“Discipleship” is rapidly becoming one of those irritating buzz-words, like missional, inclusive, and green, guaranteed to get people asking with a certain edge in their voice, “But what exactly do you mean by that?”

In the case of discipleship, at least we can blame Jesus. His Great Commission is often cited as justification for our interest in the topic. And as you might expect, Jesus sheds some light on what we mean by the word. After all

This is a workshop given by Jenny Andison and John Bowen at the Vital Church Planting Conference 2011.

This summer, my wife and I spent some time in the UK. One day, we checked online for churches to visit that Sunday, and found one that seemed very lively. I clicked on the “staff” page. There I found an impressive number of staff, both full and part-time, but I confess I was baffled by [...]

I don’t know if you have ever had the experience of knowing what you should have said — only when the opportunity to say it has long past. It seems to happen to me frequently — and perhaps more often as I get older. On this occasion it was during lunch. My friend and I [...]

The second speaker at Monday’s RightNow pre-conference was Matt Chandler.  Before this conference, I knew little about Matt except his recent cancer diagnosis.  Matt pastors The Village Church in Texas.
He began with a warning that much of what passes for Christianity today is actually a Moralistic Deism.  He says this has occurred because the gospel [...]

On Monday nights in Toronto’s Bloor West Village, the Yellow Griffin Pub’s upstairs room hosts “God at the Pub”.  A ministry of Runnymede Community Church for seven years, “God at the Pub” is the result of the church leadership’s fervent prayer and missional impulse to lower the “barriers to entry” posed by their traditional church [...]

The simplest definition of evangelism I ever heard is: “preaching the Gospel.” But that of course begs the question: What exactly is the Gospel?
A few years ago, I was leading a workshop on evangelism, and said something about “the Gospel.” An elderly gentleman in the front row spoke up and said, “I’ve been in church [...]

This Article is from the Fall 2005 edition of good idea!, also available here in a fully formatted PDF file.

One of the crucial needs for a congregation wishing to grow in the area of evangelism is to offer a course where the “basics” of the Christian faith are taught in a way that is accessible, winsome [...]