Mondays are for Great Thoughts from Mike Breen

I am out in Lima, OH this week taking part in a learning community with 3D Ministries. This is the first gathering of the churches we will be partnering with over the next two years as we engage in rethinking how we make disciples as a church.

There was a lot of great ideas and theology of being the church shared today, but I thought I would share a few nuggets from Mike Breen’s teaching today as I begin processing what we heard. these may not be exact quotes as I tend to process what people say as I record it. A first century disciple I am not. I am sure I will add some more thoughts throughout the week.

-A great question – “Is there continuity between what we are teaching people to believe and what we are asking them to do with their lives?”

- The gospel is simple but hard to live. We want to make it complicated but easy to apply.

- Identity comes from outside of ourselves, not from within.

- You can’t approach God through obedience it has to be through grace. Obedience means approaching God through the law and that will always leave us angry because it can’t be done.

- Throughout the New Testament we find the call to be sons of God. Sons in this sense is not a gendered word. We are all made one with Christ, who is the son. Thus we are all sons. Women have to get over being called sons and men have to get over being identified as the Bride of Christ. (I loved this idea)

- We don’t need more obedience to receive power from God, we need more power from God to fuel our obedience.

- Paul teaches an integrated theology. What he does is what he says and what he says is what he believes.

Those are a small sampling of the great ideas we were engaging with today in our pursuit of understanding discipleship. I wish you were all here with me to savor this time with these great people of God.