Discipleship Based Churches - A Short Review

 

I very much enjoyed this short book. I feel like I learned a good bit, too. Developing a coherent discipleship strategy still seems like a daunting process, however. This is mostly so because I have always been involved in relatively old, established churches. In these churches, programs and inward-focus have always been significant. I have never seen with my own eyes a church with a strategy like Wyrostek describes. That said, I see how beautiful this is and how it fits far better with the early church of Acts and Paul’s epistles than our paradigm today. No church under persecution or so incredibly outnumbered as the early church could ever afford to focus on the sports programs, affinity groups, and material wealth of the modern, American church. In fact, it is probably these extras which we have made central that so wear Christians out that church becomes a drudgery, a chore, and a bore. We need a change!

I especially want to grow in personal evangelism. I want to make disciples, not merely in the sense that I help disciple other Christians but in the sense that the Lord uses me to make new disciples! I need to plan and budget for this.

I see a great need for discipleship among church leaders. Both church staff and deacons generally fail to follow their own path of discipleship, which leads directly to many of the leadership problems we face in the church.

In the end, all problems faced by the church are discipleship problems! If the people of God were following Jesus, those problems would seem ludicrous!