Confident Discipleship
Reflections from GfE meeting held on 8th March 2010
  
Tracy Cotterell and Neil Hudson from The London Institute for Contemporary Christianity have worked with 16 congregations of various shapes and sizes to see how they can equip "confident disciples"
Summary of discussion and resources
LICC conducted an online survey with 3000 Christians through the Spring Harvest network. They asked an open question about key issues faced in the Christian life. The replies are categorised in the various sections of the pie chart in the PowerPoint. A significant key issue for many is being confident as a Christian witness in the home, work, and neighbourhood (in that order).
Building on the contrast between 'gathered church' on a Sunday and 'scattered church' the rest of the week, Tracy and Neil described the 'Imagine' project about being a witness at work. The role of the church is not so much to draw people in to maintain our own activities, so much as to send out and equip Christians to be the people of God in the wider world. 'Scattered' rather than 'gathered' requires a different mindset and new resources.
An older lady in a small rural Anglican church illustrated the shift. She said she did not work, but cooked, cleaned and looked after the grandchildren. Each Sunday she cooked dinner and her granddaughter often asked about church and the sermon. After her house group considered 'confident discipleship', this lady gained confidence to answer the questions saying 'I know what to do now'. The grandaughter was not 12 but 23 by the way.
Helping people in all walks of life answer questions about their Christian faith is one key element of 'confident discipleship'. It is the key question members of the churches coordinating group for evangelisation would like to consider further.
The survey further found that stress, long hours, and poor management at work cause Christians to struggle. They need support, prayer, and permission to get more involved in things outside church for work of the coming kingdom. We pray for mission partners teaching in other parts of the world but not our own congregation members on our own doorstep. One church with a large notice board of mission partners and prayer needs, placed a mirror on the board to make the point that we are all sent.
The national evangelism officers in the GfE network were pleased to be part of the thinking process of the LICC 'Imagine' project as it gets shaped in to resource materi al to be available in the Autumn of 2010.
Other related resources
The Baptists have a resource on the website to help Christians gain confidence in the Gospel, at http://www.baptist.org.uk/resources/resource_downloads/539.html
The Congregational Federation are in the process of developing a new training resource called 'Growing Disciples' which will be launched in May 2010. See: http://www.congregational.org.uk/section.aspx?id=6588
Bible Fresh is a major initiative being taken up in 2011 by many of the major churches, agencies, publishers, conferences and festivals celebrating the 400th anniversary of the KJ translation. Reading the Bible is one key way in which we gain confidence in our Christian faith. See: http://www.biblefresh.com/
Youth For Christ have produced a resource pack for young people to share their faith with more conidence under the title The Art of Connecting.
Report / article. Jim Currin, secretary to the group, has written an article on the meeting which was posted as part of CTeNews. You can subscribe to CTeNews on the CTE homepage. The article is here.
The next step
In addition to the GfE members who described their resources mentioned above, we are aware of a number of others too. The next step is to write a 'Signpost' Resource Paper which will highlight the resources available from various churches and mission agencies all looking to make 'confident disciples'.
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