You See Bones, I See an Army

All told, Jesus gave over thirty commands in the four gospels. Those who gather ‘in his name’ seek to study and obey those commands. Consistent with this truth, Acts 5:32 tells us that the Holy Spirit is given to ‘…those that obey Him.’

What are the commands of Jesus we are to obey? The commands of Jesus can be summarized in these seven imperatives:

Not that complicated. Not dependent on programmes or meetings or schools. The ecclesia are those committed to obedience. Obedience to the commands of Jesus sets us apart. Followers of Jesus become fully devoted disciples when they get serious about obeying Jesus’ commands.

(from Location 642, Kindle Edition)

I am determined to end my life more passionate than I began it. (Location 85)

the church in Western cultures is no longer growing numerically, and has lost its ability to transform culture spiritually. (Location 104)

we spend so much time and energy thinking of ways to make the sacred hour on Sunday more attractive to saved people, rather than equipping saved people to take the church to the world. (Location 117)

No one will die for a cause that is no bigger than Sunday-oriented, building-fixated Christianity. (Location 120)

His example of doing church was a community of a few men and women reaching out together. (Location 136)

a spontaneously reproducing movement of churches. (Location 140)

any model of church that wins, gathers and multiplies followers of Jesus is a good model. (Location 145)

a radical community of Jesus followers who seek to alleviate injustice and share the Father’s love with those who have never heard that He cares for them. (Location 158)

I believe God has a big dream, but I also believe He transforms the world one life, one family and one community at a time. I believe in dreaming big and building small, one new ecclesia of believers at a time. I believe the effectiveness of any movement that makes a lasting impact will be measured by how effective it is in fostering a culture of discipleship that thrusts its members out among the lost. (Location 161)

When people came to live with us, we didn’t insist they believe what we believed, but we did ask them to follow our routines of prayer, work and common meals. We put a lot of effort into a caring, personal mealtime. (Location 257)

People were fascinated with our life together. Many of them became followers of Jesus simply by observing our lifestyle of community and care for each other. (Location 261)

That He chooses to partner with us even though we are sinful is a sign of his greatness. I am still stunned by God’s humility and kindness. That He invites me to be a co-worker in sharing his love with others never ceases to amaze me. (Location 284)

If we seek community with other followers of Jesus without an orientation to forgiveness and mercy, we will experience continual conflict and division. (Location 292)

Sin is not the greatest barrier to community: lack of humility is. Sin in others is not the greatest barrier to unity, but idealism about our own sins is. (Location 293)

The church in the book of Acts functioned as a vibrant community, not a weekly meeting. (Location 309)

a church of little churches, or more accurately, a movement of churches. (Location 309)

dynamic movement of small communities, spontaneously breaking out all over the city. (Location 310)

The simple model of gathering in small communities lent itself to everyone’s involvement. (Location 319)

the storytellers of our day often give us insight into the human predicament and the need for redemption. (Location 340)

There is a deep longing in the human heart for beauty, mystery and community. (Location 341)

The church that does not carry a passion to reach the world isolates people behind walls of cultural irrelevance. (Location 375)

We functioned like the church in the book of Acts all week long, but on Sunday mornings we had to pretend we were not church so we could go to church! (Location 403)

I was dreaming about doing church the way I read about it in the book of Acts. (Location 409)

frustration creates energy, and if I would steer that energy in the right direction, it would lead to new ideas and new ways of imagining church. (Location 412)

The young people we were reaching out to were confused because we were confused. We lacked a clear vision of who we were. Were we church or weren’t we? (Location 434)

God had deposited things in us that He wanted us to impart to those we were reaching out to. They were our spiritual sons and daughters and we were to impart our spiritual DNA to them. (Location 450)

We were teaching by our example on Sundays that a church building was where ‘real’ church took place. (Location 453)

We had a deep longing to be a father and mother to the young people we were leading to Christ, but we weren’t sure where our responsibility stopped and the local church’s started. Who did have responsibility to disciple our converts? Were we responsible? If so, why were we sending them to churches that didn’t have that responsibility? (Location 455)

I went from a meeting mentality to a movement framework of thinking. (Location 473)

God was calling us to build his church. But because we saw ourselves as an extension of existing churches, rather than pioneers of new church communities, we had the wrong framework for what God was calling us to. (Location 474)

will I build what God has called me to build, or will I extend what others are doing? (Location 476)

I read and dreamt a lot about radical Christian community, but until I took courage and lived my dream, I didn’t discover the new things God wanted to teach me. (Location 480)

One of the things I committed to was to do nothing that did not lead to new church communities being started. (Location 486)

we shifted from a strategy of revitalizing existing churches to one of reformation of how we did church. (Location 504)

I believe God wanted us to reach the outsiders, not coddle the insiders. (Location 507)

It is the creative presence of the Holy Spirit yearning for a community of people who will engage their culture and reach their world. (Location 509)

live the gospel within our culture, rather than perpetuate church institutions that exist apart from our culture. (Location 511)

The Holy Spirit yearns to make Jesus real and known in our world. (Location 516)

‘What are the minimum biblical essentials to be church?’ This is followed up by the other two crucial questions, ‘What is the purpose of church?’ and ‘How do we do church in a way that causes people to grow, the lost to be won, and the Lord to be glorified?’ To summarize:   • What is church? • What is the purpose of church? • How do we do church? (Location 534)

The challenge before us is major reformation, not tweaking the meeting format. (Location 551)

God calls each generation to re-imagine church for their own context and culture and to a fresh encounter with God to live the gospel. (Location 551)

seek your own answers. Try to imagine what church would look like if it was a powerful force for change in the lives of people you relate to. (Location 560)

The Father takes a lot of joy in allowing us to create with Him. (Location 565)

Don’t try to fix the church. God is not calling us to fix what He has created. Don’t focus on changing the people and the churches they are part of. All the people who want a ‘fixed’ church have already found one. It is time for a new wave of church leaders to be released who do church in brand new ways. (Location 569)

New ways of doing church must be born on our knees, out of desperation for God. What is born on earth must first be conceived in heaven in the place of prayer. (Location 573)

Get alone with God. Cry out to Him. Weep out of desperation. Then heaven will come to earth. (Location 576)

If leaders are servants, anyone who serves God’s people through their gifts, leads. (Location 588)

Church happened for Jesus and the twelve as they formed a community that learned and lived and served together. (Location 607)

small groups of Jesus followers are easily reproducible. (Location 623)

People can’t hide in a small community. (Location 623)

simple expressions of church, like a cell group or a house church, can function in closer proximity to those who don’t know Jesus by meeting in homes, businesses, on campuses, etc. (Location 624)

invest in one another’s lives through personal accountability and discipleship. (Location 634)

more than a happenstance meeting (Location 635)

gather implies commitment; (Location 636)

those who seek to know, love and obey Jesus. (Location 640)

The commands of Jesus can be summarized in these seven imperatives:   1. Believe, repent and be water baptized 2. Live holy: love God with all your heart, soul, mind and body 3. Pray, worship and read God’s word daily 4. Gather together: love and disciple each other and take part regularly in the Lord’s Supper 5. Forgive those who sin against you 6. Go and make disciples of all nations 7. Give to others: give your money, your time, your heart and your life (Location 645)

Anyone is welcome to follow Him, to learn more about Him, just as people followed Jesus from one place to another, (Location 656)

The goal of church is to love seeking followers of Jesus while learning to make obedient disciples of Jesus. (Location 658)

Ecclesia is committed community. It is doing life together with others. It is about shared meals together, telling friends and neighbours about Jesus together, hanging out together, laughing and crying together, and growing together through transparency with others committed to loving and following Jesus. (Location 669)

We don’t have to agree on everything to stand together for something. (Location 690)

We need a revolutionary new approach to being and doing church. Not a franchise approach that produces cookie-cutter clone churches, but a commitment to build God’s kingdom on earth. (Location 697)

Such a focus of serving and engaging our culture will continually drive humble and fearless people to their knees in dependence on God for fresh outpourings of the Spirit. (Location 699)

I believe that understanding God’s view of his church will be discovered only when we address core issues of justice and spirituality, leadership and mission. (Location 717)

work as a holy calling. (Location 734)

Holistic spirituality means that making money and earning a living is not the primary purpose of any occupation, but ‘being there’ for God, active, subversive and courageous is our calling and purpose. (Location 737)

a more purposeful and relational expression of church to be part of in the face of a haphazard and chaotic world. (Location 758)

to be part of something greater than themselves. (Location 759)

we make the maintenance of established structures our focus rather than risk taking advancement and innovation. (Location 765)

I use the term apostolic specifically to refer to visionary leadership that provides energy and creativity, as well as missional initiatives. (Location 770)

An apostolic church is a church that is gripped by the imperatives of Jesus to preach good news and plant new communities of faith. (Location 777)

An apostolic leader is one who believes the whole church is a sent church. (Location 779)

Institutional churches have ignored the role of the evangelist, prophet and apostle. (Location 783)

pioneering new communities and ministries that are aimed at reaching those outside the church. (Location 786)

apostolic leaders focus their creative energies, not just on the activity of creating something new, but on the ultimate goal of pioneering – and that is reaching and gathering followers of Jesus who in turn are discipled to reach others also. (Location 791)

Movements are dynamic, fluid and growing. They are messy on the edges but have energy at the centre. (Location 798)

Apostolic leadership yearns for the ‘not yet’. Dreaming, faith, imagination, risk taking, pioneering and future goals characterize apostolic leadership. Administration, bureaucracy, reminiscence and impersonal systems and structures characterize hierarchical leadership. (Location 800)

Apostolic leaders can function as hierarchical leaders, but they do so to their own detriment. They were not made by God to oversee organizational bureaucracy. They were not designed to manage, but to lead change. (Location 803)

‘In a real sense, a true biblical maverick acts in a prophetic manner by exposing the lies that the dominant group tells itself in order to sustain its shared illusions (Location 812)

All of us who obediently follow Jesus are on mission with God. (Location 822)

The incarnation allowed Jesus to identify with people. It provided a way to localize and live out his calling. He made God available in his neighbourhood, so to speak. (Location 823)

Every culture, every sub-culture and every generation must discover for themselves how be true to their culture while being fully obedient to Jesus. (Location 830)

The incarnational approach implies that it is not necessary to extract people from their culture in order to be faithful followers of Jesus. (Location 839)

taught and baptized them, and then trusted the Holy Spirit in them to empower them to live their faith in their culture, nor apart from it. (Location 844)

People need freedom to discover Jesus on the inside of their culture, not in an imposed culture from the outside. (Location 848)

Jesus modelled for us the way to do church: among the people. (Location 855)

The church of Jesus Christ is, first of all, a family, a community. (Location 859)

It is easier to stay focused. The more parts there are to maintain in a church structure, the more difficult it is to keep them focused. (Location 873)

They are bad when they hinder initiative, responsibility and confidence in people’s hearts. (Location 883)

seeks to empower people by avoiding bureaucracy, dependence on buildings, hierarchy and ‘come to us’ models of mission. Simple church spontaneously and deliberately gets everyone involved – where they live, play and work. (Location 883)

Simple church emphasizes a facilitative style of leadership that aims at getting everyone involved, and every person’s gifts identified and mobilized, by reaching out to the lost. (Location 891)

the complicated church relies on programmes to disciple people, while simple church empowers people to disciple people. (Location 893)

Leadership in this family is about serving, not positions or titles. (Location 901)

We tend to spiritualize the invitations Jesus gave, and fail to see they were real invitations to belong to a real community of disciples. (Location 910)

The purpose of the church is to glorify God by loving Jesus, loving those who love Jesus, and loving those who don’t know Jesus. (Location 915)

If you follow Jesus you are part of something greater than yourself. (Location 920)

we were saved for God, not ourselves. (Location 921)

The goal of our salvation is not first for us, but the exaltation of the glory of God’s mercy through our lives. (Location 922)

He is on a mission to fill the whole world with his glory (Location 926)

All of life that is lived for God is part of the mission of God. When we care for people, when we speak to them respectfully, when we participate in sports activities, when we celebrate culture and art and dance and music, and we do it with our hearts aflame for God, we give God glory. (Location 928)

The answer to the problems of purposeless Christianity is not reworking outdated and unworkable church models, but creating new wine skins and then filling them with passion for Jesus and his purposes on the earth. (Location 939)

We are here for God. We will not fulfil our purpose on earth by escaping from the world; we are called to invade it, not escape from it. (Location 942)

I have dropped the word ‘missionary’ from my vocabulary. Not because I don’t believe in the mission of God, or that people should not go to the nations, but because the word ‘missionary’ implies that some of us are called and some are not. The truth is, we are all called. (Location 975)

We are all called to serve God full-time; it is up to us to find out where that is. There are no second-class people in God’s family. (Location 983)

Do you want to be part of a church community that is relationally and intentionally reaching out to other people? That is simple church. (Location 1039)

God will give you a fresh vision for the simplicity of church if you ask Him. But be careful: if you ask for it, God will give it to you and it will be like a burning fire in you that takes over your life! Vision precedes reality. If you want a vision of how God sees the church, ask God to let you see what He sees, and feel what He feels. (Location 1040)

Every person needs a vision of the church from God’s perspective. Every person who is hungry to grow in God needs a vision from God for his or her part in the church, the ecclesia. A fresh vision of church in its simplicity will create courage in your heart to break from the old and try the new. (Location 1053)

the key to passing the torch to the next generation of leaders in simple church-planting movements is never to hold the torch, speaking of positions and titles. (Location 1124)

The goal of a simple church-planting movement is not being an up-front pastor or elder, but being a spiritual father or mother to a movement of elders and church planters. (Location 1126)

God is busy revealing Himself to the world, through the church; not through institutions or programmes or buildings, but through simple, ordinary people, people willing to give up their broken lives in exchange for his life lived through them. (Location 1138)

All that the followers of Jesus needed to do, was to love each other. By living the way they did, they displayed Jesus before people who were hungry for reality. (Location 1144)

they shared their food with the poor, treated women as equals, and empowered every member to do their part in leading and serving. (Location 1145)

We don’t see them by the colour of their skin or their level of poverty. We see their potential. (Location 1152)

a man with a vision is not the prisoner of people without one. (Location 1159)

God has to get people to a state of ‘holy frustration’ before they are ready to learn about church the way He wants to do it. (Location 1160)

For the busy executive and the hustling drug dealer on the streets, the behaviour may be different, but the pain is the same. (Location 1173)

We all suffer from one degree of brokenness or another. (Location 1176)

God lives in us. Weak as we are, He has chosen to dwell in us. We are where the glory of God is found; not primarily in great conferences and well run programmes and institutions of the church, but in the ordinary men and women who make up the church. (Location 1188)

Simple church is people loving people. They show the love of God. (Location 1201)

Whatever the problem, whatever the need, God has placed within the church the resources necessary to respond. The empowering presence of God dwells in the church. And it is there, in the family of the redeemed, that we discover our part in the purposes of God. (Location 1213)

God has placed us in his family and surrounded us with brothers and sisters to remind us of whom we are and the destiny we have as the family of God. Don’t forget who you are! (Location 1236)

God designed us to love and care for our own. It is natural to how He made us. (Location 1255)

The very things that make conventional mega-churches successful will hinder the growth and spontaneous expansion of simple churches. (Location 1263)

There is a time and place to train spiritual leaders. But if we get ahead of God’s timetable in people’s lives, it may actually hinder their natural development. (Location 1268)

Establishing rules for how things should be done often hinders growth more than helping it. (Location 1273)

The role of leaders is to affirm and serve this design, not impose structures on top of it. Those who appreciate the beauty and innate order of God’s natural design for the church serve the church with the greatest wisdom. (Location 1292)

When the values and vision of the kingdom are clearly understood by those who father and mother a movement, and they are clearly articulated for all to understand and imparted through discipling relationships, the DNA of the movement takes hold in people’s hearts. (Location 1294)

how do you nurture a movement to multiply spontaneously, and at the same time provide apostolic leadership? (Location 1304)

The way we typically lead and organize churches is built on a model of maintenance and direction, not geared for spontaneous expansion. We have learned how to control the church, but we struggle to learn how to allow the Holy Spirit to be in control. (Location 1316)

Structure should be created only where it meets a need. Structures should not be created where there is no life. (Location 1335)

then you need some structure, but only what is necessary for the moment. (Location 1336)

strive to keep it simple and invisible, and then you will be safe. (Location 1337)

Structure should never control life, only serve it. (Location 1338)

involve people in structures who are secure with being out of sight, and serving. (Location 1338)

top-down command and control structure does not guarantee right doctrine and morality among leaders, and certainly does not mean quality of life and growth of new believers. (Location 1348)

They have bonded to ‘meeting’-oriented church, to church done for them by pastors, and to church that is conducted in a building one day a week. They have a DNA of dependency on the life support systems of Sunday school, youth programmes and men’s and women’s ministries. (Location 1368)

something that exists to serve them, to keep them alive. (Location 1372)

If their leaders don’t reproduce followers of Jesus, the people won’t believe it is a high value in the church. (Location 1378)

It is what leadership is all about: reproducing the life of Christ in us in others. (Location 1393)

We could describe it and impart it but we weren’t able to prescribe it. (Location 1406)

We had a very simple approach: Live in simple community, share Jesus with everyone we could, meet people’s needs, disciple one another, and start more communities. (Location 1410)

they took ownership and grew quickly. (Location 1422)

I maintained the responsibility to make final decisions in case of a dispute, but exercised that authority only a few times in many years. (Location 1422)

authority has to be earned by the character of a person who leads. I believed that true authority had to be recognized and granted by those who follow. (Location 1428)

Like Jesus, we don’t have the right to say who can and cannot do things for God. We cannot set limits of people’s spiritual authority. (Location 1435)

command and control type leadership is that it ties people to a chain of command, and creates dependency on other people for empowerment and permission to minister. A co-dependency is developed that is unhealthy and will not lead to reproducing churches spontaneously. (Location 1447)

If a person’s life does not warrant them influence in the lives of others, then they won’t be respected. But if they speak with wisdom and insight, and serve with a humble attitude, people will notice and will follow them, regardless of the person’s position title or position. (Location 1451)

If you are in a top-down system of authority, either honour it or quietly and submissively withdraw. Do not stay and be a trouble-maker. (Location 1458)

One man had all the position and title, but the other had the authority . . .’ (Location 1469)

creating a culture that encourages people to take initiative while learning to work with others to sail in the same direction. (Location 1475)

role of each person in a team is vital for a ship to reach its destination. (Location 1476)

Though each person in the crew has equal value, not every one has the same responsibility. (Location 1477)

kubernesis, which literally means to steer or pilot a seagoing vessel. (Location 1481)

proistimi, which is often translated to govern or to give oversight. (Location 1483)

leadership in the simple model of church requires a different skill set and a huge amount of humility. (Location 1485)

Those that are given spiritual leadership are called to lead from underneath, not on top. (Location 1488)

spiritual authority of a teacher flows from right use of the Scriptures to persuade and convince, (Location 1491)

Apostolic authority is derived from the faith and vision that the person has for new pioneering efforts. (Location 1493)

three primary areas of responsibility of those who lead in a local ecclesia. (Location 1497)

To guard (Location 1498)

Against ‘wolves’ from within (Location 1499)

Against false doctrine (Location 1500)

Against deceivers (Location 1501)

Against those who cause divisions (Location 1502)

Against influences of sexual promiscuity (Location 1503)

To govern (Location 1505)

By caring for people (Location 1505)

By teaching God’s word (Location 1510)

By correcting people in error (Location 1512)

By appointing other elders (Location 1514)

By making decisions (Location 1517)

To guide (Location 1519)

By discipling and equipping others to lead (Location 1523)

By imparting passion for God’s glory to others (Location 1526)

By understanding and being able to adapt one’s leadership style, the dexterity of a leader increases. (Location 1531)

different circumstances and different cultures call for different approaches to how we lead. (Location 1532)

Many leaders make the mistake of thinking leadership is equal to being able to give directives. (Location 1539)

Simple church by its size and nature needs a coaching and supporting leadership style, not a directing or delegating manner of leading. (Location 1541)

To be unaware of one’s natural leadership style will result in a person becoming a prisoner of their own personality. (Location 1547)

The dominant value in our culture today is freedom, usually accompanied by a big dose of cynicism and mistrust towards authority figures. (Location 1556)

submission to a person or a group of people who follow Jesus is a sign of spiritual maturity. That includes submitting to those who lead. (Location 1569)

Teaching authority is not about something to be done, but truth to be learned. What is of greatest importance is that the one learning has the opportunity to internalize what is being taught and make it part of themselves. (Location 1591)

questions and answers, reasons, explanations and dealing with objections and misunderstandings are all part of the learning process. (Location 1593)

God wants obedience to truth with understanding. (Location 1595)

90% of what people remember and apply to their own lives comes through self-discovery. (Location 1600)

The purpose of spiritual authority is not passive compliance, but for people to be motivated from the heart to Jesus’ commands. (Location 1609)

Those with spiritual authority have responsibilities to guard, govern and guide those they are given authority to lead. (Location 1610)

seek to influence those they lead to hear God for themselves and obey Him from the heart. (Location 1612)

The purpose of spiritual authority is to inspire people to obey the commands of Jesus and to equip them for service, not to command or control people’s lives. (Location 1613)

The essence of Christian maturity is a response from the heart to the will of God and to the direction given by spiritual leaders. (Location 1617)

hupakouo, ‘to listen under’. (Location 1620)

Hearing and obeying God comes from under the surface, from deep within the heart. (Location 1621)

that person still needs to internalize what God is saying to them. (Location 1622)

Telling a person what they must do, and why they should not do something else, may get a leader the immediate results he or she wants, but it doesn’t produce spiritual maturity (Location 1623)

exercise of spiritual authority in relation to this kind of obedience should be aimed at helping a person discover the will of God by hearing God themselves. (Location 1625)

Top-down spiritual authority stifles a movement, making the leaders the bottleneck through which all decisions must pass. (Location 1627)

when people hear God for themselves, they can get on with the work God has called all of us to do. (Location 1628)

Jesus defined authority as influencing people by serving them. If we serve we have influence, and if we influence people, we have spiritual authority in their lives (Location 1668)

authority is defined as the privilege of influencing others by exercising one’s spiritual gifts in a Christ-like manner. (Location 1669)

Teams are the most ideal way to pioneer new churches. (Location 1685)

I believe in appointing elders who lead together under the leadership of a recognized team leader. (Location 1687)

I believe there was not just one pastor in the early church, as is common today.5 (Location 1689)

There is a unique honour God receives from a team of people who subordinate their individual personalities and perspectives to work together. (Location 1690)

Harnessing the gifts and callings of a group of strong-willed, gifted and opinionated team members takes a major work of grace on the part of each member of the team. It can be done, but not without the team getting involved in each others’ lives, spouses included. (Location 1696)

I am zealous about team ministry because working together in unity is just as important to God as what we do for Him. (Location 1699)

Team leadership is a form of simple church; it is a group of men and women sharing their lives with each other in order to fulfil the great commission and the great commandment. (Location 1706)

I believe in team ministry because it helps us grow spiritually. (Location 1710)

Building such a team takes time and transparency. It means working through conflicts privately and openly as a team. (Location 1714)

I believe in team ministry because I believe the journey of growing together is as important as the end goal. (Location 1717)

He wants a spiritual family, not a well-oiled machine. (Location 1718)

Technique-oriented Christianity takes the soul out of church. (Location 1726)

I believe in team ministry because it gets us to the soul of what church is all about. (Location 1727)

I believe in team ministry because it calls us to deep levels of trust. (Location 1732)

Trust means I want people to help me by speaking into my area of ministry, my personal performance, and into the deep places of my heart. (Location 1736)

I believe in team ministry because it facilitates mutual accountability. (Location 1742)

Mutual accountability is the natural result of uncensored debate, waiting on God together, healthy patterns of truth talking, meeting with two or three others to share burdens and confess sins, and owning the decisions that are made by the team. (Location 1743)

Don’t idolize it (Location 1748)

particularly in cross-cultural efforts. Teams have to die and be reborn within the host culture to be effective (Location 1752)

The people we thought we were going to work with in a team may end up leaving the team – and God brings new people to join us. As the team forms around those who are proven and faithful, then the team becomes cohesive. (Location 1755)

He invested most of his time and energy in the lives of those He worked most closely with, and they became his friends (Location 1765)

He knew the difference between a follower and a friend. (Location 1767)

We can and should build friendships with those we disciple. (Location 1768)

Discipleship involves friendship. You can’t invest yourself in someone’s life without becoming friends. (Location 1772)

we should work towards good friendships with all those we work closely with. (Location 1781)

Elders serve by equipping and discipling the members of a church, or network of churches. (Location 1785)

Apostolic teams focus on pioneering amongst those who have not yet heard the good news. (Location 1786)

Apostolic teams are focused. They are not satisfied with just overseeing the affairs of a local church. (Location 1791)

a very simple way of defining apostolic teams: they do what apostles did in the book of Acts. (Location 1796)

they win, gather and multiply disciples and churches for Jesus – especially where people are unchurched and unreached. (Location 1799)

You can talk about being apostolic until you’re blue in the face, but if you don’t plant and reproduce churches you’re not apostolic. (Location 1806)

Leading is not about us finding our ministry. It’s about bringing life and hope to others. (Location 1815)

We are called to die. Not just once to sin, but as a way of life. By dying to ‘our’ rights, we find life. (Location 1822)

That means dying to our opinions, dying to the right to be understood, the right to be represented, the right to be loved, the right to be treated justly, and all our other rights. (Location 1822)

‘He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.’ (Location 1826)

giving up control over my time. (Location 1835)

purity. Am I willing to make a pledge to God and others to live a live of sexual and moral purity, including the kinds of music I listen to and the movies I watch? (Location 1837)

dying to my rights. Am I willing to give up all personal rights? (Location 1840)

accountability to others. (Location 1841)

being committed and loyal to a small community of people that invest in one another’s lives through personal discipleship and accountability (Location 1844)

telling people about Jesus without regard to personal reputation or ambition. (Location 1846)

embracing sacrifice and suffering. (Location 1848)

I was a leader but I was woefully ignorant of God’s ways in leadership. (Location 1883)

I didn’t know the ways of God in testing a leader. At times I was ahead of my character development in the levels of responsibility I was given. I lacked the wisdom to know that. (Location 1884)

being thrust by God into a pioneering work among dropped-out young people got me out of the complaining mode and into the action mode. I had to stop whining and lead. I couldn’t blame others for what was not happening: I was the leader! (Location 1903)

We discovered church was community – it was like having an extended family. You might say God ‘tricked’ us into loving the church by teaching us to love the people we were taking into our home. (Location 1920)

there are many leaders who are equally confused about their ministry and how it fits in conventional church life. I came to a place where I realized that my gifts did not fit in conventional church, but it took a long time to be secure in that discovery. (Location 1929)

I was insecure about my gifting and calling much more than I was confident. (Location 1934)

church as a movement and a radical community. (Location 1936)

the more a person has to announce their ministry, the more insecure they are about it. (Location 1945)

We need people who will challenge the way things have always been done. Not in rebellion or with a proud attitude. (Location 1955)

That means experimenting, being innovative, going on a journey with Jesus and a few friends into the unknown. It means experimenting and taking risks with how we do church. (Location 1956)

experiencing quite a bit of misunderstanding and rejection. (Location 1962)

I dare to dream because God has deposited some courage in my heart. It is his grace to me, and I receive that grace to follow my dream. (Location 1967)

hold on to what is good from the past while you look for the new way in the future. (Location 1968)

a set of core values that guide you. (Location 1969)

what will give certainty is core values, inner passions that keep you motivated and connected to Jesus. (Location 1971)

Changing the way we do church has to be motivated by something greater than a dislike of the old ways. (Location 1985)

everywhere we go we are to establish outposts of the kingdom of God. (Location 1987)

courage to break with the old and boldness to pioneer the new, for the sake of the lost. (Location 1990)

Jesus paid a great price to be the ‘apostle of the faith’. He left his home, gave up his rights, lived among people as a servant, and suffered misunderstanding and rejection. (Location 1995)

Reading about the life of Jesus as the apostle of our faith inspires me, but it also strikes fear in me. In myself, I know I’m not up to the task. I have to conclude that I can’t do it on my own, but I yearn to do it nevertheless. Something in me cannot back away from the longing I have to follow the radical, awesome, noble and selfless example of Jesus. (Location 2005)

He dreamed big, but he built small. He set about changing the world, but He did it one person at a time. (Location 2010)

The need all around us is for holistic models of church that integrate job creation with discipleship, drug rehabilitation with Bible teaching, and starting new churches with teaching in life skills. (Location 2014)

Sub-Saharan Africa has been evangelized many times, but it has not been discipled. (Location 2023)

The church in Africa practises passionate evangelism, but it does not do well at life-on-life discipleship. (Location 2024)

the old way of doing church is Sunday Christianity. (Location 2028)

We need a new set of beliefs and a new set of practices that emphasize an everyday type of Christianity, not just a ‘happy time on Sunday’ style of church. (Location 2028)

Many times on my journey I have become discouraged. But meditating on the example of Jesus gives me fresh courage to carry on. (Location 2043)

We may not all be apostles by gifting, but we are all charged to be part of the apostolic mission of the church. (Location 2053)

If you are like me, more times than not I have held back from taking risks for fear of failure. (Location 2064)

it is quite normal, very human of us, to be worried about what people think or say about us, or be downright terrified of suffering rejection or loss. (Location 2066)

It actually comforts me to know how human ‘great’ people can be. (Location 2070)

Doing great things for God can mean paying your bills, sharing Jesus faithfully at work, and being real with your friends. (Location 2075)

I am determined to end my life more passionate than I began it. I want to finish on fire, more fiercely focused on following Jesus and living for his purposes on earth than I was when I was 20 years old (Location 2091)

God is more concerned about my passion than my ministry. (Location 2093)

As a father in the Lord, my dream now is to raise up sons and daughters in the Lord, who in turn will have their own spiritual sons and daughters. (Location 2095)

We help people learn how to re-imagine church, then experiment with how to do it as a simple, joyful community that encourages everyone involved to use their passions and gifts to reach out to others. We are working on finding simple ways of doing church that are holistic, sustainable and reproducible. (Location 2101)

I discovered early on that if I am serious with God, He will hear my cry and respond. (Location 2109)

If we cry out to God, He promises He will hear our cry and answer us. (Location 2111)

I have discovered that even when I am surrounded with people who love me, I can still feel isolated and alone. It was like that for Sally and me. We were leading a wonderful ministry, had great friends, lived in a beautiful place, yet something was missing. I have learned that these times are arranged by God for us to seek Him. It’s his way of putting desperation in our hearts for Him, to prepare us for the fresh word He wants to give us. (Location 2138)

To equip someone is to mend what is broken in their life so they can go all-out for Jesus. (Location 2161)

Being courageous is about inspiring others to partner with God in his mission on planet earth. (Location 2164)

Apostolic people have stories to tell. They inspire others to believe God wants to use them to make a difference in the world. (Location 2166)

We go where we are not comfortable. We take risks. We get away from comfortable and familiar church life and get among the people. (Location 2173)

To be dedicated to Jesus is not first of all about being a missionary or pastor, but being intentional and obedient in making disciples. (Location 2184)

To join God’s mission is not about geography or vocation, but passionate obedience. (Location 2185)

We are all called to follow Jesus by making disciples who also love and obey Jesus. (Location 2187)

sent as messengers to people who don’t know Jesus, and they are called to inspire and equip others to do the same. They do this by following Jesus’ example: by making and gathering disciples of Jesus. (Location 2189)

take the church to the world, they don’t wait for the world to come to the church. (Location 2191)

God has wired apostles with a restlessness and dissatisfaction with the ordinary that is satisfied only when they boldly reach the lost – and motivate others to do the same. They are not supposed to be satisfied with the status quo. (Location 2197)

While others see what has been done and are grateful, apostolic people see what has not been done and long for more. (Location 2200)

learn to exercise discernment to go with their zeal. (Location 2208)

the danger of unfocused vision is just that: a lack of consistent focus on the one thing they are called to do above all others. (Location 2210)

They are called to bless what other genuine followers of Jesus do for Him, but they are also called to build what God has given them to do and focus on reaching the lost. (Location 2216)

They are called to partner with others, but not to sacrifice their pioneering anointing. (Location 2217)

They are called to build. Effective apostolic leaders have learned they can waste their time blessing many things without building one thing well. (Location 2218)

focus their gifts and energies, and the gifts and energies of those they lead, on winning, maturing and multiplying others in church planting movements. (Location 2219)

Effective disciples of Jesus know what they are called to do, and they do it single-mindedly. (Location 2224)

They are called to build God’s church – no matter what their vocation in life. (Location 2226)

When I told her she was pastoring a church, not just leading a bible study, she laughed and told me she wasn’t a pastor. (Location 2236)

Bill and Norren and Babu Kaji and Goma have given up everything to pioneer a holistic church planting ministry among the poor in Kathmandu; (Location 2246)

it is not the famous but the faithful who will receive the big crowns in heaven. (Location 2250)

Helping people overcome their objections and fears is what helps leaders stay close to God – and learn vital leadership competencies. (Location 2291)

God has given visionary leaders to the church for one purpose above all others: to see, to savour and to spread the glory of God in every neighbourhood, every sphere of society, and every nation on earth. If the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him for ever, the chief end of courageous leaders is to lead God’s people into seeing, savouring and spreading the glory of God. He has placed them in the church to magnify and intensify God’s fiery desire to display his glory in and through his people. (Location 2296)

Being a courageous leader is about being a messenger. It is the glory of the message we carry, not the fancy footwork of the messenger as we march on the journey that is to inspire the church. (Location 2306)

This is our dream: at the end of time, to be able to look into those beautiful, piercing eyes and know that we have pleased Him, that He is worshipped and enjoyed and loved by those we have brought to Him. That is our reward. That is enough. We ask no more than that. (Location 2313)

It is redeemed people He longs for. (Location 2318)

Being preoccupied with finding my ministry or my calling, no matter how natural that may seem, can be a dangerous distraction. (Location 2335)

As an adult, one of the things I dread most is boredom. The discipline of sticking with something until it is finished and finished well is a character trait that has not come naturally to me. I love variety and am constantly looking for new things to do. (Location 2399)

I see needs all around me and get three or four ideas a day about how to meet those needs. The hard part for me is not seeing new things to do – the hard part is sticking with something once I have started it. (Location 2404)

Another way to describe focus is faithfulness. Faithfulness, what my dad used to call ‘stick-to-it-iveness’, is a quality all of us need to work on. (Location 2413)

Jesus taught that the servant who is faithful over mammon, things, would earn the right to be a steward of spiritual matters. (Location 2416)

God can’t trust a person with spiritual treasures who is not faithful in the practical issues of life. (Location 2418)

learning to serve another person’s vision or ministry, learning to be faithful in our service under someone else’s leadership, is a prerequisite for being trusted by God to lead others. Serving people teaches us lessons that prepare us for finding our place in the kingdom of God. (Location 2423)

Focus is the ability to concentrate, to give your unqualified attention to what you are called to do and be. (Location 2431)

Some people may think a focused person is stubborn. (Location 2435)

They know what they are called to do in life and they stay with it. They can be counted on. They don’t change their message or behaviour to please the crowd they are with. (Location 2435)

To focus is to adjust your vision so that you see clearly and sharply. (Location 2447)

To be focused is not something that happens to us, it is what we do. (Location 2447)

We are energized when we have congruent values and vision. (Location 2454)

Paul did not make his decisions based on consequences but on beliefs in what was right. (Location 2460)

If we are going to build our lives in authentic friendships with a few others in simple church, we will have to say no, no and no, over and over again. (Location 2467)

If you are passionate about engaging your culture with others in organic church, you will have to say no to many good things in life. (Location 2468)

reduce the ‘circles’ in your life, the spheres of activity that draw you away from faithfulness to what you believe in and are committed to. (Location 2469)

Simple church requires us to simplify life. (Location 2470)

You don’t have to consciously say yes to sin to be compromised by our modern way of life. Just go with the flow. (Location 2472)

Knowing where we are headed, and going there with fierce determination, is the quality of a person who can be counted on. (Location 2474)

God’s desire for each of us is to bring us to a place of trust in his character that enables us to receive his grace to overcome the trials and testings we go through, and to resist the luring temptations we face, so that we remain fiercely determined to gain the prize God sets before us. (Location 2488)

Have you ever felt backed into a corner by God? God does lead us into situations (Location 2499)

Say no to bitterness, say no to busyness, say no to living in too many circles in life, say no to more and bigger and better material possessions, and say no to your kids when it means rushing from one activity to another all week long. Say no to the job offer that will take you away from your ecclesia. (Location 2520)

All of us, especially leaders and Christian workers, have a tendency to get our spiritual food from others rather than spending consistent, extended time alone with God daily. (Location 2544)

Do you weep over your friends to be saved? Do you fast for family members who don’t know Jesus? Do you intercede for those you lead? (Location 2550)

If we, or others around us, don’t create the circumstances that test us, you can be sure that God will do it for us. He loves us too much to leave us on our own. If we fail the tests God takes us through, we plateau. (Location 2567)

We are all tested and taught by God. Not just the great heroes in the Bible, but every one of us. (Location 2578)

We ask God for a new beginning, and step out in faith when He gives it to us. We risk everything to start climbing again. (Location 2588)

Characteristic of the vows we make are decisions to avoid difficulty or gain approval. (Location 2609)

Vows become values, but not good values. Inner vows shape our decisions, determine the level of risks we will take, infect our thinking about ourselves and about God. Inner vows deceive our spirits. (Location 2613)

New vision can be a camel in the road to keep us from being faithful to the last thing God has called us to do. (Location 2631)

If you are seeking direction, find out what God is saying and stick with it. Don’t change because it gets tough or because it is more exciting to move on to something new. (Location 2633)

Faithfulness is a long journey of obedience in the same direction, empowered by the sweet-tasting grace of God that we receive along the way. (Location 2641)

Good stewardship is not about accumulating but giving, not about hoarding but sharing. God expects us to be wise stewards, and that includes investing and making a profit. But the treasures that will be enjoyed forever are those that are the result of investing in people’s lives for eternity, (Location 2646)

invest primarily in spreading the gospel. The only thing you can take to heaven besides your own heart is the people you influence for God. That is the fruit that remains. (Location 2654)

If there are no margins in your life, you will not have time to hear God. If there is no space, no free time for you to read and reflect, how can you be refuelled emotionally and spiritually? (Location 2664)

the culture we call church is either dead or about to die: ‘This culture has become confused with biblical Christianity, both inside the church and out.’ (Location 2674)

God is not unwilling to stand against the very church He started: (Location 2681)

The church has become a hindrance to the spiritual growth of many people. (Location 2689)

church is who you are, not where you go. (Location 2697)

Church in its essence is gathering with two or three others who love and obey Jesus, but it doesn’t have to be two or three thousand. (Location 2697)

The church doesn’t need leaders who speak against new ways of doing church or to defend the old ways. God is a God of order, but that doesn’t mean He won’t move against the order of man and create some holy disorder to get people to experience church as He intended it. (Location 2710)

Leaders in the church are messengers. It is the glory of the message we carry, not the powerful personality of the messenger that is to inspire the church. (Location 2717)

The one thing that transcends all others, the focus we are to have above everything else, is the glory of God. (Location 2729)

I love the church, but church is not the goal of what we do. Jesus is the goal. (Location 2742)

God’s glory is to be the focus of our life together as the family of God. (Location 2798)

God’s glory is who He is, more than his creation, more than his mighty acts and miracles, more than sensing his presence with us; it is God’s awesome, amazing, majestic, blinding beauty. (Location 2816)

God is going to saturate the planet with Himself – through the church. He is going to do it through you and me and others like us. Not through meetings and programmes and schools and conferences, but through people. Through his people. Through the living, loving and sometimes sinning people of God, (Location 2841)

the issue is not where we go for God, but when we see his glory do we want to go somewhere for him? (Location 2859)

Finding God’s will flows naturally from seeing, savouring and surrendering our lives to his glory. When we see his glory, receiving instructions about where He (Location 2869)

Stunning vision and mission statements will get a church no further than the poster paper on which they are written if they are not empowered by a lived-out set of apostolic core values. (Location 2917)

It is possible to use church growth techniques to gather crowds without building disciples. We can enlarge our buildings without impacting on the character and practices of people’s lives. (Location 2926)

over 4 000 churches closed their doors every year in America, while an average of 1 350 new churches were started annually. (Location 2938)

one of the greatest challenges facing the church is how to respond to militant Islam. (Location 2974)

We need to match the ardour of suicide bombers with laying down our lives in love, not hate. We must send our children to serve and love and bring good news to Muslims in North Africa, the Middle East and South and Central Asia. (Location 2980)

It is not the kingdom of democracy we must preach, but God’s kingdom of righteousness, joy and peace through Jesus Christ. (Location 3029)

When we live and pray and dedicate our lives to his purposes with passion, we are changed and God works through us. (Location 3030)

He also welcomes us to initiate covenant with Him. (Location 3036)

The covenants I have made with God inspire me to keep going when my passion wanes. A covenant is like a marriage vow. It protects your commitment when romantic feelings fade. (Location 3041)

It happens because we consciously dedicate ourselves to living radically and obediently for Jesus. It is not something that happens to us, but is the result of pressing into God for a set of core values that we will live or die for. (Location 3043)

what I want more than anything else is to leave a legacy of eternal influence on people’s lives. (Location 3046)

There is only one thing we can take to heaven besides our own hearts, and that is the people we bring to Christ. (Location 3049)

I want to pour my energy and time into a band of pioneers who lay down their lives for others. I want a heritage of spiritual sons and daughters who give their lives to see Jesus worshipped (Location 3051)

While our profile as evangelicals grows in the media, the church is diminishing in size and influence on our culture. (Location 3064)

Millions of Christians have given up on church, but it is not because the church demands too much from them, but because it demands too little. (Location 3070)

church in the West is stuck in a rut of building-based, Sunday-centric, pastor-oriented Christianity. (Location 3071)

That kind of Christianity puts immense pressure on pastors to perform and places great temptations on people to watch and criticize. (Location 3073)

The church was not placed on this planet to entertain people one hour a week. (Location 3077)

for me passion means whatever a person is willing to suffer for. (Location 3086)

what you desire so intensely that you will sacrifice anything to have it. (Location 3088)

‘Apostolic passion’, therefore, is a deliberate choice to live very intentionally for Jesus among our neighbours and in the nations. (Location 3092)

It’s the quality of those who are on fire for Jesus, who dream of making disciples for Him. (Location 3094)

Apostolic passion is dead in my heart when I dream more about sports, toys, places to go and people to see, than I do about every nation in the earth and every neighbourhood in my city worshipping Jesus. (Location 3104)

when I make decisions based on the danger involved in the assignment God gives me, not the glory God will get from obeying Him. (Location 3106)

Those who have apostolic passion are planning to go, but willing to stay. (Location 3107)

If you say you will do anything for Jesus, but you don’t sacrifice or suffer for Him, then you aren’t really passionate about Him and his purposes. (Location 3110)

Nothing less will do for you if you want apostolic passion. If you are not willing to fast for it, give up sleep for it, suffer for it, and spend time with people who don’t follow Jesus, you will never find it. (Location 3123)

When you find it, it will be because you have seen Jesus, and savoured Him, and then discovered you cannot keep Him to yourself. (Location 3129)

Human enthusiasm cannot sustain apostolic passion. When God invests his own passion in you, you must build and develop what God has given you. (Location 3133)

God was giving them an invitation to join Him in filling the earth with meaning and beauty. (Location 3150)

Core values can be chosen, but they are most often simply absorbed without our being consciously aware of what we are doing. (Location 3160)

I consciously chose a few passions from my studies. My tendency is to be impulsive when I make commitments to the Lord, so I wanted to do this differently. I wanted to prayerfully focus on a few values and really live them. (Location 3199)

Once you make your choice, select a few Bible verses to reinforce them. Meditate on them to reinforce why they are important to you. Write them into your personal mission statement. Record them in your journal. Pray through them on a regular basis. Choose them and re-choose them many times. We take a lifetime to develop unbiblical passions, so we shouldn’t hold back from spending time choosing and (Location 3202)

Carefully decide what books you read, what movies and TV programmes you watch, what people you hang out with, what activities you engage in – all to feed your passions. Your passions are like a wood fire: You have to continually add fuel to keep the fire going. (Location 3210)

You can lose your passions. I lost mine at one point while living back in the States. I found myself breathing air filtered through a poisoned system of thought and belief. (Location 3213)

If you don’t nurture your passions, you can be compromised without making a conscious choice to forfeit lordship of your heart to someone else. (Location 3220)

Focus your passions on enjoying God. (Location 3225)

Develop spiritual disciplines of prayer, intercession, meditation, spiritual warfare and worship. (Location 3226)

Focus your passions on being loved by God. (Location 3231)

give Him undivided time to love you and encourage you. (Location 3232)

The person who knows they are loved by God is immune to the lure of the world and the temptation to perform for the approval of others. (Location 3234)

Focus your passions on loving those God loves. (Location 3235)

Focus your passions on the nations. Choose a nation or people group that desperately needs Jesus and pray for them. (Location 3239)

It wasn’t as if I chose to do those things, it just came naturally as a result of living in America. It’s like being involved in chemical warfare. I was fighting an unseeable force that was dulling my spiritual focus. (Location 3248)

We have chosen apostolic passion only when our hearts long for Jesus to be worshipped by our neighbours and in the nations. (Location 3273)

Everything we do must lead to making, gathering, teaching and baptizing more fully devoted followers of Jesus. (Location 3287)

Whatever you do for Jesus must lead to this one thing: that Jesus has more worshippers who know, love and obey Him. Call that what you will. I call it making disciples; (Location 3288)

If you live without a vision of the glory of God flooding our planet, you are in danger of serving your own dreams of greatness as you wait to do ‘the next thing’ God tells you. There are too many over-fed, under-motivated Christians hiding behind the excuse that God has not spoken to them. They are waiting to hear voices or see dreams, all the while living to make money, to provide for their future, to dress well and have fun. (Location 3307)

Most people ask the where-and-when questions without a revelation of God’s glory burning in their hearts. (Location 3316)

Remain there and nurture the longing to see people come to know Him and the earth bathed with his praise. Only then will you be able to trust your heart if you hear God say, ‘Stay.’ Only those who long to go, have the right to stay. (Location 3319)

Courage is believing that God’s grace is sufficient for every situation, and then acting on that belief. (Location 3335)

If you have apostolic passion, you are one of the most dangerous people on the planet. The world no longer rules your heart. (Location 3371)

His way of making disciples was to select and focus on a few, and ask them to join him as He reached out to people. (Location 3403)

The Holy Spirit led Jesus, but Jesus also had a plan. He was not just spontaneously doing whatever came to mind that day. He was intentional. He carried out his plan from a whole different paradigm. (Location 3415)

It is not a top down hierarchical organization, but a movement held together by people who share the same vision and values. (Location 3425)

He led the movement He began from underneath, very quickly involving the disciples in leadership assignments without mentioning positions or titles. (Location 3430)

He was training them to lead before they were actually born again, in our evangelical understanding of what that means. After all, the journey of discipleship doesn’t start when a person comes to faith in Christ, but long before. (Location 3431)

If you began a movement now the same way Jesus got things going in his day, it would mean telling everyone you met about Jesus, watching who responded with keen interest, and then selecting a few people from those who don’t know Christ but who are most open, and investing lots of time in them. You would start to meet with this group of seekers in times of discussion over a meal. You would ask one of them to read a few short verses from the words of Jesus, another to lead a discussion about what Jesus meant and how his teaching applied to their lives, and still another to teach a new song they had written. (Location 3435)

You would encourage them to tell their family and friends what they were learning about Jesus. You would meet in their homes, not yours. You would want as many of their friends and family to sit in on the discussions as possible. When you would come together as a group around a meal, you would model a facilitative style of leadership that got everyone involved, carefully taking a back seat so you could encourage their development. You would be pleased as they quickly took ownership of what was happening. (Location 3441)

You would have already met one-on-one with your disciples behind the scenes, asking different ones to take part in the group gatherings. You would ask each member of the group to help make it happen in different ways, and then you would coach them, seeking to instil in them leadership values that would prepare them to lead new communities as they sprung up. You would encourage them to gather their friends and family members and tell them about Jesus. (Location 3445)

We tend to think of people coming to faith in Jesus at a specific moment in the timeline of their life, through believing a set of doctrines, but my observation is that for many people, salvation is more of a process than a specific moment. (Location 3470)

This way of belonging to a group is what is called the ‘centred set’ and is all about believing a set of values or being devoted to a person who stands at the centre. The boundaries are fuzzy in terms of who is ‘in’ or ‘out’, but the centre is clear: devotion and obedience to the person of Jesus Christ. (Location 3485)

we will have the same ‘messy’ boundaries if we are effectively doing church with our neighbours and non-Christian friends. Different people are at different places in their search to know the truth if the centre is clearly Jesus and we are focused on making disciples who love and obey Him. (Location 3489)

It is not about stepping across a man-made boundary of rules and practices, but inviting people to Jesus. (Location 3496)

God wanted him to help birth a movement that radically lowered the bar for what it meant to be church, but raised the bar for what it meant to be a disciple in the church. (Location 3509)

simple church movements are spurred in their growth by personal discipleship. It is people discipling people. Programmes don’t disciple people, buildings don’t disciple people … people disciple people. (Location 3513)

Look for those who are genuinely open and want to grow, and invest lots of time and energy in them. I learned that I am not responsible for making people grow who don’t want to grow. I love them and pray for them, but I don’t chase after them. (Location 3532)

loving people unconditionally, and making disciples, are two different things. If we don’t make a distinction, we will confuse the great commandment to love our neighbours as ourselves, and the great commission to make disciples of all nations. (Location 3542)

The goal of discipleship is not disseminating information, but life-on-life formation. (Location 3547)

He poked around in my heart when he sensed I was not doing well. (Location 3560)

Pop Jenkins burned with one consuming passion, and that was to inspire young men to love the nations. He had one calling, and that was to mentor one or two students at a time to receive God’s love for those who had never heard the name of Jesus. (Location 3568)

Pop Jenkins passed on a level of compassion I had never experienced before. Most of that trip my brother and I watched Pop Jenkins weep for people. One old man, two young boys, and a few days in Mexico. But it upended my world. (Location 3573)

I learned to hear God’s voice under his leadership, and was given the opportunity to do what God told me to do when others said it was impossible. Loren believes in people. (Location 3592)

God shapes our lives through people. Everything God does is through people. It’s the principle of life-on-life impartation. (Location 3595)

If we are to be all that God wants us to be, we must find those mentors that God has for us, and receive from them, and in turn, look for those God wants to impact upon through our lives. (Location 3597)

Disciple-making is looking for those God has selected for us to disciple, and passing on what God has deposited in our lives. (Location 3599)

Building a disciple-making culture and birthing a disciple-making movement does not happen by accident. (Location 3606)

Passionate people catch the fire that burns in them from someone else and in turn pass it on to others. Every person who is influencing other people’s lives can tell you about the people who impacted upon them. (Location 3607)

These disciples of Jesus are people who have lost their lives. (Location 3632)

They have courageously chosen to reach out to a few others and invest in their lives. They are faithfully and fiercely focused on obeying Jesus’ command to make disciples. (Location 3634)

If Jesus walked the way of suffering to receive the blessing of the Father, do we think we can do anything less? If we are willing to align ourselves with a tribe of people with proven passion, it will mean getting out of our comfort zone, taking up our cross, and putting ourselves in harm’s way for the sake of gospel. (Location 3639)

Discipleship isn’t a school or programme, but a lifestyle of passion and purpose passed on through personal investment and involvement in one another’s lives (Location 3646)

There are no shortcuts to doing church the way Jesus did it. He built a team that became a community that multiplied and grew into a movement. (Location 3657)

it takes four generations of disciples over a period of about 20 years to birth a movement. (Location 3658)

I believe God wants to use every person to launch a disciple-making movement. (Location 3662)

Everyone can disciple at least two or three people. (Location 3666)

Discipleship is not telling other people what to do, nor is it a rigid set of rules and practices for spiritual growth. (Location 3691)

discipleship: it is helping another person to know, love and obey Jesus. (Location 3692)

Personal discipleship happens as a result of encouragement and exhortation. It includes calling out the destiny of God in people’s lives. It is accountability to others. (Location 3696)

Clear boundaries are maintained in discipling relationships by not taking responsibility for another person or overriding them in matters of conscience. (Location 3703)

it doesn’t mean we take responsibility for each other’s decisions. (Location 3705)

People grow the most when they learn to hear God’s voice for themselves. (Location 3706)

God has designed us to take hold of truth internally and then apply that truth to areas of our character that need changing. Every person must grasp God’s truth for himself or herself and not look to others or external rules to follow. (Location 3708)

Obedient disciples make disciples. It’s the heart of what we do. There is nothing more important than investing our lives in other people. (Location 3722)

We realized that to carry a passion for the nations we had to nurture apostolic passion in the place of prayer and intercession. We know we cannot pass it on to others if we are not carrying that passion deep in our inner being. (Location 3735)

His disciple-making started with those who did not know the Father’s love. (Location 3742)

Discipleship begins by reaching out to those individuals and peoples who don’t know Jesus and inviting them to follow Him. (Location 3744)

Baptism is intended to recognize and proclaim publicly that a person is following Jesus and is part of the fellowship of those who have made this commitment. Baptism declares that a person has been joined to the family of God. (Location 3748)

‘A reached community is not a discipled community.’ (Location 3756)

it is possible to evangelize people by the thousands and millions, but that does not mean they have been discipled. (Location 3758)

Discipleship is intended by God to lead to transformation, both on a personal level and in the surrounding community. (Location 3768)

To weave an effective discipleship net means gathering and equipping people to be disciple-makers themselves. That means modelling disciple-making in our lives. It comes down to small groups and one-on-one times with people at work and school and who live close to us. (Location 3780)

Discipling someone means intentionally identifying with God’s interests in that person’s life. (Location 3794)

‘The church is the fellowship of disciples of Jesus who have received the life of the kingdom and are dedicated to the task of preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom in the world.’ (Location 3804)

We are guilty of asking too little of each other. We are created to serve God with passion, and passion is impossible without sacrifice. There is no way a city orchestra would allow a person to perform without practising, or a local sports team let kids play without practising. It’s harder to become a member of some civic groups or sports clubs than most local churches! (Location 3809)

Some may grumble about what we ask of them, but the hungry ones will be excited. If your key people go through a time of training and equipping, they’re taking the steps we must all take to be part of a team, to join with others of like mind and spirit. (Location 3822)

We must not let people think that by going to a meeting once a week they will be ready to face the challenges the enemy throws at them. Discipleship means engaging one another through the week. It means courses and workshops and prayer meetings that are aimed at equipping people to live as co-workers in spreading the good news of the kingdom. (Location 3827)

We have the awesome responsibility and opportunity to help shape the world-view of people and impart to them kingdom values. We are preparing front line workers for the kingdom of God. God has called them, placed them where He wants them, and we get to equip them to be ‘fulltime’ for Jesus. (Location 3832)

God is calling us to father and mother movements of men and women who will do mighty exploits for God, and that will not happen if we are not diligent in seeking God and obeying Him. (Location 3844)

Unless we make disciple-making our main agenda, all our visions are fantasy. It’s the difference between dreaming and doing. And to do the job really well, we have to make our main business making disciples who make disciples. (Location 3849)

Discipleship helps create a culture. One person cannot do that by himself or herself. (Location 3853)

It’s the trust that says, ‘I want input from you, even if it means significant adjustment to my character or plans.’ (Location 3861)

Trust in a discipling relationship takes time, hard work, connecting from the heart, humility and lots of transparency. Trust is the assurance that you can rely on a person to tell you the truth, knowing that they believe in you. (Location 3862)

Amazingly, we can pull down walls of mistrust through being vulnerable to another person. (Location 3865)

Disciples make disciples. There is no short cut and there is no other way for a church or movement to reproduce itself. (Location 3873)

Who are you investing your life in, right now? Have you told them? If not, don’t let any more time slip by without doing so. Take them out for a meal or a cup of coffee, then take the risk, open your heart to them, and invite them to meet with you regularly. Outline what’s on your heart. Cast your vision. Ask them to join you on the journey. (Location 3887)

Ask people what their needs are, and how they would like you to serve them. (Location 4095)

Meet lots of people. In the first two weeks, meet only those who don’t follow Jesus. In the first three months, set a goal of how many people you would like to meet, and then pursue relationship-building as your primary goal. (Location 4096)

Select potential future leaders and invest major time and energy in their lives. (Location 4103)

as you disciple a few people, encourage them to immediately disciple others also. (Location 4105)

Take your future leaders with you when you visit other cities or towns to share Jesus. Welcome your disciples in your home and drop in to visit them where they live. (Location 4108)

Stay in the background when you gather together. Deliberately develop a model of servant, behind-the-scenes leadership. (Location 4114)

Be a coach to a network of simple churches rather than an up-front leader to one larger community. (Location 4115)

Plan for multiplication from the time you begin. Think about how to plant the seeds for multiplication so it will happen naturally as the first group grows. (Location 4117)

Love God - Intimacy • Love each other – Community • Love the world – Mission (Location 4169)