Quotes about Discipleship

Where kairos is an event word—something that has a beginning and ending—repentance (metanoia) is a process word, as is believe (pistis). The Circle is a process, a way of living that does not have a specific beginning and ending. One does not become a disciple of Jesus and stand still; discipleship is a lifestyle of learning. And this learning begins with a change of heart.

We need leaders who will step out of "managing church" and make discipling others their primary objective.

We don't have A "missional" problem. We Have A discipleship Problem.

IF THERE'S ANYTHING ANY OF US SHOULD BECOME GREAT AT, IT'S MAKING DISCIPLES WHO CAN MAKE DISCIPLES.

When Jesus's followers asked him to teach them to pray, he didn't tell them to divide into focus groups and look deep within their own hearts.

In a sense, learning to follow Jesus is simply learning to pray the Lord's Prayer.

It is true, then, that as soon as someone becomes a Christian, he or she can and must say `Our Father'; that is one of the marks of grace, one of the first signs of faith. But it will take full Christian maturity to understand, and resonate with, what those words really mean.

Sing these songs, and they will renew you from head to toe, from heart to mind. Pray these poems, and they will sustain you on the long, hard but exhilarating road of Christian discipleship.

To retrain the imagination and the natural impulses to resist the murky short-term delights of the pagan world is harder still. To make and sustain marriages of genuine mutual submission is perhaps hardest of all. Compromises and second-best solutions are easy. To go for the full version of discipleship is to sign on for spiritual warfare.

Paul does of course want the young Christians to develop to the point where, as mature followers of Jesus Christ, they will gradually find that the Christian habits of heart and life "come naturally." But to get to that point they must learn

Follow me, Jesus said to the first disciples; because in him the living God was doing a new thing, and this list of 'wonderful news' is part of his invitation, part of his summons, part of his way of saying that God is at work in a fresh way and that this is what it looks like. Jesus is beginning a new era for God's people and God's world.

will be painful. That is part of the point, not that we seek the pain, but that we seek to follow Jesus.