Recently my wife & I had dinner with Randy Knutson, the Vineyard Churches Regional Church Plant Director. He shared some wonderful things & offered to give us some resources that he thought would help with our church. One of the papers was a definition chart, which included these two definitions: Multiplication: A learned skill. When one person leads several to Christ and then trains them until they do the same thing; &, Spiritual Reproduction: A learned skill dependant upon the Holy Spirit. When one person leads another to Christ. So in our Wed. night "teaching" time I asked if we agreed that these are learned skills; everyone said "Yes." Then we wrote down the skills we thought necessary to grow in Multiplication & Reproduction & the one main attribute that impedes it: Selfishness. My wife turned it into a self-test, I adapted it, & we're almost ready to start taking it monthly.


AM I REPRODUCING CHRIST IN OTHERS?

0 = bad
1 = poor
2 = fair
3 = okay
4 = good
5 = wonderful







0 1 2 3 4 5 Prayer (specifically for others I am reaching out to or discipling)
0 1 2 3 4 5 Time with God (daily and meaningful)
0 1 2 3 4 5 Consistency with people (I actively engage those God has put into my life)
0 1 2 3 4 5 Training (I am personally reading books that make me grow in Christ)
0 1 2 3 4 5 Growing in communication (People describe me as a good communicator)
0 1 2 3 4 5 Transparency (I answer honestly & volunteer negative aspects of my life)
0 1 2 3 4 5 Accountability (Certain people know everything about me)
0 1 2 3 4 5 Time management/self management (I spend my time purposefully)
0 1 2 3 4 5 Discernment (I know the spiritual condition of those I’m reaching out to)
0 1 2 3 4 5 Loving People (My life is shaped by a love for all people)
0 1 2 3 4 5 Grace (I assume the best of others & offer unconditional forgiveness)
0 1 2 3 4 5 Initiative (I take the first step—people describe me as moving past intentions)
0 1 2 3 4 5 Bible study (Serious study of biblical text & addressing it’s questions)
0 1 2 3 4 5 Commitment (I believe God in the face of difficulty, suffering, & trials)
0 1 2 3 4 5 Christ-like Goals (I have clear biblical goals that determine my actions each day, week, month, & year)

0 1 2 3 4 5 SELFISHNESS (Selfishness is the concept and/or practice of concern with one's own interests in some sort of priority to the interests of others, including God, his church, & those who don’t know Jesus; it is often used to refer to a self-interest.) To what degree has selfishness driven your use of time, talents, & resources this week?


What is the mission of our church?


NOTES: (this is the end)

Any thoughts or suggestions?

I do recommend Dr. G's Theology class to everyone who can take it. It was and still is one of my favorite grad classes. Likewise, I recommend eating his wife's cooking, very tasty!

Here are quotes from Reformed Lutheran Theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

“It is a fatal misunderstanding of Luther’s action to suppose that his rediscovery of the gospel of pure grace offered a general dispensation from obedience to the command of Jesus, or that it was the great discovery of the Reformation that God’s forgiving grace automatically conferred upon the world both righteousness and holiness. On the contrary, for Luther the Christian’s worldy calling is sanctified only in so far as that calling registers the final, radical protest against the world. Only in so far as the Christian’s secular calling is exercised in the following of Jesus does it receive from the gospel new sanction and justification. It was not justification of sin, but justification of the sinner that drove Luther from the cloister back into the world. The grace he had received was costly grace. It was grace, for it was like water on parched ground, & forgiveness of all his sins. And it was costly, for, so far from dispensing him from good works, it meant that he must take the call to discipleship more seriously than ever before. It was grace because it cost so much, and it cost so much because it was grace. That was the secret of the gospel of the Reformation—the justification of the sinner.

Yet the outcome of the Reformation was the victory, not of Luther’s perception of grace in all its purity and costliness, but of the vigilant religious instinct of man for the place where grace is to be obtained at the cheapest price. Luther had said that grace alone can save; his followers took up his doctrine and repeated it word for word. But they left out its invariable corollary, the obligation of discipleship. The justification of the sinner in the world degenerated into justification of sin and the world. Costly grace was turned into cheap grace without discipleship. (Cost of Discipleship—pp. 49-50)

“Christianity without the living Christ is inevitably Christianity without discipleship, and Christianity without discipleship is always Christianity without Christ.” (pg. 59)