{"id":11528,"date":"2023-07-06T17:09:48","date_gmt":"2023-07-06T21:09:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.garycombs.org\/blog\/?p=11528"},"modified":"2023-07-06T17:09:49","modified_gmt":"2023-07-06T21:09:49","slug":"4-key-areas-of-discipleship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.garycombs.org\/blog\/2023\/07\/4-key-areas-of-discipleship.html","title":{"rendered":"4 Key Areas of Discipleship"},"content":{"rendered":"
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<\/p>\n\u201cGo therefore and\u00a0make disciples of\u00a0all nations,\u00a0baptizing them\u00a0in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,\u00a0teaching them\u00a0to observe all that\u00a0I have commanded you. And behold,\u00a0I am with you always, to\u00a0the end of the age\u201d (Matthew 18:19-20 ESV).
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<\/p>\n\u201cAnd Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men\u201d (Luke 2:52 NIV).<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n

The command to \u201cgo and make disciples\u201d is not just for pastors and missionaries, it\u2019s for every believer. This commission is to all who would call themselves Christ-followers. It\u2019s the Great Commission, and one of the main purposes of the Church.<\/p>\n

As a church, we want Eastgate to be like a discipleship \u201cfactory.\u201d A widget factory is concerned about production, how many widgets they\u2019re making, but they\u2019re also focused on quality control. They want each widget to meet certain minimum specs. Likewise, Eastgate’s \u201cdisciple-making factory\u201d is concerned about both quantity and quality. We want to grow both deep and wide.<\/p>\n

Desiring to grow \u201cdeep\u201d disciples, there are four areas in which we endeavor to lead and feed our flock. These four key areas are similar to the four ways that Jesus grew in Luke 2:52. Our four areas or four \u201cB”s of discipleship are (not necessarily in this order):<\/p>\n

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  • Believing\u00a0<\/strong>\u2013\u00a0Jesus grew in wisdom, in what He knew. We desire to lead people into a saving faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. We desire to teach the whole Bible. We want our members to be biblically literate and trained in good doctrine. We have ten essentials or foundations of the faith that we seek unity of belief on.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
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    • Behaving<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 Jesus grew in stature. He grew physically. We desire that our members grow in physical disciplines and self-control. We teach believers about financial stewardship, parenting, marriage and other life-skills. We teach them about the spiritual disciplines, like how to have a daily quiet time, about Bible study, witnessing, worship, prayer, fasting, sacrificial giving and more.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
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      • Becoming<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 Jesus grew in favor with God. He grew spiritually. We desire that our members grow spiritually too. This is about the inner life, one\u2019s character. We believe that the nine character traits of the fruit of the Spirit, like \u201clove, joy, peace\u2026\u201d and so on, found in Galatians 5:22-23 are good indicators of growing in the character of Jesus. Adding the trait of \u201chope,\u201d we seek to train members to yield to the Lord and grow in these ten character traits.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
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        • Belonging<\/strong> \u2013 Jesus grew in favor with men. He grew socially. We desire to lead believers to have assurance of salvation, so that they know that they belong to God and to God\u2019s family. We exist to make disciples of Jesus Christ who have a growing Heart for God, Heart for each other, and Heart for our World. We want Eastgate to live as the family of God.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

          As a church we desire to build disciples that are growing in these four areas to be more like Jesus, but admittedly, we can only offer these things. To reword an old cliche, \u201cwe can lead our sheep to water, but we can\u2019t make them drink.\u201d As individuals, we have to take personal responsibility for our own discipleship. The church can only offer an environment for growth. We each have to personally desire this growth.<\/p>\n

          Do you want to grow more like Jesus? Are you taking advantage of the opportunities for growth that your church offers? Are you yielding to God\u2019s work in you?<\/p>\n

          How\u2019s your discipleship?<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

          \u201cGo therefore and\u00a0make disciples of\u00a0all nations,\u00a0baptizing them\u00a0in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,\u00a0teaching them\u00a0to observe all that\u00a0I have commanded you. And behold,\u00a0I am with you always, to\u00a0the end of the age\u201d (Matthew 18:19-20 ESV). \u201cAnd Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":11507,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2707,2834,2061],"tags":[2926,2091,2924,2024,2431,2428,2435],"location":[],"class_list":["post-11528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-church-growth","category-discipleship","category-religion","tag-believing","tag-belonging","tag-christian-growth","tag-discipleship","tag-great-commission","tag-maturity","tag-spiritual-growth"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/garycombsorg.s3.amazonaws.com\/uploads\/2023\/07\/Footprints.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.garycombs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.garycombs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.garycombs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.garycombs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.garycombs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11528"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.garycombs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11528\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11533,"href":"https:\/\/www.garycombs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11528\/revisions\/11533"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.garycombs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.garycombs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.garycombs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.garycombs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11528"},{"taxonomy":"location","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.garycombs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/location?post=11528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}