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Disciple-Making: Foundational

2012 European Disciple-Making Leaders Network: Foundational Track

The aim of the Disciple-Making Leaders Network: Foundational Track is for each participant to develop biblical convictions about leadership and disciple-making, so that by the end of the Forum they understand their calling as leaders to build relationships that help God’s people become mature. A key component of this Network will be small group interaction and discussion throughout the four days of the Forum to help deepen participants’ learning. The Network will also include discussion of pre-Forum reading, lectures on key biblical material, and discussion of practical examples. Participants will be encouraged to develop practical strategies for becoming more effective in disciple-making. Applicants should be those involved in Christian leadership (at any level) who desire to develop maturity in the members of the body of Christ and are willing to grapple honestly with their responsibility to make disciples.

NETWORK LEADER

Mark Stirling is the leader of the European Disciple-Making Leaders Network. He is a former medical doctor who has worked in student ministry with the Navigators in Edinburgh. In 2007 he completed an MA in Exegetical Theology at Covenant Seminary in St Louis. He, his wife Jenny and their four children now live in St Andrews, Scotland, where they seek to help students grow to maturity in Christ. Mark is also engaged in PhD studies in Theology and Biblical Studies (Learning Christ in Ephesians) at the University of St Andrews and is involved in helping to lead the work of the Navigators amongst students in the UK.

 

NETWORK SPEAKERS

Tom Streeter is the teaching elder of the church he began in Zionsville, Indiana, in 1981. Having planted churches in Illinois and Indiana, his 45 years of pastoral ministry have been characterised by a devotion to developing disciples within the context of the church. Whether training believers in participatory worship, meaningful relationships, cultural engagement, or a vigorous life of the mind, he has a passion for right thinking and authentic living. His lifelong study in theology, the church, and history has included leading several Reformation tours in Europe along with his wife, Judy.

Glynn Harrison is Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Bristol. He was formerly a consultant clinical psychiatrist, a past president of the International Federation of Psychiatric Epidemiology, and he has acted as advisor the UK department of Health and WHO. He is a lay minister and leads the men’s ministry in his church. He lectures widely on pastoral issues, human sexuality, and the interface between mental health and spirituality.

 

Eric Larsen serves as the Director of Global Youth & Family Ministry and Institute for Mission to the World.  He has worked with youth and their families in the local church for 20 years. An ordained pastor, he holds degrees from Covenant College, Covenant Theological Seminary and Fuller Theological Seminary where he earned a doctorate in youth, family and culture.  He serves as adjunct professor of global youth and family ministry for Covenant Theological Seminary and Reformed Theological Seminary.  He has lived in Kenya, Australia, and the United States, and has served in well over 25 countries throughout Eastern and Western Europe, Africa, Latin America, and Asia-Pacific regions. His work involves training cross-cultural youth ministers and equipping national leaders and local churches to reach the youth in their context. He and his wife Rebecca have four children.

Endi Kovacs was one of the first traveling sceretaries of the Hungarian Fellowship of Evengelical Students and is the founding Chairman of the Board of Directors of ’Harmat’, a Hungarian Evangelical Publishing House. He has been involved in leadership training with Church Resource Ministries in Hungary for the past 20 years. He received his training in the agriculture and dairy industry at Pannon University, Hungary, and studied Spiritual Theology at Regent College, Vancouver, Canada. His main interest has been to promote and cultivate spiritual transformation in the lives of those who serve the people of God, hence his interest in the history and the current practices of Christian spirituality. He lives with his wife, Kati, who is a Christian counsellor, and their two children, Lilien and Robin, in Hungary.

NETWORK PROGRAMME

Day 1

Introduction and Overview of Network
Mark Stirling

This introductory session will introduce the aims and methods of this Network. This first session will include an introduction to the members of the small group. Participants will work in the same small group for the duration of the Forum. These will be facilitated by experienced small group leaders.

The focus of this session will be upon the nature of biblical maturity, how people grow to maturity and how leaders facilitate and nurture that growth. The second half of the session will be devoted to group work engaging with the question of what key biblical convictions need to be built into people’s lives in order for them to grow to fruit-bearing maturity.

A Biblical Vision for Disciple-Making
Mark Stirling

This session will overview some of the biblical material on disciple-making, focusing particularly on Jesus’ call to follow in Luke 9:22-3. In this session, the inseparability of discipleship and mission will be emphasised and we will pay close attention to Jesus’ training of the disciples’ heart attitudes. Participants will be encouraged to begin to develop personal applications that they can “take home” to their own ministries.

Day 2

Disciple-Making in Context: Children, Youth, and Families
Eric Larsen

This session addresses the particular challenges of disciple-making among children and youth. How can the church do the best job possible of nurturing its young people towards Christian maturity? What kind of help do families need from those in church leadership in order to bring up their children well. These practical disciple-making issues will be the focus of this session led by Eric Larsen, an experienced youth pastor and director of Mission to the World’s (MTW) Global Youth and Family Ministries.

Disciple-Making Leadership in the Local Church
Tom Streeter

Discipleship is central to the life of the mature Christian. One cannot take salvation seriously, nor one’s purpose in the world, without embracing this concept embedded in biblical teaching. Established as Jesus’ plan, discipleship is not an “add-on” to the individual’s life or a “programme” added to the schedule of a local church. Rather, it is a serious and intentional response to how we live and conduct our lives in answer to the call of Jesus to “come and follow Me.” Each local church is intended to be a disciple-making body, and each Christian is called to discipleship as a way of life. This session will look at how we nurture a discipling consciousness and establish local churches that have discipleship at the heart of their ministry.

Day 3

Discipling with Self-Awareness
Glynn Harrison

The Puritan John Flavel said that “keeping the heart” is the central duty of all Christians. He wrote, “You have been strangers to this work too long; you have kept others vineyards too long...will you now resolve to look better at your own hearts?” This session looks at some of the dangers of “keeping others vineyards” and how we need to be watchful over our own hearts to guard against them.

Disciple-Making Leadership: Maturity and Spiritual Formation
Endi Kovacs

This session will address the question of how people grow towards maturity and the process of spiritual formation. The practical focus of the teaching will be upon the use of spiritual disciplines. The question will be addressed not only of how the leader needs to continue to grow by employing spiritual disciplines, but also of how the leader can help others to do the same.
 

Day 4

Power, Authority, and Leadership
Mark Stirling

The approach to disciple-making outlined in this Network is highly relational (without sacrificing content) and also very powerful. However, as with anything that has potential to do great good, it also has potential to do great harm. Sadly, nowhere is this more true than in Christian leadership.

This session will explore the nature of the power we exercise in relationships and how we can develop a properly biblical perspective on how we exercise authority. Having laid a biblical foundation, the small groups will then discuss a series of illustrative case histories to help us think very practically about some of the potential pitfalls of leadership.

So What? Or, Where Do We Go From Here?
Discussion facilitated by Mark Stirling

In this final session, each small group will work for 45 minutes at clarifying the take-home messages of this Network and generating specific personal applications, revisiting the list of biblical convictions they generated on Day 1 of the Network. There will then be a final, 30-minute plenary session when groups will provide feedback on what they have learned during the Network and in what ways their learning will inform their ministries when they return home.There will be a particular focus in the final session on the question of leaders’ responsibilities to train and equip (“multiply”) other leaders.

 

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