“If you knew that there was one greater than yourself, who knows you better than you can know yourself and loves you better than you can love yourself, who can make you all you ought to be, steadier than your squally nature, able to save you from squandering your glorious life, who searches you beyond the standards of earth . . . one who gathered into himself all great and good things and causes, blending in his beauty all the enduring color of life, who could turn your dreams into visions and make real the things you hoped were true, and if that one had ever done one unmistakable thing to prove, even at the price of blood — his own blood — that you could come to him, and having failed, come again, would you not fall at his feet with the treasure of your years, your powers, service and love?  And is there not one such, and does he not call you?”

A. E. Whitham, quoted in Raymond C. Ortlund, Let the Church be the Church (Waco, 1983), page 39.

HT: Ray Ortlund

HT: MHC

Training Introduction

Introduction to the video training. (Notes)

Purpose

An overview of the Vision of community groups at Mars Hill. (Notes)

DDL: Overview

Pastor Bill Clem gives an overview of the DDL (Description of a Disciples Lifestyle) and tells us how it can be applied to our ministry to insure that at the end of the day we are making disciples of Christ. (Notes, Document)

DDL: Gospel Identity

At the root of being a disciple of Christ is finding our identy in Him. (Notes)

DDL: Gospel Worship

As image bearers of God we are constantly worshiping. Pastor Bill paints a picture of what it would look like to identify the idols we worship and begin to worship Jesus instead. (Notes)

DDL: Gospel Community

Pastor Bill gives us a picture of what it looks like to live in Gospel Community with one another. (Notes)

DDL: Gospel Mission

The purpose of our discipleship must result in a desire to help the lost. This session takes us through what a disciples life of mission might look like. (Notes)

Expectations of a Leader

It is important for you as leader to understand what the expectation of a leader are.. And what they are not. Pastor Brad addresses these questions in this session. (Notes)

Understanding the CG Structure

Understanding the support structure and purpose gives us confidence as leaders that we have support for the messes we will run into as leaders of authentic community. (Notes)

Authority of the Bible

(Notes)

How People Change

HPC is a valuable resource for us to understand a basic model of sanctification for the purpose of a common language to deal with sin and sinful responses in our groups by pointing people to Jesus and God glorifying responses. (Notes)

Worship in Community Groups

(Notes)

Deep AND Missional: Community like Jesus

Many leaders as if our groups should be deep and authentic or missional. Pastor Bill explains through the example of Jesus that these to strategies are not mutually exclusive and how in the end we can and should be both. (Notes)

Relational Geography: A Strategy

This session explains how our commitment to geography gives us a foundation from which to reach and bless our city one neighborhood at a time. (Notes)

Replication: Growth for the Gospel

One of the hallmarks of our community groups is that growth occurs through replication. (Notes)

Instruments in the Redeemer’s Hands

Instruments is a valuable resource for leaders to understand the rythyms of shepherding the people in their groups. (Notes)

Click through to Gospel Delta if you can’t see the videos.

http://www.jesusstorybookbible.com

The Summons: Exploring the Call to Ministry (Sovereign Grace Ministries)

Dave Harvey and Jeff Purswell

• In December of 2004, men from three nations and representing more than 20 churches gathered at Covenant Fellowship Church in Glen Mills, Pennsylvania for this one-day seminar. The teachings presented that day are designed to provide pastors, leaders, and potential leaders with a biblical framework for exploring a sense of calling to full-time ministry.

1. The Caller and the Summons Part 1 (Dave Harvey)

2. The Caller and the Summons Part 2 (Dave Harvey)

3. Eldership and the Call to Character (Jeff Purswell)

4. The Call to Prepare (Jeff Purswell)

5. Q&A Panel Discussion (Dave Harvey and Jeff Purswell)

GOSPEL GROWTH = PEOPLE GROWTH (Matthias Media)

Gospel growth happens “in” people and “through” people.

• IN PEOPLE: You can have growth in numbers, in budgets, in programs, in activities, in staff, in baptisms, in buildings, in reputation, and even growth in the quality of preaching, but unless individual people are growing in knowledge, in faith, in godliness, and in love as disciples of Christ, it’s all a noisy clanging gong. Are your people really growing? How would you know whether they are or not? Who is discipling each person in your congregation?

• THROUGH PEOPLE: Jesus commissioned every disciple for disciple-making, and a pastor-teacher’s job is not only to proclaim and to pray but also also to equip, train and mobilize People for the task. Gospel growth multiplies as Christians get involved in the three P’s: Proclamation, Prayer, and People — in prayerfully speaking God’s word to other people, in whatever way they can, large or small, at home or at work, in small groups or one-to-one. Is this happening where you are? Or is the ministry basically done by the staff? How many people in your congregation, for example, would be willing and able to do the foundational personal discipling work of following up a new believer and establishing them in the basics of the faith?

Listen as Tullian Tchividjian describes how the gospel is not just what ignites us as believers but fuels everything we do in the Christian life.

Oftentimes people ask me about my love of pastors, preachers, and authors, and wonder if it is an unhealthy thing that I listen to and read the thoughts of men whose opinions most Christians could care less about. Many of my friends in Christian community hear me quoting Puritans and other dead and living theologians like Tim Keller, D.A. Carson or John Piper and write me off as another “fan-boy” of celebrity Christian culture, if there were such a thing as celebrity in this small corner of Christian world known as “The New Reformed.” They call it being a “second-hander” or “hero-worship.”

But there is a difference in my mind between “hero worship” and “holy emulation.” Throughout his letters, the Apostle Paul exhorts others to imitate him, as he is imitating Christ. Most notably in 1 Cor 11:11 (“Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ”) and Phil 3:17 (“Brothers, join in imitating me, and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us”). If another brother in Christ speaks truth to me, or reflects Christ to me, or illumines my mind with spiritual thoughts in such a way as to renew my spirit with the Gospel, I love that brother for it. And if they do so on a consistent basis, ministering the Gospel to my soul through their preaching, writing, or leading, then I am drawn to emulate them, and want to be like them…and I thank Jesus that through them he is shining his divine and supernatural light upon me.

True to form, and in ironic fashion, I will quote Puritan Thomas Brooks to conclude my point. In The Secret Key to Heaven, Brooks wrote this about holy emulation:

Bad men are wonderfully in love with bad examples…. Oh, that we were as much in love with the examples of good men as others are in love with the examples of bad men.

Shall we love to look upon the pictures of our friends; and shall we not love to look upon the pious examples of those that are the lively and lovely picture of Christ? The pious examples of others should be the mirrors by which we should dress ourselves.

He is the best and wisest Christian…that imitates those Christians that are most imminent in grace…. It is noble to live by the examples of the most eminent saints. (12-13)

How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!” – Romans 10:14-15

This is a helpful introduction to the difference between missional and attractional models of being the Church. However, this understanding of missional church is a tad individualistic. The Church should be doing mission as a community, locked arm-in-arm, and living everyday lives together with Gospel intentionality. One of the pitfalls of the missional model is the over-reaction against Christian community, where we see individuals leaving to become vigilante missionaries and eschewing all meaningful ties to the local church. Mission without community is not mission at all.

Some good books for follow up:

Simple Church: Returning to God’s Process for Making Disciples

Missional Renaissance: Changing the Scorecard for the Church