Institute of Disciple-Making

In the Fall and Spring our church offers seminary level courses for members to take. In the Fall I signed up for my first class called, "Teaching the Bible" that David Platt taught. It was a lot more than I realized I was signing up. It was kind of a "preaching" class and we were supposed to prepare and present a sermon as a part of the class. I didn't do this part of the class. I simply attended the class for the lectures and did most of the weekly reading assignments but I learned a lot. 

I'm not really sure when and how God will call me to use the information learned in this class, it may be 20 years from now but I could not pass up the opportunity to learn more from the greatest pastor I've ever heard. 

One quote sited in our lectures was from E.M. Bounds, "The church of God makes or is made by, it's leaders. Whether it makes them or is made by them, it will be what its leaders are; spiritual if they are so, secular if they are...A church rarely revolts against or rises above the religion of its leaders." 

This is such a powerful and true statement. When pastors live in country clubs and drive Lexus' their flock probably are, too. However, when pastors are downsizing their homes and lifestyles and adopting orphans their church will follow their example and do the same. That should be humbling and frightening to any church leader! 

Another quote from my notes, "People today are crying out for practical application when it comes to God's Word. They want to see the Bible's relevance for their lives. But there is a dangerous tendency in our day to focus so much on contemporary application that we begin to look at the Bible with man-centered eyes. Our infatuation with practical application can cause us to overlook the most important quality of the Bible - it's divine feature. The Bible is a book about God more than it is a book about us."

I used to turn to a Billy Graham "Christian Handbook" that had scriptures to help people deal with various issues such as depression, grief, stress, etc for encouragement any time I was dealing with something and I wanted to see what God's Word said about that issue. Now I understand that my greatest need is to know Christ and become more like Him and God gave us His Word to accomplish this. Although we can find comfort from scripture when we are dealing with different things His Word is about Him, not us. 

I'm going to scan in my notes from class, if you would like a copy of them please let me know and I will email you the PDF. 

I wasn't planning on taking a Spring class because of tax season but when I saw the class titles posted last night I couldn't resist. I signed up for "Evangelism and Missions." David and Jonathan (our global disciple making pastor) will be teaching this class from 1/23 to 4/17 which is of course right smack in the middle of tax season. Here's the course description....

Evangelism and Missions - Making disciples involves proclaiming the Gospel here in Birmingham and around the world. This class will provide biblical, theological, and practical training in how to share our faith and spend our lives for the sake of God's glory among the nations

I couldn't resist taking this class since I will be heading to Uganda and Guatemala in just a few months. I need all the practical training I can get!