{"id":1974,"date":"2013-08-17T00:00:33","date_gmt":"2013-08-17T05:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.twocities.org\/?p=1974"},"modified":"2013-08-16T12:31:59","modified_gmt":"2013-08-16T17:31:59","slug":"discipleship-and-dodo-birds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/?p=1974","title":{"rendered":"DISCIPLESHIP AND DODO BIRDS"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

The Dodo, of course, is well known for two things: being ugly and being extinct. \u00a0Discipleship where you invest long-term in a few relationships seems to have gone the way of the Dodo.<\/strong><\/p>\n

On Scot McKnight’s blog, he posted a poll on what top ten things pastors like about their calling. \u00a0I list them here with the comment I posted over at Scot’s Jesus Creed:<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Seeing lives transformed. \u00a0<\/strong><\/li>\n
  2. Preaching.\u00a0Frankly, I expected this response to be number one, but it was a distant second. Preaching is very important to these pastors, but transformed lives are the most important. Of course, some of them noted that preaching transforms lives.<\/strong><\/li>\n
  3. Personal evangelism.\u00a0Though distant to number one, sharing the gospel one-on-one was a clear number three. Here is a fascinating facet of this study to me: Over 85 percent of the pastors named one of these first three as their response. The next eight were named by less than 15 percent of the pastors.<\/strong><\/li>\n
  4. The people\/members. \u00a0<\/strong><\/li>\n
  5. Developing new relationships. \u00a0<\/strong><\/li>\n
  6. Ministering in the community. \u00a0<\/strong><\/li>\n
  7. Ministering to members. \u00a0<\/strong><\/li>\n
  8. Casting a vision. \u00a0<\/strong><\/li>\n
  9. Staff relationships. \u00a0<\/strong><\/li>\n
  10. Mentoring or discipling one-on-one. \u00a0(Study by Thom Rainer)<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    As a former full-time pastor and now itinerant, I find it disheartening (if this poll is any real<\/strong> indication) that discipleship is tenth and no comment made about that changing lives.<\/strong><\/p>\n

    My own interaction with many pastors does reflect what the poll is saying. Few pastors seem interested in the non sexy work of long-term discipleship. Thankfully, I know some notable exceptions to what may be the general rule.<\/strong><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The Dodo, of course, is well known for two things: being ugly and being extinct. \u00a0Discipleship where you invest long-term in a few relationships seems to have gone the way of the Dodo. On Scot McKnight’s blog, he posted a poll on what top ten things pastors like about their calling. \u00a0I list them here […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-discipleship","category-pastor"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1974"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1974\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1976,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1974\/revisions\/1976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}