Thursday, June 3, 2010

Three Barriers to Radical and Effective Discipleship Right Now

Caught up with Weizhu just now. We talked about discipleship. Three barriers to discipleship as it is right now:

1. Focusing on ministry participation as a marker of spiritual growth, when it should be love for God and love for people (character and holiness are by default covered by these two commandments).

2. Focusing on getting people to know the principles of God's Word more, but neglecting to help the younger ones know the Person of Jesus Christ, of whom the Word testifies.

3. Not challenging our younger ones to see the need for total surrender, to let Jesus be the absolute Lord over every area of our lives. Not challenging them to bring every area of their lives under the absolute authority of God's Word. But letting our younger ones settle for half-baked selective obedience that neither challenges nor inspires men. Contrast to Paul's declaration to the Ephesian elders: "For I have not hesitated to proclaim to you the whole will of God."

2 comments:

Unknown said...

My thought is that for 2, the two are not mutually exclusive. I can see what you mean but I think we really want to teach the younger ones who Jesus is, which we have to teach from the word (which will in turn mean teaching certain principles from the word as well).

Teaching people who the word testifies will require teaching of the word, although I must concede that the knowing part is really up to individual desire, which has to translate to personal devotion and studies. As disciple makers, there is only so much we can do, such as facilitating their learning from the bible etc (which again means we have to impart the principles sometimes)

yeu@nn said...

Thanks bro! :) Good point you made.