DISCIPLE Bible Study - A Challenge and a Promise
If you make my word your home you will indeed be my disciples.
In this verse, Jesus issues a challenge to those who would be his disciples: Take up residence in my teaching, he says. Spend time with me, he says – long enough to feel at home with me. Nothing less will do. But with this challenge, Jesus also includes a promise: to make a home in my words, he says, is to find a home in my way. The nature of discipleship, Jesus says, is like the lifetime of labor it takes to establish a place of growth and nurture, refuge and redemption, trust and hope. In the end becoming a disciple, like making a home, is its own reward.
DISCIPLE offers the congregation a challenge and a promise. The challenge is to see the regular, in-depth study of Scripture, designed to develop biblically nourished persons committed to discipleship, as the foundation for all congregational ministry. The promise is that all who come to Scripture allowing it to have its say will, with the aid of the Holy Spirit, experience a power that changes priorities and redirect lives. DISCIPLE guides small groups of persons to submit themselves to examine by Scripture, to put themselves under the power of God’s Word, and to be changed by God’s Word. This process is not the work of just one group of thirteen – or even two or three groups – but ultimately of every person in a congregation, generation after generation. Transformation is central to the challenge and the promise of making DISCIPLE Bible Study the starting point for ministry. If congregations desire members whose way of life – as individual Christian and as faithful community – is transformed by the way of Christ, then studying Scripture is an essential step to take. For everyone.