These essays examine what the New Testament says about the subject of discipleship, highlight the features of both unity and diversity that appear throughout the New Testament, and suggest how Christian discipleship can be expressed today.
"If discipleship is a journey, this book belongs in the rucksack. . . Like the scriptures on which it is based, it deserves repeated reading." Stephen Cherry, Dean of Kings College, Cambridge This fresh and inspiring look at the meaning of discipleship covers the essentials of the christian life, including: faith, hope and love; forgiveness; holiness; social action; life in the Spirit. Written for the general reader by one of our greatest living theologians, this book will help you to see more clearly, love more dearly and follow more nearly the way of Jesus Christ.
Whether you are teaching a Sunday school class, leading a small group, discipling an individual, or studying on your own, this study guide is designed for you! Each lesson consists of the Lesson text, Outline, Teacher's Guide, Discipleship Questions, Answer Key, and Scriptures. As a bonus, you can download PDFs of the Outlines, Discipleship Questions, and Scriptures for each lesson in this study guide.
Exploring the interrelated topics of Christology and discipleship within the apocalyptic context of Mark's Gospel, Henderson focuses on six passages: Mark 1:16–20; 3:13--15; 4:1–34; 6:7–13; 6:32–44; 6:45–52. Together, these passages indicate that the disciples failed to understand not just Jesus' messianic identity per se but the apocalyptic nature of his messiahship, as well as its implications for their own participation in God's coming reign. The implications of this for Mark's gospel as a whole are to situate Mark's Christological claims within the broader context of the apocalyptic 'gospel of God'. This lends coherence to Mark's bifocal interest in miracle and passion. It also illuminates the relationship between Mark's Jesus and his followers as those who carry forward his own mission: to demonstrate the coming kingdom of God, which is fully assured if not yet fully in view.
During his years of pastoral/teaching ministry Pastor John has bemoaned the erosion of the Church, of Western Civilization in general, and the American culture in particular. He attributes much of this erosion to a general weakness in the Church of making Biblical disciples of Jesus Christ. This book is not primarily about showing that weakness; rather, he will define Biblical discipleship and provide a simple-to-grasp but difficult-to-do five-step process to transform converts into maturing disciples of Jesus Christ. The will of God for the Christian is sanctification, to be holy. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote of The Cost of Discipleship; Pastor John gives a workable process to be holy. The stated goal is to look like the Biblical Jesus to a watching world.
This volume examines the Fourth Gospel narrative in terms of its character portrayal, especially the portrayal of anonymous characters. It focuses on how characterization impacts readers, eliciting their involvement in the narrative, particularly the recognition of and response to Jesus' identity, and how anonymity facilitates that participation. The first chapters examine the understanding of characterization in contemporary literary theory, then the author explores other contemporaneous narratives for the function of anonymous characters in those narratives. The final chapters examine specific character portrayals in the Fourth Gospel, demonstrating how the narratives of anonymous characters draw the reader into participation in the narrative and enables identification with those characters, especially the disciple Jesus loved, the Johannine paradigm of discipleship.
The author of this study of Romans has served in the ministry for over sixty years. He served as pastor of churches in Mississippi and Alabama. He also served as Missionary Associate for the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention as professor and principle of the Barbados Theological Collage, Barbados, West Indies. This study comes out of over forty years of preaching and teaching from Paul's Book of Romans. Ponder These Questions In Your Heart. As a Christian, do you sometimes feel incomplete, insufficient, insignificant, unworthy and unable to live as you desire? At your best do you feel you are a failure and at your worse you are just no good? Do you feel that the things you do are never satisfying to you and are unworthy of God's approval? Do you sometimes feel the person you are as a husband, wife, mother, father, neighbor, Christian worker is never good enough? Your heart's cry is, "Oh, I wish I could be a better husband, wife, parent, Christian." Are you at times able to say, "I do know some victory, some joy, some peace, but my defeats and despairs are greater than I believe they ought to be? Have you tried and tried but you are always failing, ending up empty? You may at times feel like the fellow who said, "I am sick and tired of being sick and tired." If these express your feeling, then you know what Paul was feeling when he said, "Who can deliver me from this death" (Romans 7:25). If your answer to these question is Yes, this study is especially for you.
Dozens of brief yet powerful chapters about what it really means to live out the Great Commission in practical terms, written by two men with more than sixty years of combined discipleship experience.
Soon after Jesus began his public ministry, he called his first ‘disciples’. He would teach and train them and then, after his death and resurrection, commission and empower them to go to the nations to make more ‘followers’. The risen Jesus is still calling and sending people today. If we heed his call, the result can be just as transformative and as exciting as it was for the first disciples. While there are no explicit occurrences of the term ‘disciple’ outside the Gospels and Acts, with only two further biblical references to ‘followers’ of Jesus, it is Peter Morden’s conviction that we need the entire Bible if we are going to be whole-life disciples. He reflects on Scripture and asks the primary question, ‘How do we live as committed disciples of Jesus today?’ He explores the foundations, resources and practice of discipleship in a range of Old and New Testament texts. The result is a well-rounded and satisfying picture of Christian discipleship, one that is wonderfully attractive as well as deeply challenging.