willard on discipleship

More wisdom from Dallas Willard on discipleship.

... we are ... disciples in discipleship making. We learn from Jesus how to make disciples as He did. ... this involves proclaiming, manifesting, and teaching the Kingdom of God. ... It is only a matter of appropriately informing people about Jesus and His Kingdom and helping them, through prayer and guidance, to make a decision.

The issue is that the church in general seems to have a weak hold on what it means to live in the Kingdom of God. Because of that we do not make disciples of Jesus and His Kingdom, we fall into the consumer/client model of teaching, training, etc.. In the end, we are often fail in this and then when we are successful, we train people to the wrong target.

We need to create genuine disciples within the community. Only then does the church becomes the visible people of God.

Our goal is "to enable people to become disciples we must change whatever it is in their actual belief system that bars confidence in Jesus as Master of the Universe." Dallas Willard

As Jesus said, "repent for the Kingdom of God is at hand". He's saying turn complete from you old way of thinking and take on all that He embodied relative to the Kingdom.

For us that looks like:

1. living in a community of love and unity
2. living a life as servants - preferring others
3. demonstrating signs and wonders as the Father directs

I'm convinced that we need proclamation of the Gospel as well as demonstration in all three of the above points. This will provide the information for the rationale decision to come to Christ as well as the emotional (or whatever word best fits here) motivation, i.e., the significant emotional event to prompt us to that decision.

Without that "one-two punch", leaders are constantly working against the actual beliefs of the people we are trying to lead.

Technorati Tags: Dallas Willard, Kingdom of God, discipleship