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Nathan Creitz

I help disciples make disciples.

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7 Reasons Why You’ve Never Made A Disciple

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Jesus tells His disciples to make disciples. That’s our mission. But apparently, only 1 in 20 Christians has even shared the Gospel.

Less than that will ever lead someone to Christ.

Less than that will ever invest time in leading that new disciple toward Christlikeness?

What are we to make of so few disciples actually making disciples? If you’ve never made a disciple (or haven’t in a long time) there are at least 7 factors that might be contributing to your disciple making slump.

You aren’t obeying

Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:19-20)

What you can do: Confess your disobedience and ask God to equip you to become a disciple-making disciple. Remember, it’s in the context of the Great Commission that Jesus says, “I am with you always…” (What else? – Read this post on The Mission of the Church)
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Multiethnic Church Planting in Queens

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Queens Unisphere

The last month has been a whirlwind of activity for my family.

In addition to launching a disciple making writing project, we decided to move to Queens to start an English speaking multiethnic church plant.

More about that in a minute.

Meanwhile, on the blog, I’ve written several articles that struck a nerve. If you missed The Pastor Driven Church, I’d like to invite you to join the conversation. Also, today churchleaders.com picked up one of my articles called Making Disciple-Making Disciples and republished it on their site for, well, church leaders. Head on over there and check it out and tweet it or share it on facebook.

But the biggest news is obviously our decision to move to Queens. I have several years of church planting experience in the Northeast but I really feel like a novice in many ways. I put together a Queens Fact Sheet that you’re welcome to check out. Or, you can subscribe to my newsletter to stay in the loop especially on the eBook and the church plant journey. In the weeks ahead, I’ll also share bits and pieces of our story here on the blog.

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YOUR Disciple Making eBook: Tentative Title, Contents, and Feedback

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I recently launched a collaborative writing project about how to make disciples.

This is the first post in a series of posts that will ultimately be bundled into a free eBook. By publishing content here first, I get the benefit of running it by you, getting your feed-forward, and hopefully avoid heresy 😉

I’d love for you to subscribe to the blog, engage in the conversation, share the content with others, and help make this an extremely helpful resource for you, me, and anyone else who wants to join in making disciples of all nations.

For now, I’d like for you to look through the tentative titles and table of contents below and answer the following questions:

  1. If you were going to read this eBook, is this what you want to learn about making disciples?
  2. In addition to what is included here, what other questions do you have about becoming a bearing more fruit as a disciple maker?
  3. How would you rephrase these titles and subtitles to be more intriguing and creative?

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The Pastor Driven Church

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It’s all about you!

In the pastor-driven church, it’s all about your gifts, your strengths, your abilities.

If something needs to get done, don’t bother asking a member to do it. They’ve said no a dozen times before. Why would they start pitching in now?

After all, that’s how you’re training them to act because they know you’ll always pick up the slack.

That’s what they pay you for right?

But that’s okay. It feels nice to be needed. So, you spend most of your time doing what a volunteer could do for free. That means you rarely have time for sermon prep, personal disciple-making, and vision casting.

The Pastor-Driven Church sacrifices bold preaching and personal disciple-making for powerless people-pleasing.

Reminder: “feeling nice” and pleasing people isn’t your calling. Sacrifice is.

Not the kind of sacrifice you’re currently modeling. The 24/7 on call schedule that takes you away from your family isn’t the sacrifice you were called to make. Trying to cater to every whim of every church member is a sacrifice you brought on your self.

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You Don’t Have To Be A Super-Christian To Make Disciples

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Not everyone is a super-Christian!

We don’t all have stories of how we glanced at the stranger seated next to us on the plane and led them to Jesus right there on the spot.

Most of us are probably missing like 9 out of every 10 opportunities we have to share the Truth. (Wait! What opportunities?!)

Worse, in the unlikely event that we ever did accidentally unintentionally luckily lead someone to Jesus, we wouldn’t have the first clue what to do next. Maybe the pastor knows what to do? Sadly, maybe not.

Or, maybe you know how to “lead people to Christ” but you have never considered how to lead them toward Christ-likeness.

We may not all be super-Christians, but every-Christian has been tasked with making disciples of all nations.

A Collaborative Writing Project

I’m writing an eBook to help the every-Christian make and multiply followers of Jesus.

But I’m not writing from a super-Christian’s perspective. I’m writing from an every-Christian perspective.

I actually believe that if Jesus has given us a mission to make disciples of all nations he can empower every-Christian to fulfill that mission. And if we’re not intentionally making disciples who make disciples then we are pursuing the wrong mission.

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Discipleship In Church Planting

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I was having a conversation yesterday with someone about the lack of disciple making in new churches and in established churches. It seems that many church leaders know how to implement small groups and preach sermons but few know how to make and model disciple making on a personal level.

The reason I was talking about this is because I am beginning work on an eBook about the path to making disciples. I want to encourage Christians that they can make a disciple in the next 12 months who will make a new disciple in the next 24 months. I’ll share more details soon on the blog (I’ve already share the details to my newsletter contacts).

But in the meantime, my friend J.D. Payne has written an eBook on discipleship and church planting that is a great resource.

J. D. is a National Missionary with the North American Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention and an Associate Professor of Church Planting and Evangelism in the Billy Graham School of Missions and Evangelism at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, U.S.A. where he directs the Center for North American Missions and Church Planting.

I love J. D.’s definition of church planting: “Biblical church planting is evangelism that results in new churches”. (For my particular focus, I might modify the definition to “Biblical church planting is intentional disciple making that results in new churches”.)

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