What I would like to hear from you all is how you think we should help people to become self-feeders

Gene,

Yeah I didn’t as much address the “how” as the “we need to do this”. The other writers here have put together plenty of articles on how to become self-feeders, and while I could write a whole other article on it, I think just telling you what we do in the discipleship Bible study here would suffice.

Basically we follow the concepts found in 2 Timothy 2:2 “And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach others.”

And also 1 Cor. 4:16-17 it says “Therefore I urge you to imitate me. For this reason I am sending to you Timothy, my son whom I love, who is faithful in the Lord. He will remind you of my way of life in Christ Jesus, which agrees with what I teach everywhere in every church. ” And in 1 Cor. 11:1 it says “Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ”

So basically we handle it by leading by example. The ‘trainer’, ‘mentor’, discipler, whatever you want to call him/her takes the baby under their arm and leads him by showing them how to feed himself, pray, worship, serve all, and love etc etc. The baby will see the teacher reading the Bible everyday, doing a Bible study, praying, fellowshipping and loving the brothers, and this ‘witness’ speaks wonders in to affecting change and growth in their life. You’re also teaching and sharing with them what you’ve learned from the ones who trained you. It’s a great proccess and it’s worked wonderfully for us for years. I’ve seen myself, and other Christians I’ve had the honor of serving by discipling them grow up so much in Christ, it’s great. It’s all under the foundation of Jesus telling us to make disciples by teaching them what He’s taught us.

So practically speaking, that’s how we do it.

Joe

the more I think about this discussion, the more I’ve come to the conclusion that “mature” believers would have the humility to not even label themselves as such…but would only keep on seeking to grow, being acutely aware of their own shortcomings.

Also, I think a truly “mature” believer would also necessarily seek to serve, use their gifts, etc. not sit around navel gazing while getting “their meat”.

just thinking out loud…

But when I remember that it’s not about me, it affects how I view the weekly get-together we so commonly call “church.”

The teaching then, whether meat or milk or cottage cheese, should glorify God in the hearts of those listening and compel them to GO and share that love.

It’s not about me.
It’s about Jesus.
It’s about drawing others into His loving embrace.

When I was teaching regularly at our young adult gathering, we had a group of teachers who met every week. We would start with prayer for our hearts and for the hearts of our congregation. And then we would study the passage together that one person was going to teach on that week. We studied in community. We taught that way. And we asked for and received feedback. The goal was always to help our hearers fall deeper in love with Jesus and to share that love with others.

Corporate worship charges our batteries to go out and expend that energy. Out private devotions causes us to fall deeper in love with Jesus and to go out and share that love with a world who desparately needs His healing touch.

It’s all about Jesus.

I would argue that all too many churches (see Seeker churches with REVEAL studies) have been shown to never mature past the bottle because of a lack of true conversion. A false convert will not desire the deeper things of the Word. Seeker churches are filled with people who feel perfectly comfortable just being entertained.

Pasterboy, you are assuming a lot from very little information you have about the REVEAL study done at the so called Seeker churches (e.g. Granger). Chris Lyons gave some more stats from the study done there that puts the stats that Chris Rosebrough quoted in a very different light :

1. The survey was done (as far as I can tell) by all attendees of GCC not members only.
2. The 15% Exploring Christ(unbelievers) and 42% Growing in Christ(new believers – babies) adds up to very close to those 47%, 57% and 56% stats. In my mind there is definitely some correlation between them.
3. Having 15% unbelievers regularly attending a church is commendable and should not be criticised.
4. 42% Growing in Christ is quite a huge percentage and we do not know how long these people have been saved or attending GCC. To minister to that many new-believers in a single church is a big challenge. I think GCC will probably put a huge effort in addressing the spiritual growth of these new Christians.

A false convert will not desire the deeper things of the Word.

Any convert (false or true) can get stuck in some stage of their growth. According to the REVEAL study material I have read so far a lot of Christians get stuck at the “Close to Christ” stage and do not move on to Christ centred living. This is true in all the churches the study have been done which are not all seeker sensitive or seeker driven churches.

I know, Gene. I was self indicting us who live here. I suggest the culture has infiltrated the church.

So true. I think most Christians is totally blind for this.

Perhaps a Sunday school class or weekday class to train interested members.

One good thing of American churches that we don’t have in South Africa is adult Sunday school. To get people here(in our church) to attend anything beside a Sunday morning service is really challenging. I think it comes from years and years of Sunday-morning-service-is-my-time-for-God habits. It makes me !

Do you have material for such classes Rick?

I would teach on mentoring, focusing on the last three years of Jesus life as he called and mentored His disciples. Keep the church praying for this ministry to expand in your midst. Perhaps a Sunday school class or weekday class to train interested members.

How can I get the people in my church to start doing this?

Sorry I meant to say our church. It is not as if the church belongs to me, lol.