Gospel Centered Discipleship

Currently, I am serving on a committee at church called the Discipleship Ministries Committee.  It has replaced the Christian Education committee.  We have been discussing for a few months what we should focus on and what are responsibilities are.  One of the committee members sent us an email with a link to an article.  This article linked to a specific website called Gospel Centered Discipleship.  I went to the site and downloaded two free e-books. 

I started reading one of those e-books on Thursday.  It is called Grow: Reproducing through Organic Discipleship by Winfield Bevins.  I have not finished the e-book, but was challenged by several through provoking quotes.  Here are a few quotes from the introduction and first two chapters:

"In a similar way, a church's discipleship strategy must be structured enough to maintain order, but organic enough to change with the ongoing needs of the church as it grows or it will hinder its growth."

"When Jesus said, "make disciples" the disciples understood it to mean more than simply getting someone to believe in Jesus and they interpreted it to mean that they should make out of others what Jesus made out of them."

"The church needs to bring evangelism and discipleship together.  Christians have viewed discipleship as something they do on one hand and evangelism on the other, which is a false dichotomy. The church needs to rediscover the integration of evangelism and discipleship in order to fulfill the Great Commission and 21st century disciples of Christ."

 "Therefore the gospel of Jesus Christ that saves individuals is also the gospel that grows individuals through discipleship."

"Discipleship and spiritual formation are rooted in the gospel of Jesus Christ from beginning to end."

"Believers are saved by the gospel and called to live by the gospel. The gospel is for all of life."

"Church leaders can use church growth principles to add people to the church; however, only the gospel can grow people into disciples of Jesus Christ."

"The gospel is not an addition to our ministry or even a beginning point; rather, the gospel must saturate every part of our church's life."