Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Attributes of Discipleship - Stetzer

The church is commissioned to make disciples. Part of that involves sharing the gospel with lost people so that they might come to Christ in faith. The other part of the commission is to help each one of those who comes to Christ to develop into a maturing follower of Christ. Evangelism (the first part) must be coupled with discipleship (the second part). Neither works on its own. But together, the church becomes an agent of transformation in a world that badly needs the change that a new life in Christ brings.

This excerpt from Ed Stetzer's site lists eight measures of personal discipleship. I hope you find them useful and encouraging as you mature in Christlikeness.


In 2008, LifeWay Research commissioned a survey of more than 7,000 churches to discover the principles involved with healthy congregations. That research made up the framework for Transformational Church, a book I coauthored with Thom Rainer.

Last year, we conducted another study to focus not on the church, but on the individual believer. In this study, we asked more than 4,000 people about their spiritual lives and level of maturity. This was not a convenience sample drawn from participating churches, but a randomly selected sample to ensure an even higher level of research accuracy.
The results allowed us to identify eight Biblical factors that consistently show up in the life of a maturing believer. Those "attributes of discipleship" are:

    1. Bible engagement
    2. Obeying God and denying self
    3. Serving God and others
    4. Sharing Christ
    5. Exercising faith
    6. Seeking God
    7. Building relationships
    8. Unashamed transparency
Spiritual growth does not happen by accident, and since Jesus has called us to make disciples of all nations, we wanted to discover the common traits for those maturing in their faith. It goes without saying that such attributes do not make you a Chrisitan but, rather, are an outgrowth of being a Christian. Furthermore, these are measurements of growth, but only God causes the growth. (http://www.edstetzer.com/2012/07/massive-lifeway-research-proje.html)


Now we ought to assess our own spiritual maturity to learn where we can improve. And the church - your church, my church - should look closely at our discipling process to see how we might better carry out the Great Commission.

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