This will be my final post on the book 'The Discipleship Difference' by the good people at Logan Leadership. It comes from the chapter on "The Tools For Making Disciples" and this post really only deals with one of the many they mentioned: social modeling.
I am not suggesting, and neither are they, that discipleship is about anything other than following Jesus. However, they ask a pertinent question on p. 147 that really has me thinking:
"If someone were to follow you around for a whole week, what would they learn about the life of a disciple based on your behavior?"
That's a darn good question. Not that anyone should be learning to follow me (or you), but more like, how exactly am I living my life as a disciple of Jesus?
So it has me a'wondering... if I take the "Eight Dimensions of Discipleship" from their 'Tree of Life,' how might I stack up?
These are the Eight Dimensions of a Disciple from the book:
- Experiencing God
- Spiritual Responsiveness
- Sacrificial Service
- Generous Living
- Disciplemaking
- Personal Transformation
- Authentic Relationships
- Community Transformation
- I like to start my days off by reading from the devotional "Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals." [Experiencing God; Personal Transformation]
- I usually try to do some reading/studying when I have down time at work. [Experiencing God; Personal Transformation]
- I am participating in a HomeGrown Coaching Group on discipleship. [Experiencing God; Spiritual Responsiveness; Discipleship; Personal Transformation]
- I attend/participate in community worship gatherings with my church. [Experiencing God; Generous Living]
- I serve as the parking lot caretaker for our church (for Parkview Field events). [Sacrificial Service; Community Transformation]
- I meet for mutual edification and challenge with Tom on a weekly basis. [Disciplemaking; Authentic Relationships]
- My wife and I talk about issues of faith quite often. [Authentic Relationships]
- I try to treat the under-served people I see with respect. [Generous Living; Community Transformation]
- I feel this blog is sometimes a place for me to work out my "stuff." [Spiritual Responsiveness].
NOTE: I started writing this a couple weeks ago, and this is as far as I got. I'm not real sure now where exactly I was headed with it. Still a great question to consider though.
1 comment:
This would seem to be a pretty sobering question. I like the responses you listed because sometimes I don't think about those things as discipleship but they are. I know there would be a lot of days that my behavior would be a pretty poor reflection of Christ. I was going to say, but.... Maybe I need to make more of an effort to not have some sort of excuse after that statement so I wouldn't have to make it as often. :)
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