Quotes About Discipling

Christian mission is not simply about the multiplication of the church; it is about the discipling of the nations. It is about the penetration of cultures and ways of thought by the word about Christ.

Yet the Bible teaches that the local church is the natural environment for discipling. In fact, it teaches that the local church is itself the basic discipler of Christians. It does this through its weekly gatherings and its accountability structures (this chapter), as well as its elders and its members (next chapter). These in turn provide the context for the one-on-one discipling we have been considering so far.

Can we say anything further about what discipling is? I've said it's helping others follow Jesus. It's doing them spiritual good. But to fill all that out, discipling is initiating a relationship in which you teach, correct, model, and love. It takes great humility.

A resistance stirs within us. Do we *want* our theology paraded thus? As natural men, no. We do not want it any more than we want the discipling of the Christian moral law, repentance, the painful call of self-surrender. but if it is the intellectual expression of that faith by which we live, how can our minds work Christianly without it? Wherever men think and talk, the banner will have to be raised.

From our experience, if you want to make disciples, if you want to build a discipling culture in your community, you are going to need three things: 1. A discipleship vehicle (I call it a Huddle) 2. People need access to your life (the texture of Family on Mission) 3. A discipling language (the discipling language I use is called LifeShapes)

Huddles work because they expose people to the learning of a group rather than only one-on-one mentoring. What a member gets to see is not only how the leader is discipling them, but also how the leader is discipling other people as well. Because each person is different, different skills and practices are needed to disciple various personality types.