Gravity Leadership

Lead Like Jesus. Live On Mission. Make Disciples.

Make Disciples

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How Do I Know if I’m Really Hearing From God?

If God is really always present and at work, and salvation is participating in the divine life God shares with us, we can assume we are meant to live lives of constant communion with God. As Dallas Willard put it, we can cultivate a “conversational relationship with God.”

This is wonderful news, but one of the first issues that comes up for people who seek this kind of relationship with God is the question: “How do I know if I’m really hearing from God?”

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4 Kinds of Sermons That Will Cripple Discipleship

“Why do I spend all this time on these sermons if people forget almost everything I say by the time they’re halfway home?!? Sermons are so ineffective!”

Jared was a little worked up. He’s a pastor, and he was realizing that what he put the most ministry effort into (his sermons) was bearing very little tangible fruit in the lives of the people of his congregation.

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Why the Cost of Discipleship Is Lower Than You Think

Most people have the wrong idea about the “cost of discipleship.”

When Bonhoeffer first coined the phrase, it was a helpful corrective to a very nominalistic faith. But nowadays the phrase “cost of discipleship” stirs up images of spiritual heroes: those who’ve heeded the call and have become a special elite kind of Christian. The Few. The Proud. The Disciples.

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Why Would Anyone Want to Be a Disciple of Jesus?

In the past couple decades or so, lots of churches have begun to focus on discipleship. There’s a recognition that we’ve largely assumed that if we simply focused on church growth, discipleship would just sort of… happen. We are realizing we’ve neglected Jesus’ explicit commission to “go and make disciples.”

And this renewed focus on discipleship is a good thing! But in our work with leaders, we’ve noticed that many churches dive straight into the work of developing a plan for discipleship without first articulating clearly WHY they’re doing this in the first place. The result is a whole lot of confusion and very little movement. [Read more…] about Why Would Anyone Want to Be a Disciple of Jesus?