by Terry and Amy, Team Expansion workers in Ghana
“This sounds like children’s church. You can’t disciple people with Bible stories. There is so much they will never learn, it is just too simple.”
Jesus’ methods were so simple that illiterate new believers, without access to the New Testament in his context, could turn the world upside down with these simple stories. The things that you read about in the book of Acts happened without access to the written New Testament that you and I have at our disposal today. That’s why Jesus told so many stories and parables that we now can read in written form. But disciples were being made long before the written Bible became available to literate believers.
People who say it is too simple are actually criticizing the master teacher, Jesus Christ. We are simply following Jesus’ example and it is working amazingly well!
In fact the western church would do well to make things simple so everyone can be involved in the discipleship process, not just those trained in Bible college or those that have attended church for many years.
Here is one tool you can use!
THE BLESS PRAYER – Jonathan Tools
This is a simple, but amazingly powerful tool that we teach in Jonathan Training to use when prayer walking through villages we are entering. Among DMM’s, extraordinary prayer is always involved. So we enter simply praying for the village and mapping information we discover about the village like, persons of peace (POP’s), fetish priests, witch doctors, churches, mosques, idol trees, etc.
When we see people we simply tell them we are walking through their village praying for them. Then we ask can we pray for you? Almost always they say, “yes” and we pray for them using the B.L.E.S.S. acronym as our guide.
- The “B” is for their physical body.
- The “L” is for their labor (work).
- The “E” is for the economy of their household and village.
- The “S” is for social relationships
- The second “S” is for spiritual relationships.
Almost without exception, this prayer really blesses the person. They are so appreciative that someone came and took the time to pray for them and it opens their heart to hearing the Gospel story and then inviting us back with more of their household present.
Amazingly simple and at the same time powerful. Many discipleship groups have begun by identifying people of peace and soon afterwards launching discipleship groups within their household.
I have used this on the street in the US with amazing results as well.
