The SEND U Blog

Reflections and Resources for Lifelong Learning for Missionaries

Category: Disciple-making Page 18 of 29

Not OUR disciples

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On February 25, 2019

In Disciple-making, Training

Who are your disciples? Whom have you discipled?

While these questions are helpful in directing our focus on the importance of disciple-making and encouraging us to be intentionally investing in other believers, I think there is an inherent danger as well in these well-intentioned questions.

During my sabbatical last year, I spent a lot of time thinking and reading about discipleship and disciple-making. I became increasingly convinced that in order to be a disciple-maker, we first need to be a disciple. In other words, to learn how to be a disciple-maker, we need to be learning from Jesus. As Dallas Willard so aptly said,

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Two-sided writing

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On October 31, 2018

In Disciple-making, Training

Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, like some people, letters of recommendation to you or from you? You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everyone. You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts. – 2 Corinthians 3:1–3

I have a grey SEND T-shirt with the words, “Be Disciples, Make Disciples.” It communicates a central idea, key to our calling as missionaries, but also to every Christian. Each of us has been called to be both a disciple and a disciple-maker. We need to be learning and growing disciples of Christ who are multiplying ourselves in the lives of others so that they also become learning and growing disciples of Christ.

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How do we disciple those of other cultures?

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On October 23, 2018

In Book Reviews, Disciple-making

Walking together on the Jesus Road: Intercultural Discipling by [Hibbert, Evelyn , Hibbert, Richard ]

A book review of Walking together on the Jesus Road: Intercultural Discipling by Evelyn & Richard Hibbert

Evelyn and Richard Hibbert believe that core to the missionary task is discipling those of other cultures. But they note that most of the books on disciple-making are written for the Western church context, and even those books which talk about cross-cultural disciple-making seem to assume that the methodology used in the West can also be used in non-Western contexts. I would concur with their observation. Discipling others to maturity in Christ when those disciples are from a different culture than yours is a significant challenge, and many mistakes can be made if one just follows a programmatic approach to disciple-making used in Western churches.  Their new book, “Walking Together on the Jesus Road” is an excellent book helping to address that challenge and showing us how to avoid the mistakes.

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Book Review: Two Stories of Everything

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On September 15, 2018

In Islam, Book Reviews, Storying, Worldview

Why review another book comparing Islam and Christianity? Two Stories of Everything: the Competing Metanarratives of Islam and Christianity by Duane Alexander Miller take a different approach than most. Rather than comparing Islam and Christianity as religions, Miller compares the metanarratives that Islam and Christianity tell. Metanarratives are the overarching story that includes and defines all the smaller stories of a people. It is the story that communicates the worldview of a group. I find it interesting that Miller never uses the term ‘worldview’ (if he did I missed it). I think he wanted to stay focused on the stories of everything rather than get bogged down in a philosophic analysis. He has lived in the Middle East and has personal experience interacting with Muslims for whom he shows great respect. He explains his approach in the introduction:

People often talk of Islam and Christianity as competing religions, and compare their doctrines and practices. When I moved to the Middle East ten years ago I shared this opinion. But over that time I found this approach to be deficient. Which is not to say it is wrong, but it fails to grasp the genius of either of these collections of doctrines and practices. … In this book I will outline the stories that Islam and Christianity tell. Furthermore, all these stories (or narratives) find themselves included in a great story of everything, which is to say a metanarrative. Islam and Christianity, whatever they may be, certainly do propose to tell a grand story of everything, from creation of the world and time all the way to the consummation of history and the eternal fate of human souls. – Duane Alexander Miller, Two Stories of Everything, xi.

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Book Review: Marks of the Messenger

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On September 3, 2018

In Book Reviews, Evangelism, Gospel

On the back cover of J. Mack Stiles’ book: Marks of the Messenger: Knowing, Living and Speaking the Gospel (Downers Grove: IVP, 2010) D. A. Carson comments:

I do not think I have ever read a book on evangelism that makes me more eager to pass it on than this one – better, that makes me more eager to evangelize than this one. -D. A. Carson.

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