Page 28 - Contact Summer 2017
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Disciple Making
- A Core Value
One of High Kirk’s core values is ‘intentional Between September 2016 and March 2017,
discipleship’ embodied in the following High Kirk sent a number of delegates to the
statement – ‘we will intentionally nurture Disciple Makers Network in Assembly
Christian maturity, engaging all our members, Buildings. These gatherings were the initiative
young and old, in meaningful service and of Rick Hill, PCI’s Discipleship Officer, with the
ministry.’ How this will be achieved will look hope of ‘envisioning and equipping disciples
quite different from how it has been practiced who make disciples.’ A number of churches
in the past. We want to move away from from across the province were represented
traditional models to a more biblical and Rick enlisted the help of a few of his friends
perspective on disciple making. As Colin who work in the coalface of disciple making
Marshall and Tony Payne say in their excellent across the UK. The amount of helpful material
book The Trellis and The Vine: that was gleaned from the various sessions
cannot be outlined in a short article like this,
“Structures don’t grow ministry any more than so I want to focus our attention on one of the
trellises grow vines. Most churches need to preliminary sessions called ‘Helpful shifts in
make a conscious shift away from erecting and becoming a Disciple Making Church.’ At the
maintaining structures, and towards growing outset, it was important for us to see what
people who are disciple-making disciples of Jesus himself saw as the priority for His church.
Christ.” As we were reminded, Jesus never told us to
build the church; that was His job (Matthew
16:18). Our job is to make disciples (Matthew
28:19). We were then told that to be able to do
this we needed to have a ‘ministry mind shift.’
Five helpful shifts in becoming a disciple
making church were outlined as follows:
