Revolutionary Discipleship

by ME Brines

Overview

The author lays out the problems of the Christian church in America today - declining attendance, spiritual apathy and cultural irrelevance - and demonstrates they are directly related to the lack of discipleship training provided by the church and expected of the average Christian. But how would Jesus recruit, educate and train disciples? Wouldn’t it be great if there were a book on how to do that? Wouldn’t that be the perfect way to model our lives? Wouldn’t that be the perfect mission to organize a local congregation around? Isn’t that what Christian churches are supposed to do? Currently there are dozens of books available on discipleship by all sorts of authors who come at the subject from every different perspective. But if we really want to know Jesus’ ideas on the subject, why not examine the “books” written by the disciples that Jesus personally trained? Revolutionary Discipleship examines the Gospel of Matthew to see exactly how Jesus trained his original disciples and how Christ expects us to be disciples and to make disciples of others. Unlike most discipleship books you may have seen that quote two verses and then expand them into an entire book, he follows Matthew’s account of Jesus’ training of His disciples verse by verse and in context. It’s a journey to discover what the Apostle Matthew said Jesus taught about discipleship, not what the author or any other merely human writer thinks discipleship ought to be. Think of the author as a fellow student; Jesus is your teacher. Along the way you see how the discipleship training that Jesus practiced two thousand years ago compares to what goes on in modern American churches today. How do we stack up against the teachings of the Master? If you want to truly be an effective and obedient follower of Christ in America today - you need to read this book.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940012993854
Publisher:	M. E. Brines
Publication date:	09/04/2011
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	583 KB

About the Author

In Acts chapter 26 the Apostle Paul gave his personal history as a way of demonstrating to his accusers his credentials to speak on the subject of Judaism. I’ve been attending for more than 45 years, actually since before I was born. During the time when my mother regularly attended and was pregnant with me, my father was the Sunday School Superintendent. I grew up in the church. I’ve got a first cousin who’s an ordained minister and a great-grandfather who was a Pentecostal preacher. My father organized a church from its beginnings as a house church with two families, through a storefront with a part-time pastor (who officiated at my own wedding in a “real” church rented for the occasion) all the way until it was able to build its own building.
I was saved and baptized as a teen and since then I’ve served in the church in every capacity that a layman is allowed to: teacher, Sunday School superintendent, janitor, youth group leader, as a deacon and on the church governing board. I’ve taught Sunday School, vacation Bible schools (including one on the Navajo Indian reservation), AWANA, been a summer camp counselor, done home visitation, door-to-door cold calling to present the Gospel, participated in Christmas pageants and small groups, and organized, cooked for and cleaned up after banquets and dinners and breakfasts of all sorts.
My family used to move a lot when I was a kid and I’ve attended Christian and Missionary Alliance churches as well as Evangelical Free, Community, Methodist, Presbyterian and several varieties of Baptist churches. I don’t think anybody could be more knowledgeable about what goes on inside of churches in America from a layman’s point of view than I.