It’s easy to cater to the needs of religious consumers; if we aren’t careful we become defined by what happens on the weekend, and there are times when we lose our way when it comes to mission and we are in need of rediscovering it, according to David Putnam in his book The Gospel Disciple: Moving Beyond the Weekend.
This short ebook comes in three chapters, each discussing something critical which it is easy to lose sight of in the daily stresses and busyness of running a church:
- Rediscovering the Gospel
- Rediscovering our disciple-making mission
- Rediscovering what it means to be the church
According to the author, what we believe about the Gospel determines the kind of disciples we become, and what kind of disciples we become determines our understanding of church, so it is critical for us to start the process by rediscovering the Gospel.
The issues which the book discusses are issues which inevitably arise whenever a new church is planted, unless the church is merely following someone else’s pre-existing plan. Every church planter needs to ask what the Gospel means for the community which will be served by the church, how best to go about disciple-making in that community, and how the church should best be embodied in that community.
The ebook is available for free download at http://blog.exponential.org/2012/10/the-gospel-disciple-by-david-putman/