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

Baptism classes
At the time of baptism for people, we have classes that explore the fundamentals of the faith, the characteristics of Churches of Christ, the meaning of baptism and the seven spiritual disciplines. This is usually done in a small group environment but sometimes is done one on one. A ministry team member is normally the leader of the group and will cover the topics in their own way.

There is a great deal that could be done to improve the baptismal classes to be more effective in longer term discipleship sustainability. A more intentional curriculum could be developed to ensure a consistent approach across the groups. Further to this, a mentor or sponsor system could be explored for perhaps the first year.

teaching classes
At various times we have offered short-term courses that people can take to explore certain issues. A retired minister at Northern has taken this on as his ministry area and this has been most worthwhile. In addition, we have invited guests in from theological colleges and people with other skills to run short-term courses. Our careworks ministry offers a yearly people skills course with the aim of improving people’s ability to build relationships with people in our careworks ministries such as the opportunity shop, work for the dole program, foodbank and other ministries.

Preaching/input
The input times at our congregation can also be seen as discipleship inputs. Only one of our seven congregations has a traditional sermon but each of our congregations have a input time. Input times (both the sermon at Blended and the interactive times at our other congregations) are opportunities to deepen people’s understanding of mission and Jesus. Some of the primary discipleship would occur at the congregation event and this is why as mentioned previously that the smaller congregations have had an increased impact in this area.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 14th, 2006 at 6:16 pm by phil and is filed under mDNA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.