Missional Thinking

If we look at just the leaders who could not, for whatever reason, move their PGMs to an online format, the conclusion we reach is that 61% of them simply refused to declare their PGMs as dead, even though they weren't able to meet in person. For these leaders, the PGM is definitely functioning, even though it’s not meeting. What can we learn from these leaders about church membership during this time of pandemic?

For Trotman, evangelistic follow-up generated reproduction and after that, the multiplication of reproducers. His favorite illustration for this truth was 2 Timothy 2:2, where we see four spiritual generations: Paul, Timothy, the faithful men, and others.

Breaking down the Gospels, Moore sees that Jesus had a private ministry, concentrating on individuals in a way that was much more strategic than his ministry to the masses.  For him, if we want to copy Jesus’ manner of making disciples, we should train converts to reach others.

Are small multiplier groups found in the New Testament? Are they, in fact, coherent with a biblical ecclesiology? What is the relationship between small groups and church polity?

For Joel Comiskey, Jesus modeled what should be the ideal discipleship that the apostles - and we, today - should imitate, that is, the discipleship that happens within a small group of disciples.

Perhaps it is because we have bent so much towards a multiplying discipleship that we eventually began to neglect the roles of the preaching of the Word, church discipline and membership on the formation of disciples. If we don’t want to take this risk, I believe we should read and listen more to Mark Dever.

In this episode I will talk about vertical discipleship, that is, our relationship with Jesus as his followers. I will do this by highlighting the works of the principal authors on the subject and commenting some applications in search of effective evangelism in the 21st century.

Discipleship started receiving a crucial relevance in Christian missiology since we began to realize that evangelism itself is not the end of the line, and that conversion is only the beginning of a process that must take the new believer to a life of witnessing and multiplication.

The church will always be beautiful, because it’s the Lord’s bride. But it can either be restrained in four walls or exhibit all of its vitality in the open field. It depends on how we practice leadership among God’s people.

Understanding that discipleship begins before conversion was a crucial shift for an effective evangelism in the 21st century because it took us from an occasional evangelism to a relational evangelism.