In the final context of “Discipleship that Fits,” chapters 12 and 13 talk about the most intimate and personal context a human being can enter – being in community with divinity.
God knows all things. There isn’t anything one can hide from God. In this context, we “are laid bare before him, and he opens himself up to us.” (p.192).
This context involves spiritual disciplines. Those are obviously connected to discipleship as a disciple will engage the disciplines in order to deepen their walk but there is more to it than that. Bobby and Alex explain that it is from the divine context that gives us something to offer for making disciples in the other contexts.
As with all the other contexts, this one is split into two chapters. The first, like the rest, is a theological foundation. The second is about practical implications of this context.
How did Jesus embrace this context? What does it look like throughout the rest of the Bible? You will have to get the book to find out! But I will point you to what they believe are the goals of this context: Identity, destiny and truth.
Chapter 13 is about the practical outflow of the divine context in ministry and church life. This chapters isn’t just more information on how to do various things like pray and read scripture. It is an invitation or encouragement for you to engage in these things with others.
This is something I am coming to realize is that our typical call to commitment is call to perpetuate a program. The real call to commitment we need to be making is calling people to committed relationships in the church body
Chapter 14 is application of the five contexts along with answering frequent questions the authors get. This chapter addresses things like what to do when a context you are in is morphing into another context, barriers to creating a disciple-making culture and how to keep things simple.
All in all this is an excellent book. It provided some much needed information for me in my search to understand how to make disciples who make disciples and gave me the ability to understand how the groups we typically operate in and around work and how they, then, can be leveraged for making more disciple makers!
I hope you will pick it up and read it. It comes from two life-times of disciple-making experience and you will be blessed if you do.
Previous chapters
Chapter 1 (Re-imagining Discipleship)
Chapter 2 (Introducing the contexts)
Chapter 6 (Understanding the Social Context_
Chapter 7 (Missional Communities)
