How do we hear God? Does He speak in an audible voice? How do we know it is Jesus speaking and not an over-active imagination? What might happen if we deliberately listen to God, believing He will speak to us? About 18 months ago I had the idea of a multi-media e-book that would address… Read More
Category: Kingdom skills
Should one ever go against principle? When it comes to baptizing people, I believe there are times when it is right to go against principle. Two of the principles I have mentioned in the last few blog posts are The person who leads someone to the Lord baptizes them Baptism is immediate Whenever baptism is… Read More
I have led many workshops on the Great Commission, but one in particular stands out in my memory. As the group of twenty or so, many of whom had been believers for a long time, went through the passage (Matthew 28:18-20), the focus of the very interactive discussion kept returning to baptism. By the end,… Read More
I'm posting this article (which I originally wrote for Shapevine) as a response to the excellent discussion you all initiated from the last post on the difference between "getting saved" and becoming a follower of Jesus. On May 23rd 2008, I became an American citizen. In a large gymnasium hastily converted into a courtroom, before… Read More
After the last post I wrote on the Roman Road pattern of leading someone to Christ, Jared commented: "I wonder if we should be encouraging people to confess the "Romans Road", or focus more on following Jesus. Not that the two are mutually exclusive, but which ever we lead with will (purposefully on inadvertently) be… Read More
"Tell me how to become a Christian!" Would everyone in your simple/organic church know how to lead someone to Christ using the Scriptures? If we want to see a multiplication of new disciples and therefore new churches, it is essential that ordinary believers know how to make a disciple, how to lead someone to Christ.… Read More
I became a Christian at the age of 11 through reading a book from my school library (Treasures of the Snow by Patricia StJohn). I had no direct contact with any Christians that I remember. I understood an absolute minimum, but when I finished the book, I went down to a shady grove at the… Read More
In his book, Church Planting Movements, David Garrison tells the story of "John," who taught a group of thirty farmworkers how to tell their stories and encouraged them to tell their story to five people. After the first week, seventeen of the thirty had shared their story, but one farmer had shared with eleven people.… Read More
The function of the 5-fold ministry in Ephesians 4 is to equip the saints for the work of ministry. What is the ministry we are equipping them for? Expanding the Kingdom by making disciples, helping them to mature and equipping them to do the same for others. In the one of the last posts we… Read More
Our friends in India, who are seeing hundreds of thousands of new believers each year, have various training topics with which they equip people, the majority of whom are oral learners. Everyone is equipped, and those who are in any kind of leadership are trained not only in the concepts, but also in how to… Read More