like a fire

I just received a big box of discipleship resources from all over the globe. I have stuff from Lifeway, Simply Youth Ministry, Youth Specialties, Group, and several other smaller resources. As I sift the sands of value, I will blog some, hopefully, useful reviews of these resources and also have some good things to say about the “D” word.

Those of you who haven’t talked to me much might be wondering why I am so bent on discipleship right now. Well apart from typing discipleship so often that I can do it without looking at the keyboard (I never took typing), I see the youth ministry that I am a part of as being in desperate need of this one aspect of church. We do some things well and even some I would rate as excellent, but this one really sucks. The groups we have are good, but only a few would actually be discipling.

Part of the quest is just to nail down the word. If you’re like me or my wife, you know that words are actually just symbols of meaning. Discipleship is a word that has been used so long that, for many, it no longer has any meaning or even worse has a convoluted meaning. Most people think of discipleship as small groups built around bible study. That is pretty far from what Jesus did with his twelve.

So all of this is to say that I am trying to figure out what discipleship should be and how to do it well in a Web 2.0 world. More later.