Tag Archives: Personal Discipleship

February 1, 2015

Personal Discipleship Class

By John Paine
Personal Discipleship Class

Click on the images inside this file to link to the online resources. (You may need to adjust your browser settings to allow the links to work, or open it in iBooks, or save it to your desktop and open it with Acrobat Reader.)

Starting today (February 1st), I will be facilitating a new class on personal discipleship. For the next nine weeks, we will meet promptly at 10:45 a.m. in room 156 at the Williamsburg Community Chapel.

This class will build upon the apostle Paul’s instruction in (Philippians 2:12):

“Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling;”

“Personal discipleship” is the process by which a believer or seeker accepts personal responsibility for exploring the claims and content of the Bible. The class will explore resources and topics, going beyond the sacred page to meet some of today’s most interesting and thought-provoking theologians, apologists, and philosophers. We will discuss historical evidence for the Resurrection, the dating of Easter, apologetics, textual criticism, the trustworthiness of Scripture, biblical inerrancy, science and faith, and current topics in theology.

The first session will focus on resources for personal discipleship. Click on the image above to download a PDF file containing hyperlinks to some of my favorite resources, which I will demonstrate in the class. If your personal studies are getting a little rote, try clicking on the images in this file to find some refreshing new tools and resources that you can use to reinvigorate your devotional life. The breadth and depth of high-quality resources available today is absolutely stunning.

Objective Truth As The Basis For Our Study

I posted the following video a couple of weeks ago. It presents an interesting, refreshing basis for studying the Christian faith—specifically that Christianity is founded on objective truth. The ideas in this video will frame our approach to studying during this class.

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August 13, 2014

A Layman’s Faith

By John Paine
Religio-Laici

Religio Laici, or A Layman’s Faith. John Dryden’s radical 1682 poem comprises a warrant for personal discipleship.

“For every man is building a several way; impotently conceited of his own model, and his own materials: reason is always striving, and always at a loss; and of necessity it must so come to pass, while it is exercised about that which is not its proper object. Let us be content at last, to know God, by his own methods; at least, so much of him, as he is pleased to reveal to us in the sacred Scriptures; to apprehend them to be the word of God, is all our reason has to do; for all beyond it is the work of faith, which is the seal of heaven impressed upon our human understanding.

“Yet to such as are grounded in the true belief, those explanatory Creeds, the Nicene and this of Athanasius, might perhaps be spared: for what is supernatural will always be a mystery in spite of exposition: and for my own part the plain Apostles Creed, is most suitable to my weak understanding; as the simplest diet is the most easy of digestion.

“But, by asserting the Scripture to be the canon of our faith, I have unavoidably created to myself two sorts of enemies: the papists indeed, more directly, because they have kept the Scripture from us, what they could; and have reserved to themselves a right of interpreting what they have delivered under the pretence of infallibility: and the fanatics more collaterally, because they have assumed what amounts to an infallibility in the private spirit: and have distorted those texts of Scripture, which are not necessary to salvation, to the damnable uses of sedition, disturbance, and destruction of the civil government.

“The florid, elevated, and figurative way is for the passions; for love and hatred, fear and anger, are begotten in the soul by showing their objects out of their true proportion; either greater than the life, or less; but instruction is to be given by showing them what they naturally are. A man is to be cheated into passion, but to be reasoned into Truth.”
John Dryden, Preface to Religio Laici, 1682

(Ed: One of our regular readers complained recently about the length of a typical Veracity post. His complaint was that they are too short. Well…far be it from us to ignore our readers.)
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March 5, 2014

Personal Discipleship

By John Paine

Clarke and I have been invited, along with four other bloggers, to share devotional posts with our Church (Williamsburg Community Chapel) during Lent. Here’s the first post we’d like to also share with our Veracity readers as we start this ” Lessons In Lent” series on Ash Wednesday.

John Paine's avatarLessons in Lent

The Life Line The Life Line by Winslow Homer, 1884

Personal discipleship has been a lifeline for me between what had become a comfortable and complacent Christian experience, and one that became vibrant, exciting, and very real. As we embark on this new Lenten series, I invite you to take a fresh approach to your devotional life.

Personal discipleship is the process in which a believer or seeker takes personal responsibility for investigating the claims and content of the Bible. While we all appreciate hearing a well-turned sermon in a moving worship service, sitting in a pew is a passive experience. None of us would get very far academically if all we ever did was attend lectures. We have to read, study, work some problems through, write, engage others in discussion, apply ourselves, and prepare to be tested. And so it is with our faith.

Matthew’s Gospel invites that kind of approach. His…

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January 14, 2014

Lessons Learned from Our 2013 Symposium

By Clarke Morledge

So, What did we learn?Can you defend your faith when challenged by others? Our Veracity blog founder, John Paine, has been thinking about this question, courtesy of J.I. Packer. But what are some of the obstacles that you and your fellow Christians face when given the opportunity to defend one’s faith? I have been meditating on these type of questions lately, as our Facts & Faith Symposium wrapped up about six weeks or so ago in November, 2013.  I would like share some of the things that I have been learning.

Our Symposium, sponsored partly by Veracity over three nights (#1, #2, and #3), covered the topic of Creation and how Science and the Bible relate to one another. OK, hang on for a minute. I admit that I am a bit of a science-geek. This is no surprise, as I am a computer engineer, so it comes with the territory. I know that there are a lot of friends of mine who could care less about science. As long as they can use their iPhones and work the microwave oven, technologies that have been brought to us by the miracle of modern science, then that is just fine with them.

I get that. Not everyone can be totally into “science-ish” type stuff, and I am no expert either. I still can not figure out how to connect a DVD player to a television screen easily, so if you ask me to help you hook up your home theater system, I will just end up staring at the puddle of wires for as long as you did. So, please do not get disappointed if I act like I have no clue as to what is going on.

Because you know what? I do not have a clue.

That’s what Google and YouTube videos are for.

But you do not need to be a science-geek to talk about the God of the Bible with your neighbors, friends and family. Working through our own theology of what it means to say that God is our Creator, that we are created in His image, the question of how we are to view the problem of suffering, death, and evil, and that we are fallen and in need of healing is crucial to the journey of personal discipleship. Our contemporary world is built on the foundations of modern science, and that scientific outlook presents challenges to the Christian faith were not there a couple of hundred years ago. So, it is difficult to avoid these challenges.

However, here is the interesting part. Thinking about the relationship between Science and the Bible with respect to Creation is but one example of the type of work Christians need to be able to do in order to effectively communicate the Gospel to a world today that finds it easier to ask Google instead of God for the answers to their questions. I have come to learn that the “Creation issue” is merely a case study illuminating a larger set of issues. Here is what I have learned:

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December 28, 2013

Marketplace Disciples

By John Paine

Marketplace Disciples

Dick Woodward’s ministry partner, businessman Dois Rosser, asked Dick to write a how-to manual for:

  1. Leading a secular person to Christ,
  2. Discipling someone who has come to faith, and
  3. Turning every day you spend in the marketplace into an adventure with Christ.

After reading the final product, I’m certain Dois would agree that he got more than he hoped for.

Marketplace Disciples succeeds beyond the ‘marketplace’ where most of us earn a paycheck. In a greater sense it succeeds in the marketplace of ideas, where there is no shortage of ideas about how to live your life. Atheism, agnosticism, skepticism, religious ideologies, post-modernism, apathy, self-centeredness—you name it.

But here is the big idea: Until Jesus Christ is everything in your life, He really isn’t anything in your life. Dick learned this basic truth from his mother. It doesn’t take long to figure out that Dick takes discipleship very seriously. The difference between Dick and someone like David Platt is that, like the apostle Paul, Dick bears the marks of Jesus on his body.

Dick can’t type. He can’t move his fingers. Or sit up in bed, or scratch his nose. If his head slides off his pillow someone else has to prop him back up. You get the picture—it takes enormous energy and determination to produce even a small amount of text, let alone this 324-page book, using speech recognition software. His voice-control skills are quite impressive. I wouldn’t want to be Dick’s editor—he is a strict grammarian and a meticulous writer.

Dick Woodward

Pastor Dick Woodward

So why should you read Marketplace Disciples? Dick has 50 years of discipleship experience. The man knows what he is talking about, what works, why it works, and most importantly why it matters. He has walked with a lot of people, and has clearly earned his credentials. Even Ravi Zacharias has been deeply moved by Dick’s ministry.

But if I were to get to the heart of the matter, the best reason is that Dick is one of the most joy-filled people I know. You would be hard pressed to find anyone with a brighter outlook, or anyone who could offer more encouragement to those needing a kind word. Continue reading

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