Do You Want More Than Dry Prayer Times?
Our prayer times can often feel dry when what is offered in the scriptures is a prayer life that is dynamic and accessible at any time or occasion.
Creating a Culture of Discipleship Multiplication
In order to establish a church culture where followers grow as disciples, develop into leaders, disciples making disciples and passing on the process, it is essential to adopt and incorporate some fundamental principles.
Do you have a discipleship pathway in your church?
What is a Disciplehsip Pathway and why should we have one? Thats a great question.
Discipleship needs three things to be Jesus shaped
The importance of being relational, intentional, and replicable.
How to share Jesus with your neighbours.
Have you ever wondered how to share your faith with your neighbours without coming across as pushy or awkward? Well, fear not because we are here to share some tips on how to talk about Jesus in a natural and friendly way.
Developing a Habit for Life
How to create your own Habit For Life, often known as a Rhythm of Life. With printable PDF template.
Refreshing Your Heart Through Wonder
Have you ever thought about refreshing your HEART through a Wonder Walk?
Can you sneeze it?
How easy have we made it to share our faith? When trying to explain faith, many of our churches over-explain or over-confuse something that is really meant to be so simple. For example, if you asked most church attendees what it means to be a disciple they would struggle to give an answer in one sentence. Because a simple answer can’t be given, the danger is that nothing is said that is useful at all.
How To Become A Disciple-making Movement.
A disciple-making movement results in a rapid and exponential increase in disciples making disciples.
Women and Discipleship - Discipling Young Women
The importance of discipleship of young women and the need to help them navigate how to live as a Christian woman in an increasingly secular society.
Be discipled back to church.
Sadly for many of us, we have become discipled out of gathered church and discipled further into consumer church. How do we get back into the swing of things?
Quality Discipleship is Key in Releasing Women
In order to take opportunities, women need access to quality discipleship, based on biblical truth.
Risk taking as a woman
How to take risks as a woman and how men need to make a way for women to step up.
LENT WEBINAR / DISCIPLESHIP COACHING
Imagine having your own Discipleship Coach!
How to run the race in a pandemic.
“Run in such a way as to get the prize”. 1 Corinthians 9:24
5 ways to alleviate apathy in your faith.
It’s too easy to settle into a monotonous routine that lacks any passion or joy. So, what can we do to elevate apathy in our faith?
The Battle of Discipleship
The battle of discipleship is lost and won in your church culture and not the programs that you run.
Apprentice To Jesus: 40 days of walking in the way
Location, Location, Location.
Understanding where the Bible was set can help us understand what is happening within it. In this episode, Cris explores the book of Acts and specifically Pauls visit to Ephesus.
How to be discipled in lockdown.
Would the church thrive in the absence of leadership or would they ‘drift off’?
If Jesus was Jewish, then why aren't we?
If Jesus was Jewish, then why aren't we?
Discipleship during Lock down
The Church has never had so much access to great online content about God, but what makes people part of your congregation is their connection with each other and with you — the way you live life with God together as people: discipleship.
5 reasons why we love our neighbour and serve
Activating out faith and living it out can be hard and sometimes we need help. This blog post helps us explore why getting our hands dirty is so important.
Activating out faith and living it out can be hard and sometimes we need help. This blog post helps us explore why getting our hands dirty is so important.
Six reasons why you should trust God
In this week’s Making Disciples episode, Cris speaks about why God is trustworthy. There are many ways to answer that statement but Cris gives us a walkthrough…..
THE PODCAST
MAKING DISCIPLES THE PODCAST IS HERE. A weekly 25min podcast to help in your spiritual formation.
A discipleship podcast for beginners, doubters, confused and long term established Christians. In this podcast, we talk about everything related to growing in faith but in a really simple way. We are honest with our struggles, learn from some wise people and hit some brick walls… a little bit like the original disciples.
THE PODCAST
MAKING DISCIPLES THE PODCAST IS HERE. A weekly 25min podcast to help in your spiritual formation.
A discipleship podcast for beginners, doubters, confused and long term established Christians. In this podcast, we talk about everything related to growing in faith but in a really simple way. We are honest with our struggles, learn from some wise people and hit some brick walls… a little bit like the original disciples.
THE BREATHE PRAYER
How to use your breathing as prayer.
Should Young People Be Discipled?
Interview with Kyle McKinnon Director of Reign Ministeries
What is advent and why do we need it?
If we don’t celebrate advent you will not celebrate the real Christmas. Without advent, Christmas will always become about bigger and better gifts, amounting up debt and eating too much. Without advent, Christmas will struggle to celebrate the Christ child. Let’s have a think about why and how we can celebrate.
PREPARING YOUR KIDS FOR A HAPPY CHRISTMAS
Christmas is such a wonderful time of year that so easily gets swamped with gift-giving and gift-receiving. If we aren’t careful our children grow up with a consumer approach to a season all about the simple Christ child. As society aims to sell more stuff and make Christmas as commercially successful as possible we need to simplify and point to the story of Christmas.
TIPS FOR LEADERS WANTING TO DISCIPLE CHILDREN
It is everyone's responsibility to disciple children, not just the parents and the children's church. Here are some tips for church leaders.
THE PODCAST
MAKING DISCIPLES THE PODCAST IS HERE. A weekly 25min podcast to help in your spiritual formation.
A discipleship podcast for beginners, doubters, confused and long term established Christians. In this podcast we talk about everything related to growing in faith but in a really simple way. We are honest with our struggles, learn from some wise people and hit some brick walls… a little bit like the original disciples. Cris Rogers is a church leader in East London and has been described as a Urban Practical Theologian. wearemakingdisciples.com
THE FATHERS LOVE LETTER
The Bible is this beautiful love letter or sonnet from God to humanity where he whispers on every page “I love you”. In Malachi 1:1-5 it reads, “I have loved you,” says the LORD. “But you ask, ‘How have you loved us?”
Help revitalise your relationship with God.
Four helpful hints to help revitalise your relationship with God:
Making Disciples Interview with Andy Frost
How to raise faith in the family.
Andy Frost heads up Share Jesus International. Working with Care for the family and Katherine Hill, Andy has been apart of creating Raising Faith. In this conversation, we talk about kids and how to disciple your family. We talk about the five helpful hits to disciple your children. 1. Praying with your kids 2. Reading the Bible with them and them seeing you read 3. Being intentional in asking questions about faith 4. Committing to a church family and playing your part 5. Looking to point faith outwards towards others. wearemakingdisciples.com
Lent is for the training of disciples
Lent is more important to your discipleship than you think. Its origins are about 1800 years ago in the Egyptian desert where they would baptise new disciples at Easter. Each disciple would go through 40 days of serious prayer and preparation as they approached their public declaration of faith and their renunciation of any other way other than the way of Jesus.
Lent in a Bag
Pilgrims journeying together…. Throughout the forty days of Lent, we remember the time Jesus spent in the wilderness. Each week, we will be taking time to reflect upon what might sustain us when we find ourselves in a “ wilderness.” Perhaps not literally, but in terms of facing empty, bleak or difficult times in our own lives. Perhaps something that happens at work, school or at home and we know that somehow we will have to get through it. We will have to “ walk through the wilderness”. “ Lent in a Bag” helps us to consider what we need to journey through that wilderness as pilgrims together.
HOW TO USE MAKING DISCIPLES IN LENT
Lent can be an amazing opportunity to take stock and invest in to our discipleship and spiritual formation with honesty and reality.
3 creative ways to disciple kids this Christmas.
Christmas is a great season for taking up the opportunity to disciple the kids in your life. Here are 3 creative ways to disciple your kids this Christmas.
Consumerism:
The enemy of Christian discipleship and community
Big and small disciples together
Thoughts on Children’s Discipleship
So how do we disciple children? Is the classroom the best way to help them fall in love with Jesus? Can we be doing more to share Jesus in the day to day as fellow disciples and as parents?
Interview with Rowan Williams
In this episode, we talk with Dr Rowan Williams about Discipleship and the art of watching and waiting to see what Jesus might do next.
What does it mean to be a disciple of Jesus?
Discipleship isn’t about learning more, but following and copying Jesus in the everyday. We aren’t historians we are partners in Jesus’ kingdom movement.
In this series on discipleship, Loretta chats to Rev Cris Rogers about making disciples and together unpack the most frequently asked questions on the subject.
How can we get more from the Bible
Discipleship is about learning about the one we follow and the place we do that is in the Bible. Here we ask questions around how to get more from the bible? Cris gives us a spiritual practice to use every day to help with this.
Interview with Mike Gore
WHAT IS TRUE DISCIPLESHIP AND WHY IS PERSECUTION IMPORTANT FOR US.
CHRIST-CENTRED DISCIPLESHIP
MAKING DISCIPLES INTERVIEW WITH ALAN HIRSCH
APPRENTICESHIP AND DISCIPLESHIP
Pete Baker, the Pais England National Director, talks with Cris about how to put into practice ancient discipleship practices with young people.
DISCIPLESHIP IS FOR ALL AND NOT THE FEW
For many with disabilities, seeing where they fit into the big story of the Bible is hard, especially when they can barely see where they fit into the church.
There is a group of people for whom discipleship is difficult to access, or there is nothing for them to access in the first place.
Apprenticeship as Discipleship
Making Disciples interview with John Mark Comer
Cris Rogers interviews John Mark Comer, Author of "God has a name" and pastor of Bridgetown Church Portland on the topic of apprenticeship as discipleship.
Surrendering all to Jesus
Making Disciples Interview with Danielle Strickland.
Cris Rogers interviews Danielle Strickland on what 'real' discipleship is and the importance of surrendering all to Jesus.
FOUR THINGS JESUS NEVER SAID
Weird and wonderful phantom quotes or ideas that people either say or live by without realising they are just not true and really not helpful...
I wonder how often we misquote Jesus without even realising it. Could it be that we think we know what Jesus said but for some reason we have the wrong end of the stick. Someone once said to me, ‘as Jesus said spare the rod, spoil the child’. Wow! Taken aback I made sure they understood that Jesus never said that. I also had to make it clear to another person that Jesus never said, God helps those who help themselves. I quickly made them aware that God helps those who can’t help themselves.
How to share our faith with others
Taking time to think about sharing your story of meeting Jesus...
When it comes to sharing our faith, where do we start? Sin? Jesus? Resurrection? Do we go with something more palatable and vague? What about love, everyone wants a bit of love don't they? The truth is that there are some words that unlock conversation and some words that close conversation down. A good example is that of sin. Sin has been used for so long to bash people towards Jesus that the whole concept has become familiarised and people roll their eyes and shrug their shoulders and give us a ‘yeh yeh, tell me something I don't know’ look.
Where’s your garden?
Create gardens, small covered hidden places where you can regularly walk for pleasure with your creator
The bible begins with a regular encounter that took place in a garden, In the opening lines we see that God originally walked with Adam and Eve in a garden. Genesis 3: 8-9 “Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?””
Help, I have a young family...
I am tired, short of time and struggling to grow in my faith.
I love the verse from Matthew 22:37 “Jesus replied: "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind… 'Love your neighbour as yourself.” Or as the disciple-shape tool showed us. Love God with your head, heart and hands. That is the teaching, there's nothing new there. The reality is, there does come a time when this is significantly hard. What do you do when you have a baby, and a toddler, and another on the way. What does it mean then to love God with your head, heart and hands? How do we apply this teaching in this season of life?
Discipleship as living on purpose
Making Disciples interview with Cathy Madavan
Cris Rogers and Cathy Madavan explore discipleship and how to make a firm commitment leads a holy life.
Your Counting Ability
How we support each other to grow in our discipleship
James tells us to ‘confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed’ (James 5:16). And I think this provides a great model for how we can move forward in this area...
Is our school system destroying our discipleship?
Is our present church system is killing discipleship?
Ken Robinson would strongly state, and I would agree, that at present the school system is fundamentally about training university professors. Essentially everybody is being equipped to be an academic until they choose to opt out. The same could be said by the way we do discipleship. Sermons are often academic monologues. We are taught one way so we therefore teach this way. We tend to use the sermon to train people to be theologians and not disciples.
HOW TO STOP MOVING
Taking time to be present to Gods presence
Modern life is busy, some of it busy for work, other times busy for family and sometimes a little busy for us and maybe a little for Jesus. Busyness for some of us makes us feel wanted, needed or appreciated. We think that if we are busy we must be proving our existence. But our identity isn't found in how busy we are.
Creating a culture of growth and change
To change direction or an activity of the church we may need to change the very culture of the whole body.
Creating a church culture of growth and change is a challenging one. We can struggle to change the direction of the church community, we can find resistance where we don’t expect. To change direction or an activity of the church we may need to change the very culture of the whole body.
WE GET TO SHAPE WHERE WE LIVE
WHAT KIND OF NEIGHBOURHOOD DO YOU WANT TO LIVE IN?
In recent years we have seen gay hate shootings, terrorism, Political leaders murdered and the racist outbursts post the EU referendum. The clinical psychologist Dr. Robert Lusson says that “Fear is a bigoted master compelling us to behaviours and actions we would never choose were we free from its incessant calling.” I liked this; fear is an intolerant master that drives us.
THE GOOD OLD DAYS
Going back to the old ways of making disciples - apprenticeship is discipleship, discipleship is about apprenticeship.
Our higher education model is having a detrimental effect upon how we do discipleship. So much of how the church does discipleship is modelled on a failing school system. I don’t say that to offend any teachers, but I am trying to shake up the church.
Making Disciples interview with Dr Paula Gooder
We talk with the eminent theologian Dr Paula Gooder about learning to 'knock about with Jesus'
Dr Paula Gooder speaks about learning to 'knock about with Jesus' and what it means to be a life long learner of Rabbi Jesus.
PRESENT TO GODS PRESENCE
Being present in God's presence.
Have you ever been at a party or the pub and suddenly wished you were back home in bed? Then, just as you head for the door to leave, you suddenly spot someone you didn't have a clue was there. Here you are at this party and a good friend is there and you never realised it because you were far too preoccupied with who you are with or your mind was working on an exit strategy.
Additional Needs & Discipleship
Why and how to disciple children with additional needs?
Should discipling children with additional needs be a priority for the church?
We Are Making Disciples
Discipleship and our planet
I’ve just come back from preaching at a church that used little plastic disposable cups for communion. Probably about 500 were used which equates to about 26,000 little plastic cups in a year (never mind the throw-away coffee cups it also used).
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Mission isn't an afterthought
It is central to your discipleship
Why is it so easy for Churches to form small groups but so difficult to get volunteers for outreach days?
Three Simple Rules
3 Simple Rules For Building A Healthy Dating Church Culture
I meet lots of people who say dating in their Christian community can be a bit of a nightmare...
Singleness Part 1
What The Bible Actually Says About Singleness
In this two-part article, we will explore two important biblical teachings surrounding singleness.
Singleness Part 2
What The Bible Actually Says About Singleness
In the second of this two-part article, we will continue to explore the biblical teachings surrounding singleness.
Marriage
Discipleship in practise
Most of us remember our wedding day with great clarity...
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Browsing the Library
The Bible is a funny old book, and let’s be honest sometimes not the easiest book to read...
Committed to Christ, Committed to His Family?
Have you ever had a good read of an internet review?
Dealing with Anger as a Disciple of Jesus
Are you a fighter or a hoarder?
I feel angry about all kinds of things, from people in front of me at the supermarket being ridiculously slow to unfair criticism on a piece of work I’ve done. Indeed, anger is a fact of life for any of us who interact with real people, but how do you deal with anger - Are you a fighter or a hoarder?
How to talk about your faith well
5 tips for talking about Jesus
There are few things that I get asked about more by my fellow Christians than ‘how do I talk about my faith?’
Catalysis
How did the early church make disciples? What can a church implement to activate discipleship in its churches.
Making Disciples with Dementia
The Challenge of a Dementia Friendly Church
In this second blog, on making disciples of older people. I want to focus on the subject of dementia and discipleship.
Ministry and Mission with Older People
In recent times the issues and challenges of ageing, seem to resonate in every news headline.
Discipleship in later life
What does it mean to be a disciple of Jesus when we spend our newly retired energy in looking after our own very elderly parents and at the same time serve our children in parenting grandchildren, or as we live an isolated existence in a care home?
Reading in three dimensions
How to get the most out of your bible reading
Reading the bible is not easy. How many of us have started out with the intention of reading the whole bible in a year only to find ourselves defeated the tenth time we read about ‘the long lobe of the liver’ in Leviticus!
Who drives the verbs?
How to read the bible for personal transformation
What are you looking out for when you read the bible?
Who shapes your view of the world?
The Bible? Other Christians? The spirit? All of them?
We can’t help it but we all read the world through western eyes and we certainly do the same with the Bible. With everything we watch, read or hear we make a judgment upon it from our way of seeing the world. We all have deeply held beliefs, ingrained patterns of interpreting the world around us. Each of these firmly held beliefs cast a shadow over the way we read the Bible.
Shaping our minds so our hands can be activated
Making Disciples interview with Dr Stephen Backhouse
Stephen shares with us how our minds needs shaping so that our hands can be activated and live out what we are wrestling with. We also talk about the place of Theology in the local church and Tent Theology.
DO I NEED TO GO TO CHURCH TO BE A CHRISTIAN.
Three aspects of why church is important….
Church isn’t a prerequisite for being ‘saved,’ but I would argue that to live a radical, empowered discipled life, church has to be an intrinsic part of it; to inspire, equip, and challenge you, and to enable you to grow in your faith. Church isn’t at its core what you get from it, it’s what you give to it. So when you’re not at church you might not feel like you miss out but you can be guaranteed others will miss out from what you have to offer.
Making Disciples Interview with Miriam Swaffield
[PART 1] Cris Rogers interviews Miriam Swaffield about 'real deal discipleship'. A whole life lived for Jesus.
A whole life lived for Jesus.
Making Disciples Interview with Miriam Swaffield
[Part 2] Cris continues speaking to Miriam about how to share our faith whilst making it natural and normal...
Understanding what we can bring to the table once we own our style for sharing our faith.
Making Disciples Interview with Luke Whyte
Cris Rogers speaks with Luke Whyte about discipleship and millennials.
Creating a discipleship culture that is authentic is key.
Making Disciples Interview with Rob Peabody
How do we move people out from the pews onto the streets.
Discipleship was always done on the go. We also talk about using technology to mobilise discipleship.
Making Disciples Interview with Nathan Foster
Cris speaks to Nathan about spiritual disciplines.
Cris Rogers interviews Nathan Foster, writer of Ordinary Saints, about spiritual disciplines.
Milennials
Creating a church culture that disciples millennials (without trying to disciple millennials)
This January I turned 28 (hurray). In Church of England Clergy terms this makes me a foetus and the youngest Rev in my area by 10 years.