Discipleship 101 old school way
24 May 2006
As I cleaned the umpteenth window for the day I was reflecting on some of the old style Crossroads discipleship back when I first joined. Back in the day... the discipleship program was pretty full on.
Think of long lists of people. People paired up with little regard to personality and friendship (Unity in the gospel was all we needed). The task was simple, meet up with another person (same sex only) for one hour. Try to get through prayer, reading the Bible and asking the hard questions (How are you going with lust?). You might have guessed but there wasn't much time for chit chat (idle ungodly stuff). Lot's of time for correcting and rebuking (not a whole heap for encouraging). There wasn't much time for problems either it was more about straightening things out. The relationship was of "giver" to the "receiver" OR "helper" and the "helped".
I don't want to make it all sound bad as many good things came out of this. People grew and matured as Christians. People read their Bibles and prayed and the church grew. However there were many people who go lost along the way. Some found the systems difficult to handle or just fell away and stopped being Christian. Some burned out, others were disrespected and damaged. There was too much "tough love" and not enough "love, love". When objections were raised they were quickly quashed.
I was just as guilty for all this as anyone else out there. By God's grace we moved on from this shocker and sought forgiveness from God and asked for forgiveness from the people we'd hurt.
tags christian, ministry tips, rant, thinking, windows
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