mdna - Approaches to disciple-making (continued) #2
We are exploring the mDNA component -disciple-making or discipleship from Alan Hirsch’s forthcoming book and how it applies to Northern Community. The other posts in the mDNA series are here
Approaches to disciple-making (continued)
Small Groups
In the past twenty years the Western church has become fascinated with the concept of small groups. Many of the mega churches that have sprung up in the last couple of decades have pushed the line that they are small group churches and not churches with small groups. Small groups have become integral to managing large churches and they are seen as the primary providers of pastoral care, communication and discipleship. The larger worship event is intended to provide motivation for the large church whereas in a smaller church – pastoral care and communication can occur more easily within these settings.
One of the successes of the small group approach is that it cultivates an environment where people engage in each others lives to a larger extent than at a worship service. This is arguably why many emerging church initiatives, including those at Northern, deliberately keep small in numbers and grow by planting new cells or groups. The smaller group environment has significant discipleship benefits over larger worship events and these will be discussed later when we look at Northern’s approach in more detail.
Short Baptism Classes
It is common practice in many churches to offer a short course at around the time a person makes an adult confession of faith to examine some of the basic principles of the Christian faith and to explore what it means to follow Jesus. In our heritage of Churches of Christ in Australia, this occurs around the time of baptism by full immersion. At Northern our baptismal classes revolve around our seven spiritual disciplines, church history and the distinctive of Churches of Christ heritage. As the baptism classes are short and conclude usually after the baptism the danger is that the intentional discipleship process is relatively superficial and short.
Spiritual Direction and mentoring
There has been a growth in the interest of spiritual direction and mentoring in recent times. What was once an ancient Christian practice is having a renewal. Susan Rakoczy describes spiritual direction and mentoring as:
…a privileged meeting of hearts. Built on trust in the bond of the Spirit of God, two persons come together in faith to hear the story of the workings of the Spirit in the life of one of them. For the person who shared her or his experience of God, there is always the moment of ‘stepping out of the water’ as one begins to speak of what is most sacred in life. The listener, who is companion on the journey, is called to receive that sharing in trust and love, with encouragement and support, and, at times, the invitation to challenge to further growth, even at the cost of pain and suffering.[1]
At Northern we are exploring the idea of formal spiritual direction and spiritual mentoring as two distinct options. The formal spiritual direction would be offered by a trained spiritual director and be seen as a way of being held accountable in one’s spiritual life and seeing God in the midst of activity and life. Spiritual mentoring would be a pairing of someone with another who is further along the journey. The spiritual mentor would not be someone who has formal training but may receive basic mentoring skill based training.