mentions church and worship together was about a lifestyle of serving him 24 hours a day.
  • The kingdom of God is to be decentralized, but God’s people constantly try to centralize it. God wants his people to fill the Earth with His glory.
  • Apostles specifically means sent ones. 
  • The church in Jerusalem was told to go, but they stayed. God had to bring persecution on the church in order for the gospel to be spread.
  • Southern Baptist have said that only 4% of churches in America will produce a daughter church. 
  • We cannot compete with the world’s show. Wherever the next best show is, that’s where people run. 
  • The key to a healthy church is not more attendance, more money, nicer buildings, or better activities. 
  • Healthy disciples make a healthy church, and reproducing disciples make a reproducing church. 
  • Accountability, confidentiality, caring for needs of each other, flexibility, communication, direction, and leadership is better done in smaller groups/churches.
  • One reason churches are not growing today is because they have left out the outreach chromosome.
  • We are tempted to focus on models that work when we should be focused on the Master. 
  • The Ethiopian eunuch was one of the best evangelists we know. After being saved, he only had the Holy Spirit and the Scripture, but he went back to his people and shared the gospel. 
  • As Christians, we should repent of: 
      1. Underestimating what God can do through new believers
      2. Overestimating what we think our value is in the growth of new believers.