Tag Archives: discipleship

What Discipleship Is (and Isn’t)

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Discipleship is not about:

  • Religious rituals
  • Biblical knowledge
  • Emotional experiences, or even
  • Spiritual disciplines

Though they all help!

It is about submitting every thought — and emotion! — to Christ, so we more consistently manifest the Fruit of the Spirit.

[By denying our Self so we can follow Jesus all the way to the Cross]

Which is how others learn to enjoy Him.

#AmygdalaGospel #TheTransition #FruitOfTheCross

DRAFT: Fruit Of the Cross

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Practicing to Become More Like Jesus

[A 12-week class I might build. Feedback welcome!]

As Christians, we all want to live and love more like Jesus. But books, sermons, Bible study, quiet times, and even counseling only get us so far.

To fully address our strongholds, woundedness and blind spots requires encountering Jesus in a supportive community that models how to deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow Him. In practice, not just in theory.

Fruit of the Cross (FOTC) is a 12-week online course, built around the Fruit of the Spirit, where we learn how to help each other identify and surrender those parts of our “flesh” that hinder us from growing closer to Jesus. By the end, you will be equipped and certified to host your own online or offline FOTC courses, using or adapting our free materials. You also gain membership in our missional social network, where you can continue to grow and plan with like-minded believers.

The course is built around active learning, inspired by Discovery Bible Study and the Minerva Project. Each week focuses on practicing a different Fruit-related learning objective, via:

  • a brief recording, which you listen to on your own time
  • a 2-hour live session where we encounter Jesus through His Word, Spirit, Body & Blood
  • an online chat community where we share questions, testimonies, and encouragement

The course is being developed via the Maven Accelerator Program in January 2022, and we hope to host our first cohort by Lent. Cost will be $14 per student, but scholarships and group discounts are available. For more information, please contact ernest.prabhakar@gmail.com.

DRAFT: DBJ Challenge Statement

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My current best understanding of what we are trying to accomplish in DBJ.

  1. Learn and model what it means to deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow Jesus in a nominally Christianized culture.
  2. Develop a “Jesus Study” format where people who think they know Jesus and the Bible encounter the living Messiah by soaking together in Scripture and the Spirit
  3. Leverage the unprecedented global adoption of video conferencing for publicly practicing fellowship and repentance, in order to draw others to the cross of Christ rather than church buildings.

Sign Up Now! Experience Discipling by Jesus during Lent 2021

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Tickets now available for our inaugural season, starting February 25th/26th

Discipling by Jesus is a novel public co-devotional format, where we help each other learn and demonstrate how to keep growing closer to Jesus, via His Word & Spirit, Body & Blood. We come together online for seven weeks to read, meditate, journal, and respond to how Jesus discipled Peter in the gospels.

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TGR-S6E6: How to Cure Train Wrecks

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Join us on The Great Reset (via Zoom or YouTube Live at Tue Jan 5, 2020 at 1PM PST) as Ernie pitches a framework for tying together our recent themes of discipleship, reconciliation, and loving more like Jesus.

Question: Is there a single thing that both causes and sustains “train wrecks” (i.e., cascades of broken relationships)? If so, can it be inverted to provide a cure?

Perspective: Yes, abjection (i.e. dissociating self from what is toxic or outside our control). The tragedy is that abjection is essential for identity in both groups and individuals, yet ultimately destructive of the larger context. The cure is to follow Christ by incarnating into what was abjected, and overcome it by the power of the cross.

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The Post-COVID Church

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Right now, most churches devote at least six-sevenths of their budget, staff, and attention to what happens on Sundays, and at most one-seventh to helping the congregation follow Jesus the other six days.

Can you imagine what we might accomplish if we flipped that on its head, and invested 85% of our treasure into the rest of the week?

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TGR-S5E2: Discipled By Scripture

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This week on The Great Reset, we invite you to learn along with us as we try out a new practice of being cooperatively taught by God.

John 21:15-17 (study starts ~15 minutes in)

Question: How do we shift from intellectually studying God’s word to humbly obeying it?

Perspective: By submitting ourselves to be Discipled By Scripture together to Love More Like Jesus (“LMLJ”)

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TGR-S3E2: Biastes Co-Discipling Network (Pitch V1)

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The Biastes continue Season 3 of The Great Reset by attempting to articulate concrete commitments we can make together to help us become better husbands and fathers, yet at the same time advance Christ’s purposes on multiple levels.

“He must become greater; I must become less.” — John‬ ‭3:30

Question: How can we as men, whatever our occupation and family situation, make every action count for the Kingdom of God?

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TGR-01: The Cup of Suffering

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The Great Reset: Becoming the Church Decentralized

Episode 1 • April 3, 2020 AD

Public Discipleship as Exercise for the Body of Christ

Wrestling with Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane

Ernest Prabhakar, Speaker Domaĝanto: Question Tamer in Esperanto

  1. Assumptions to Discuss
    • A1: Nothing on earth is more important than becoming (loving) like Jesus
    • A2: That includes becoming like Him in His sufferings (“drinking from His cup”)
    • A3: God as a good Father sometimes asks us, like Jesus, to embrace things we don’t see as good for us.
  2. Questions to Answer
    • Q1: Are we also willing to submit to the Father’s plan, no matter how painful?
    • Q2: What is the suffering God might be calling each of us to rejoice in, rather than reject?
    • Q3: What is the joy set before us, that would make it all worthwhile?
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AORTA Adolescence: The Perpetual Practice of Growing into Christ

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It may be too late to have a happy childhood, but it is never too late to have a turbulent adolescence!

We as a society have lost sight of what it means to grow up. And that’s a good thing!

The gift (and curse) of the Enlightenment is that each of us must answer the question: who do I want to be when I grow up?  It is tempting to envy our ancestors and traditional cultures who had well-defined “markers of maturity”, e.g., marriage, mortgage, and making money.  There is enormous security, stability, and support in having society validate who you are supposed to be.

But there is also enormous danger, especially for Christians.

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