I've just spent a week in a country I doubt you'd want to live in; I don't think I would. It's a country wracked by multi-level poverty, which makes it a difficult place to visit and an even more difficult place to live. (NB: for the security of the people involved, I've deliberately omitted the name of the country.) The economic poverty is apparent on every street corner: buildings and infrastructure are run-down, food is scarce and expensive, and essential services are hard to access. But perhaps more pressing is the overwhelming social poverty—expressed in a lack of relationships, constant mistrust and suspicion, and the reality that you are being ‘watched’.

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Well we're up to the last of our ten propositions about Christian ministry. They don't say everything (of course). And they are all necessarily short and simple (being very abbreviated summaries of argument of the new book The Trellis and the Vine that I've just finished writing with Col Marshall). I hope they've been stimulating all the same, and that they've whetted some appetites to read and think and talk further.

The first nine were as follows:

1. Our goal is to make disciples not church members.
2. Churches tend towards institutionalism as sparks fly upward.
3. The heart of disciple-making is prayerful speaking of God's word.
4. All ministry has the goal of nurturing disciples, not just one-to-one discipling or mentoring.
5. To be a disciple is to be a disciple-maker.
6. Disciple-makers need to be trained and equipped in conviction, character and competence.
7. There is only one class of disciples, regardless of different roles or responsibilities.
8. The disciple-making imperative of the Great Commission needs to drive fresh thinking about our Sunday meetings, and the place of training in congregational life.
9. Training almost always starts small, and grows by multiplying workers .

The final proposition is less about the day-to-day life of congregations, and more about the generation-to-generation growth of the gospel.

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Regular SP readers are probably aware that our Saturday posts are reserved for little blasts from the past. We republish bits and pieces of the last 21 years of The Briefing for your edification. (It's also a way of pointing out that magazine articles come and go, but the things they talk about, when they're based in Scripture, are still important a decade later. Since when did 10 years become ancient history?) Over the next month or so, I am going to put up some stories of God's work in people's lives. Hopefully they'll be as encouraging and challenging for you as they have been for me.

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As Mark has indicated, this little gig is looking at the ‘knowing ourselves’ part of the knowing God/knowing ourselves learning curve we are all involved in. One of the things that has recently surfaced again for me is the ubiquitous personality test—mostly because they have been pattering about all over Facebook like so many hobbits. So I thought it might be time to evaluate these critters again, and work out their strengths and weaknesses. Having a tool is all very well, but we need to be sure we're using it correctly and not (to use a metaphor) digging a hole with a hammer.

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We're on the home stretch with our ten propositions about Christian ministry. The first eight were as follows:

1. Our goal is to make disciples not church members.
2. Churches tend towards institutionalism as sparks fly upward.
3. The heart of disciple-making is prayerful speaking of God's word.
4. All ministry has the goal of nurturing disciples, not just one-to-one discipling or mentoring.
5. To be a disciple is to be a disciple-maker.
6. Disciple-makers need to be trained and equipped in conviction, character and competence.
7. There is only one class of disciples, regardless of different roles or responsibilities.
8. The disciple-making imperative of the Great Commission needs to drive fresh thinking about our Sunday meetings, and the place of training in congregational life.

The ninth is another counterintuitive thought: if you want to train people, don't run a training event.

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Theodicy is the defence of God's justice and goodness. It is something that we naturally think about, and yet, more often than not, it drives our preaching. You reach a difficult teaching of Jesus about hell, or a confronting passage of Paul's about the role of men and women in the church, or even about the uniqueness of Christ, and instead of listening to the passage, you start arguing with it. And sometimes God's word seems to magically come around to your point of view.

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Just a quick plug for the new Christians in the Media evangelistic material produced for the Jesus All About Life campaign. I've had a flick through the book and watched one of the videos and, as usual, the material is excellent. Dominic Steele preaches through parts of Revelation to show you the character of Jesus and the nature of his work, and the workbook material gets people to think personally about what it means to trust Christ and repent. The advertising will provide background noise, but this material is where the action is at. Here is the gospel—explained clearly, winsomely and unapologetically. Check out the material for yourself.

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History ‘from below’ gets down and dirty. It is a pity it hurts so much to do it.

The ‘Great Ones’ of human history often earn the acclaim they so enjoy to propagate—at the expense of many ordinary people. These ordinary people either made them what they became (without thanks), or were crushed by them in the process of their exaltation (without mercy). Either way, there are valleys of dried bones beneath the feet of those who call themselves benefactors.

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The Trellis and the Vine has just gone to printers in Singapore, and will be available (God-willing) in mid-October. In the meantime, our last three propositions start to zero in on some implications of this view of ministry. The first seven were:

1. Our goal is to make disciples not church members.
2. Churches tend towards institutionalism as sparks fly upward.
3. The heart of disciple-making is prayerful speaking of God's word.
4. All ministry has the goal of nurturing disciples, not just one-to-one discipling or mentoring.
5. To be a disciple is to be a disciple-maker.
6. Disciple-makers need to be trained and equipped in conviction, character and competence.
7. There is only one class of disciples, regardless of different roles or responsibilities.

How does this agenda relate to our regular church activities?

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This is our final instalment in our blast from the past series from Peter Jensen's 2001 Briefing article on the nature of humanity. So far, he has canvassed some alternative ways of viewing what it means to be human before arguing that biblically we are one race and two sexes. In this final installment, Peter asks how we might live as a result of the biblical teaching.

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