sustain:if:able kiwi

emerging disciples

I’m off to Auckland this evening to speak at the 21st Century Challenges to the Gospel conference, organised by Laidlaw College. Here is a PDF of my 2 page handout.

They gave me the topic of “emerging church” but I asked for it to be changed to “emerging disciples.”

Partly because I’m sick of talking about “church”, but mostly it’s where I am at the moment in terms of ministry at Opawa. We have good numbers of searchers among us, particularly from our local community, and so our season is a “discipling” season, with particular emphasis on two groups (using John Drane’s Do Christians Know How to Be Spiritual? typology) – spiritual searchers and the poorer.

Updated: for notes go here.

forming disciples

We don’t think ourselves into new ways of behaving
We behave ourselves into new ways of thinking.

(My summary of the end of a chapter in Andy Crouch’s (fantastically well written), Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling, in which he argues that to we need to focus not on culture, but cultures; not on big picture but everyday cultural practices.)

Is this statement true and accurate? If so, what does it mean for the way church’s disciple people – for the sermon, the discipleship group, the way we form our youth and children?