Where I am Now on Discipleship

Also in a note on Facebook
Some were discussing recent Juan Carlos Ortiz material that has been posted, then Megan Anne Fey wrote Chris, do you have any good reading on "true discipleship" (Internet materials), the Lord has commissioned me and I would love to read more about it...
Here is what I initially wrote, followed by a longer reply to her question
Allibris is good for Ortiz books. The original was one of those historical confluences of "mismatches" that God is in like Rahab and the spies. Jamie Buckingham was a pastor out of a job because he had fallen in adultery...so he became a writer to the new fledgling baptized in the Spirit Community.Ortiz being Argentinian, needed someone to work ... See morepatiently with him to get the English right!!! So "Call to discipleship" was born. This was the original Spirit format of what later became the shepherding pyramid still visible today, though softened. In the original format, which is what we'd also been led to in England....which is why the book is in my DNA....we learned that Discipleship comes out of relationship, it comes from Holy Spirit prepared "fathers", male or female, and involves feeding the young with stuff as God gives revelation. It is warm, not sterile. It is dependant on people walking in a living relationship with Jesus and it definitely involves a bit of "going to hell" for the people you are being used to feed. What I mean is...you feed with unconditional love...because "reactions" come up and some of the freshly prepared food is thrown back over you. Then as Ed Miller says, "when you've taken the disciples to the throne, just like any good taxi driver you withdraw.
Discipleship is not about Alpha Courses, though they can be used. It is not about manuals. It is not about study groups on a Tuesday evening. You'll find people don't have problems on Tuesday evenings, it will be Wednesday! It's not about mini Sunday services with preprepared speeches in your home. It is not about discipling people to you, or your ... See morechurch. You know when you've succeeded not when they are in your church, but when they know how to live Jesus as them, in their calling. Discipleship is now a dirty word.But a true discipler, as in any ministry, takes on the same role that Joseph had with Mary. He takes all the flack for a babe born out of wedlock, without being the actual father. I'll spell that out. Unlike seminary trained pastors who feel they have earned their position and now "disciple" people into "their ministry" and "their church", a true discipler realises he is discipling people out of a job, with nothing in it for him, while taking all the flack "for being out of wedlock"....that is true Spirit stuff always looks iffy to carnal bystanders who cannot understand what is going on.
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Here is my fuller reply to Megan about what I am feeling now about Discipleship

We are in a singular time period. Corporately, were we to view the parable of building on the sand and building on the rock....we have discovered that we weren't quite on the rock and people all over the world are still digging down to find it. (Understand here I am talking in terms of building the Kingdom of God,personal salvation we have clear.).Apart from individuals like Norman Grubb, Major Thomas and others....Everything, absolutely everything out there that relates to discipleship has a very naive view of what humans are. I don't yet know of a single book that covers discipleship from the bedrock foundation of reversing Genesis 3 by faith in a Christ who wants to live out Our Life as Us. So herein lies the problem.

Nor is there a book that covers discipleship in a way that faithfully honours some of the ways the Holy Spirit has led a whole generation or 3 of people as they have rediscovered the baptism in the Holy Spirit. Living in any sense at all corporately is doomed to failure without an active relationship with the Holy Spirit. To the extent that any of us have lived continuously together as a worshipping community advancing in the knowledge of God, that, from a human perspective has to be a divine miracle. Sin has disconnected us from God and each other at a very core level. For this reason, one of the spin offs of getting to know Jesus better is loving my brother and sister more. This side of discipleship is behind this series of posts which begins here http://080808onnowto.blogspot.com/2009/04/from-mystery-of-sin-to-mystery-of-syn.html and continues via the ”next button” to the 8th post. There’s “How do we live this stuff ?” http://080808onnowto.blogspot.com/2009/06/i-was-encouraged-to-get-message-from.html

The taxi Driver picture of Ed Miller, and my own revelation on Joseph taking on Mary with child are two key foundations to discipleship. They are the two barricades against “Pyramid” building in the Body of Christ. If people took regard to just these two principles half of the present structures would disappear overnight.

Since these posts I have been seeing more clearly what Romans 1:21 means For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened.

We became effectively locked in our left brains, alienated from God’s life which should be bubbling up actively from within, but is clogged up in shame and hurt, and effectively cut off from God.

So you can see how addressing this problem with mere manuals , however good they are like the YWAM Discipleship manual, cannot change the fifth column in our own make-up. Our own mind filters God out by default!!

There are two models of discipleship or Temple building in the Bible. There is the picture of each stone being prepared beforehand in the quarry, then seamlessly fitted together on the Temple site. This is similar to our own individual daily walks preparing us in Ephesians 4 and 5 fashion, for corporate warfare in Ephesians 6.

The second model is the way the disciples lived with Jesus for 3 years . This model was transplanted in the early churches where people hungrily learned as much as they could from living together, sharing together and attending to what the apostles were bringing of the revelation of the life of Christ. A proto type of this was experienced by ourselves in Emsworth thirty years ago as, as many as 30 lived together in one not too large house.

You notice I do not view discipleship too separately from building the House of the Lord.
The vision of the Church is so powerful, and the love being shared abroad in people’s hearts by the Holy Spirit so intoxicating that others are pretty soon drawn in.

But one of my latest revelations concerning discipleship actually comes from the calling of Moses. This also is one of the most important keys to ministry and discipleship that you will ever hear and we will spend our entire lives exploring this. When Moses asked how God would like to be known when he presented his message of calling Israel out of Egypt, God replied…..”You shall say I AM sent you.”

Think about it. As things stand, when we minister to each other we are sharing the latest doctrine, our own agenda, our own stream. What the Key of David meetings are teaching us to do. What Jorge Pradas’s meetings were all about 30 years ago , was spending time with the I AM. What is the I AM up to today. Transplanting this ability to perceive God’s heart in individuals and churches is far more important and dovetails exactly with the revelation of Christ living out His life as you. They are the training ground which is then exported into the rest of people’s lives.