The purposes of this project are simple, though not necessarily easy!
I wrote DNA of a Christ Follower with that hope that:
- Followers of Jesus Christ would recognize that the Lord wants to change their character, not just their actions.
- Those followers would be moved to study the Bible to see just what those character traits are and to discover the enabling of the Spirit to help them more accurately represent Jesus in both their being and their doing.
- All disciples who recognize that they are called to “make disciples” will form a concrete, workable Bible-based framework of what a disciple actually is and how a disciple is made.
- These disciples, and especially those in church leadership, will honestly assess and adjust their lives and ministries to contribute to the making of such disciples, versus being content with just “doing church.”
If these things were to happen on some level at least in part due to this effort, I would be extremely grateful and encouraged. But I’m hoping for more.
My dream is that there will be those who will choose to approach their Christian lives, their ministries, their formation of Christian community from a blank slate, shaped simply by the question “How can we best make such disciples in our current context?”
Captivated by the call to be and make disciples, in radical obedience to and dependence on the Holy Spirit, they will be used by Jesus to build his church. They will jettison the many hindrances to disciple-making that have become an entrenched and accepted part of the church subculture. They will be focused, simple, nimble, efficient and effective in their efforts, unswayed by Christian fads, unafraid of cultural trends. And they will become part of a visible answer to the prayer “Your kingdom come, your will be done…”