Disciple: Getting Your Identity from Jesus
This guide looks at the essential elements of discipleship while encouraging readers to think and journal through Scripture.
Christians are disciples of Christ. Since our entire identity is defined by Christ, we do well to think carefully about what it means to be a disciple. Bill Clem, an elder at Mars Hill Church in Seattle, looks closely at the characteristics of discipleship.
Originally written as a text for the Resurgence Training Program (Re:Train), Disciple grounds our identity as disciples in the storyline of the Bible. Careful not to be overly prescriptive, Clem instead uses Scripture and real-life stories to illustrate the essential elements of Christian discipleship. He does so by looking at characteristics and distortions of image, worship, community, and mission. He finishes with a practical chapter on weekly planning and a chapter on the multiplication of disciples. Each chapter ends with an assignment in which Clem encourages readers to journal through Scripture passages built around a particular theme. Both veteran and new followers of Jesus will benefit from this comprehensive look at what it means to be a disciple.
Top Highlights
“Embracing the servant role of experiencing redemption in God’s story rather than abandoning the God of the story because we don’t like the way the story is going is perhaps the biggest hurdle to our faith. To place oneself as the character in a story written by another flies in the face of the society and culture in which we live today. The slogan ‘I am my own master’ bellows loudly from both newsstand and blog post. Our world is saturated with the autonomy of the individual, and we simply don’t like to think that we are not in complete control of our own destiny.” (source)
“Gospel community does not settle for truth as informational; it devotes itself to truth as transformational.” (source)
“The point I am attempting to make is that if someone is oriented toward imaging God, then the disciple-making process will be more transformational than an informational set of verses and lessons.” (source)
“3) Reflecting God’s Glory to One Another through Community” (source)
“Take notice of two huge implications from the story: first, Satan is created, and evil is therefore not an eternal counterbalance to good; and, second, because evil is written in as part of the story, it can be ultimately written out.” (source)
Product Details
- Title : Disciple: Getting Your Identity from Jesus
- Authors:
- Clem, Bill
- Driscoll, Mark
- Publisher: Crossway Books
- Publication Date: 2011
- ISBN: 9781433523496
