{"id":6575,"date":"2023-10-25T17:30:00","date_gmt":"2023-10-25T23:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/?p=6575"},"modified":"2023-10-24T09:02:58","modified_gmt":"2023-10-24T15:02:58","slug":"personal-intentional-disciple-making","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/?p=6575","title":{"rendered":"Personal, Intentional Disciple-making"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">My long-time friend Ray Bandi, now a pastor-coach, former pastor, former Navigator staff member, graduate of a leading seminary, and graduate of the Air Force Academy, class of 1972, spoke to a group of over 50 pastors and church leaders in Manchester, NH, last week. (Ray and I served together in the Air Force.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The purpose of the meeting was to think about how they could develop &#8220;missionary disciples.&#8221; Here&#8217;s what Ray said (shared with his permission):<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Good morning.&nbsp; My name is Ray Bandi.&nbsp; Dick asked me to speak for five minutes about <strong>personal<\/strong>, <strong>intentional disciple-making<\/strong>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>During the past 45 years, I\u2019ve ministered in churches in four different regions of the country\u2026. the last 29 years in New England. \u2026&nbsp; During that time, I\u2019ve observed <strong>three consistent characteristics of the disciple-making<\/strong> of American churches.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><em>First, our disciple-making tends to be <strong>impersonal<\/strong>.&nbsp; Typically in the American church, when we gather as the church, <strong>what we <u>do<\/u><\/strong> when we gather, <strong>rarely <\/strong>helps people to go <strong>deep relationally<\/strong> with each other.&nbsp; People in the church are usually polite and friendly, but the vast majority don\u2019t really know each other below a surface level.&nbsp; And as a result, our disciple-making and our discipleship tends to be <strong>impersonal<\/strong>.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><em>Secondly, our understanding of disciple-making tends to be very <strong>vague <\/strong>and <strong>incomplete<\/strong>.&nbsp; In 2018, the Barna organization did a survey asking the question, <strong>\u201cChurchgoers: Have You Heard of the Great Commission.\u201d&nbsp; <\/strong>Over eighty percent of the respondents said that they either had never heard of the Great Commission or if they had, they didn\u2019t know what the term meant.&nbsp; So, as a result of our vague and incomplete understanding of the Great Commission, our understanding of disciple-making and discipleship is <strong>vague <\/strong>and <strong>incomplete<\/strong>.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><em>Thirdly, our disciple-making in America is typically <strong>optional<\/strong>.&nbsp; Obviously, all church leaders want their people to be obedient followers of Jesus.&nbsp; But <strong>the way <u>we train<\/u><\/strong> people in our churches, regardless of what we say, the <strong>message <\/strong>people take away is that <strong>\u201cdisciple-making and discipleship are optional.\u201d<\/strong>&nbsp; So, if we don\u2019t train people in a way that supports personal responsibility and accountability, then our disciple-making and discipleship will continue to be <strong>optional<\/strong>.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Now, we all know that the three things I just pointed out, were <strong>not<\/strong> characteristics of the way Jesus made His disciples.&nbsp; Jesus was always <strong>personal <\/strong>and<strong> intentional<\/strong> in the way he trained His Disciples.&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>So, what does this contrast teach us? \u2026&nbsp; One thing it teaches me is that we have created a different kind of disciple-making, and a different kind of discipleship<strong>, from the kind that Jesus did with His disciples.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>So, here are two questions for us to discuss around our tables:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><em>How did Jesus train His disciples, both <strong>personally<\/strong>, and <strong>intentionally<\/strong>?<\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>What are some practical ways that we can make disciples just like Jesus did?<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If you&#8217;re a regular reader of The Ewellogy, you&#8217;ve heard this message <a href=\"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/?p=6499\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">before<\/a> although not articulated as clearly and completely as Ray has done here. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>And he said to them, \u201cFollow me, and I will make you fishers of men.\u201d (Matthew 4.19, ESV)<\/em> Jesus was <strong>I<\/strong>ntentional and <strong>R<\/strong>elational, and his goal was <strong>T<\/strong>ransformation and <strong>G<\/strong>enerations (<a href=\"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/?p=3501\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">GRIT<\/a>). <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My long-time friend Ray Bandi, now a pastor-coach, former pastor, former Navigator staff member, graduate of a leading seminary, and graduate of the Air Force Academy, class of 1972, spoke to a group of over 50 pastors and church leaders in Manchester, NH, last week. (Ray and I served together in the Air Force.) The &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/?p=6575\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Personal, Intentional Disciple-making<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8X9bo-1I3","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6575"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6575\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6578,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6575\/revisions\/6578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}