Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Question-Based Discipleship

Ideation appears as one of my top 5 in the Strengthfinder inventory, and that means ideas tend to hit me at weird times, like when I'm making the turn from 3rd Street to E Street looking for a parking spot. I decided at that moment what my Leadership Retreat breakout will be this year, Greater Depth: Questions That Transform.

I'm convinced that discipleship often boils down to the questions we ask more than the answers we give. I've never researched it, but I'd love to know the percentage of Scripture devoted to Jesus' questions vs. Jesus' teaching. I bet the percentage looks a lot different from the amount of time the typical pastor engages in both of those activities.
  • Who you say that I am?
  • What do you want me to do?
  • What are you thinking in your hearts?
  • Do you believe I can do this?
  • Why are you terrified?
Those are some of the questions Jesus asked, and they transformed the lives of the people that he asked. How would we answer them today? And how can we incorporate questions like this into our day-to-day conversations with people? What if we moved away from a classroom or coursework approach to discipleship and viewed every conversation as an opportunity for discipleship?

posted by Heather Z @ 9:21 AM   2 comments

2 Comments:

At 11:30 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

You bring up some great points here and fundamental questions to think about! I totally agree that discipleship does boil down to the questions we ask, but a question I ask you is, where does discipleship begin? Effectively answering that question enables us to identify opportunities for discipleship. I think the first question one must ask is, God, who are you? The first step for the disciples was to follow Christ. The first step was the obedience of a command. The first step was recognizing that it was about Jesus, not themselves. I would love your thoughts!

 
At 2:11 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Interesting points, and something I have been wondering about too. Reminded me of something I experienced at a recent retreat with Michael Christensen (http://users.drew.edu/mchriste/). He asked us to identify one persistent question in our life and share it with our group. Don't try to answer or resolve it, but live with it for a while. Hope you have a great retreat!

 

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