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I was raised in a home where regular, frequent attendance of church services was the norm. I was in church by the time I was just a week old, and I attended faithfully from that point forward. It was just a…

Those churches that sprang from American soil have avoided certain aspects of the feudal model, but unfortunately many have been co-opted by another system. Whereas Constantine poured the early Christian movement into the mold of Roman patronage, many American…

Youth live in transition between childhood and adulthood, so youth ministry always has the potential to pull them in either direction. Too often, it tugs toward childishness. We offer really sophisticated day care. We compete with entertainers. But the…

The best way to make disciples is with patience. It’s also the only way to make a community, multiply a community, and plant new communities in a healthy way. But it’s also not the American way, nor the American church…

It feels that at some point, we might have lost our way. Perhaps we became more concerned with success than fruitfulness. Jesus says we evaluate things in the Kingdom on their fruitfulness…but somewhere along the way it became about…

Boys don’t enter the world knowing how to be godly men; they have to be trained into it. Of course, the primary training role for that formation should be the boy’s father. He is to disciple his son every…

We need to remember that God is inviting people into Jesus’ story. As important as we might think we are, we only serve as the go-between. We are called/commanded to go out and live on mission. As we live…

Lately there’s been a lot of talk about spiritual formation and discipleship, and rightfully so. I think we can all agree there’s a discipleship deficit in evangelicalism. Perhaps the elephant in the room is that there isn’t a whole…

Jon Tyson explains how the church gets distracted from its mission of making disciples of Jesus. Instead, the culture is making disciples, and doing a much better job of it than the church. That’s a big…

We have a poor understanding of our Commission.  We act as if Jesus has commanded us to plant churches.  We are commanded to make disciples.  It is out of disciple making that churches are to be birthed.  The weight…

I have this gut-wrenching feeling that many students will move off to college with nothing learned from church except food, games and shiny events. None of these things are bad, but they aren’t the crux of what will keep…

Alan Hirsch discusses the problems surrounding discipleship. Problems range from the fact that we fail to recognize its centrality to the mission of God to the fact that the Church in the West is not very intentional about it…

Alan Hirsch gives a few simple reasons for why discipleship is the mission of the…

This video shows what a disciple making movement looks like and how it…

Francis Chan shares a story about how he got a 2nd chance to talk to someone who God wanted him to talk to after he had already blown it once. His encouragement is to make sure that fear doesn’t…

There is no command in the Bible to go into all the world and plant churches. The Church is never told to plant churches until the end of the age or search out all people groups and plant churches…

What if church, the gathering of God’s people in a particular local, was supposed to be a temporary thing, a seasonal ecosystem that cycled through life and death, or a snapshot of ecclesiastical, historical, and geographical history. I know,…

Dhati Lewis explains how we desperately need to recapture the art of hospitality in order to make disciples. He describes a process of taking people into his home for discipleship. This goes beyond information transfer to achieve more of…

We started going out on the streets, praying for the sick in every place. Me and a buddy were going out on the streets all the time and seeing many healings. I’ve learned that the high point is no longer…

Looking back on my many years in youth ministry, I see that I was working so hard to win the hearts of students to the youth group. I want the youth group to be the place where they found their…

This is part 1 of a two-part series of video posts on Alan Hirsch’s presentation on discipleship. See part 2 here. Alan Hirsch explains how traditional evangelical thinking that we must evangelize first and then disciple second is flawed.…

The church, by and large, is filled with passive consumers who are unwilling to take spiritual responsibility for the lives of others. We need to be reminded that the command to “follow me as I follow Christ” is not…

Every Christian and ministry faces the slow, subtle, suffocating pressure of the ordinary. The creeping clutch of worldly concerns confronts us all. We settle into routines and ruts. Our zeal cools as we have our minds and then our…

Today’s Throwback Thursday post recalls a short video that demonstrates well the need to re-establish the making of disciples as THE mission of the church. “I don’t know any pastor who has been more personally fruitful in discipleship ministry…

God doesn’t intend for you to move past the gospel or the basics of Christianity; He intends you to build your life on the gospel and the basics of Christianity. God’s people will never be missional if all we do is sit around and inspect…

David Platt and Francis Chan have a friendly chat about the reality that disciples of Jesus make more disciples of Jesus. They also talk about the reality that many people think that they are disciples of Jesus and are…

Jesus understood the Great Commission begins with the souls of the little ones. The Great Commission is not just personal, but multi-generational. The disciples were standing in the way of parents and grandparents, and Jesus quickly put an end…

This 5 minute video offers a brief summary of the life and significance of Dietrich Bonhoeffer during the Nazi regime in WWII. Bonhoeffer is often known for his book The Cost of Discipleship. As you shall see, that book…

In honor of Throwback Thursday, I want to recall one of our earliest posts. Mike Breen puts his finger on a problem that is plaguing the so-called “missional movement.” It’s time we start being brutally honest about the missional…

The question isn’t merely about the mission; it’s about how disciple-making should be defined. Is disciple-making broad or narrow? Below are four important truths we should keep in mind as we consider biblical…

The pattern and ethos of Jesus-style discipleship revolves around the idea that it is disciples who in turn make disciples. According to the New Testament pattern, pastors, church programs, and preaching alone are not what make disciples. No, it…

The refrain of the garden echoes through the halls of our churches. It’s always someone else’s fault. We have become masters at diverting responsibility and placing blame. Everyone is to blame except the one who is actually responsible and…

Paul Washer delivers a sobering word to the American church, cautioning us about using carnal means to make false converts and starve true disciples of Jesus in the process. Warning: This might make you uncomfortable, so be sure to…

Voddie Baucham calls out a strange phenomenon in American church culture. Somehow, we think a man who has interest in studying the Scriptures, theology, church history, etc. must go get an advanced theological degree and get a job as…

Francis Chan shares a compelling new vision for the Church, except that it’s actually not new at all. It’s actually quite old. It only sounds new to us today because most of our ideas about church are so far…

A new study might reveal why a majority of Christian teens abandon their faith upon high school graduation. Some time ago, Christian pollster George Barna documented that 61 percent of today’s 20-somethings who had been churched at one point…

Paul lectured, taught, spoke, reasoned, preached, and interacted with students in the school of Tyrannus every day for 2 years! He had interactive “classes” with people which were sometimes practical in the sense of teaching as he did mission AND non-practical in…

Since many pastors and leaders believe standing in front of a pulpit and having people listen to them once a week is “making disciples” and fulfilling the great commission, it can be easy to falsely gauge our success in…

This article offers 6 insightful points about the beliefs and practices that lead to explosive and exponential growth of the Church in areas all around the world. When the goal is to make disciples who can reproduce and make…

Whiteny Clayton shares some great stories and great points about family discipleship. Listen to at least the first 30 minutes. The final 15 minutes are oriented toward specific application, which may or may not be of interest to…