Our Families and Disciple-Making
Imitating Jesus Blog
by Lewie Clark
7M ago
Elizabeth DeLuca asks the question, “How are the worlds in which we live shaped by the ways that households are thought and made? How does the scale of the household shape the spatial and temporal scales at which we claim belonging and responsibility?”[1] Disciple-making establishes a person’s familial connection to her heavenly Father, Jesus, and to her spiritual siblings. The setting in which we make disciples will shape our disciple. The classroom creates students, a laboratory develops scientists, a bootcamp produces disciplined soldiers, and the familial forms disciples of Jesus. Since lo ..read more
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Mental Health and Making Disciples of Jesus
Imitating Jesus Blog
by Lewie Clark
11M ago
One way to love a person that has a learning disability, mental disorder, or who is neurodivergent is to help him attach to his heavenly Father, who is love. (Neurodivergent is a term that describes people whose brains develop or work differently for some reason. People with ADHD, dyslexia, autism, or other mental disorders would be neurodivergent.) God can seem distant to a person that is neurodivergent because the usual means of connecting to God by reading the bible, reading a Christian book, journaling, memorizing scripture, church attendance, and listening to a sermon are not easily acces ..read more
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Giving Access
Imitating Jesus Blog
by Lewie Clark
1y ago
Two important questions to ask when we make disciples of Jesus for the advancement of kingdom of God: What came into the minds of the twelve disciples when Jesus said to them, “Go into all the world and make disciples?” How did the disciples do ministry because of the training they had received from Jesus? The disciples had spent three intensive years with Jesus being trained by him to be his disciple. The books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John show the means by which Jesus trained his disciples and what lesson he taught them. The Means The means by which Jesus trained them was, a) by being ..read more
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A Monument to Atheism
Imitating Jesus Blog
by Lewie Clark
1y ago
Exploring our one cemetery in Buchanan, Michigan my sister and I came upon a 25-foot marble monument dedicated to atheism. It read: “Nature is the True God. Science the True Religion” “The More Priests the More Poverty” “The More Religion, The More Lying” “The Christian Religion begins with a Dream and Ends with a Murder.” I was stunned at the existence of such a monument and here it was in my hometown! I immediately went to our public library to find out the history of the monument. Joseph Coveney was a wealthy orchardist in Buchanan who opposed anything Christian. In 1874 he erected the monu ..read more
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Imitate Me
Imitating Jesus Blog
by Lewie Clark
1y ago
“How do I make a disciple of Jesus, especially since I have never been discipled? What curriculum do you recommend?” My answer is to allow people close enough that they will be able imitate your behavior and attitude. Your disciple needs access to your life for him to be able to pattern his life after yours. The weekly meetings at Starbucks or Bible study group are not enough. It is essential for your disciple to observe how you interact with your family, how you handle stressful situations, to witness your ministry to others, and to see how you spend your downtime. It is in these settings he ..read more
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Making a Disciple of Jesus
Imitating Jesus Blog
by Lewie Clark
1y ago
A disciple is formed by imitating the life of his discipler. Jesus and the apostle Paul gave their disciples access to their lives so that their disciples could observe and then emulate their behavior and attitude. Both made disciples in the context of an intentional community in order to demonstrate for their disciples how to behave in a group with diverse personalities and also to use the misconducts of the members to correct and instruct them in the proper way to love one another. One example of this was when a dispute broke out among Jesus’s disciples about which one of them was considered ..read more
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But I’m Not Good At Leading Small Groups
Imitating Jesus Blog
by Lewie Clark
1y ago
Churches do not make disciples of Jesus, disciples do. From the beginning kingdom multiplication came by disciples making disciples, not churches starting churches or small groups starting small groups. (This is not to say that disciples cannot be made in churches or in small groups, but it is the disciples in those churches or small groups that are actually making the disciples.) The books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John give us four extensive accounts of Jesus training his disciples. Nowhere in that training do we find “how to start a church” or “multiplication through growing small groups ..read more
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First Things First
Imitating Jesus Blog
by Lewie Clark
1y ago
C.S. Lewis writes, “Put first things first and you get the second things thrown in. Do second things first and you lose both the first and second things.” The question I am asked most about disciple-making is, “What curriculum do you use to make disciples?” It sounds like a perfectly legitimate question to our Western ears but it is a “second thing” question. It is a question that would have seemed strange to our brothers and sisters in the first century, not dissimilar to asking a parent today, “What curriculum did you use to raise your children?” Or inquiring, “What curriculum do you and you ..read more
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Teaching Your Disciple to Belong
Imitating Jesus Blog
by Lewie Clark
1y ago
Often people ask me what does making disciples of Jesus look like on a practical level? The first thing I tell them is to create a space for your disciple to belong. How Jesus taught his disciples the love of the God was to draw them into a community in order for them to experience belonging with 11 other people. (If you make a place to belong the Holy Spirit will send people for you to disciple.) For those of you with families you already have a core to draw a disciple into. Doug Cooper writes, “There’s a drive in a lost soul—in one that is searching for acceptance, companionship, belonging ..read more
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