Customer Reviews

Transforming Discipleship: Making Disciples a Few at a Time

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is an excellent book that points very clearly to how the Church has been distracted from effective disciple making. It shows the failings of the "mass production" approaches to discipleship and calls us back to invest the time in relationships. I highly recommend this book. I plan to lead a group through this material because I found it so valuable.

This is one of those books you will wish you had read years before. After discussing what discipleship is (helping people to live like Jesus), Ogden gives a detailed overview of the models Jesus and Paul used to disciple people. Jesus' model, very simply, was first to be an example to people. Secondly he would teach them to serve, teach and lead. Thirdly, Jesus became a coach, helping his disciples to actually step out and actively serve. Finally, Jesus delegated all responsibility to the Apostles to go out and carry on the work of the kingdom. This model is one that any servant of Christ today can use to duplicate his/her own faith and ministry in another willing person.

The following statement from the book encapsulates the goal of duplication and discipleship for all Christian leaders : "The tragedy is that most Christian leaders have placed almost no priority on transitional leadership. It is generally fair to say that the effectiveness of one's ministry is to be measured by how well it flourishes after one's departure." (P.96)

Public teaching and preaching will always have its place. But nothing can replace one-on-one teaching, modeling and training. I highly recommend this book.

I would highly recommend this book to pastors and leaders who are desperate to see lives transformed into the likeness of Christ. The book is an easy read and makes sense from beginning to end. It has answered many of my questions about small groups and discipleship and greatly encouraged me.

One of the most revealing books on the reasons we have so few transformed lives today. Read this book only if you are truly serious about being an effective discipler and concerned about helping Christians lead transformed lives. Biblically solid and tested methodology explained in a way that will help anyone be more effective in their discipling efforts. If you are looking for just another "program," look elsewhere.

Greg Ogden goes against the mega-church grain by promoting a discipleship plan based on one-on-one meetings instead of small groups.

He wants to see church leaders making disciples a few at a time instead of trying to churn out groups of people who have sat through a class.

First, Ogden describes what went wrong and with with The Discipleship Deficit and getting to the root causes.

Next he explains how to use the Bible as a method book in making disciples.

In part 3, he gives us church-based strategies to make disciples.

He is not shy at expressing his disdain for the current fad of Small Groups and he seems to come in conflict with a popular discipleship book called Simple Church.

Within Transforming Discipleship, Ogden explains how the Paul/Timothy model shouldn't be used in churches as that was a special case. Instead, we should employ the Paul/Barnabus model in which we grow together, taking turns.

One of the bright spots in this book came at the very beginning when Ogden explained how our pastor's are too busy doing the work that others should be doing.

Biblically, pastors should only worry about instructing and equipping the church goers; the visitations, pastoral care, etc... should be left up to those who are built up within the congregations and turned out to lead.

This is an important, high quality, recent work on disciple making from a long-time practitioner who has served as a pastor and seminary teacher. Ogden surveys the low condition of discipleship in the modern church before analyzing Jesus' and Paul's approaches to making disciples. His analysis is rich in principles and useful insights. Then he provides a section on practical strategy for making disciples in the modern church. He correctly stresses the relational dimension of disciple making, and clearly explains why programs cannot deliver the real life transformation needed. Ogden advances a method based on triads, where three meet together. We have also seen good results with this approach, although we do okay with two-person meetings as well.

Ogden includes a wonderful section on building slowly and solidly (127,128). I think leaders and pastors should all read this book, or anyone who wants to make a lasting difference for Christ.
-Dennis McCallum, author Organic Disciplemaking: Mentoring Others Into Spiritual Maturity And Leadership

I genuinely like Greg, and I found this book quite readable. I think the ideas he shares about the essence and importance of discipleship are great, but I found this book to be a bit repetitive of more classic works like Coleman's The Master Plan of Evangelism (I wondered if the only reason he wrote this book rather than referring people to Coleman's book was so that he could explain his specific "triad" structure in the last three chapters).

I think this book could have easily been half as long and just as comprehensive, and being someone who ministers primarily to college students (among whom I've noticed a growing distaste for "weekly-meeting-based discipleship" and a strong desire for more organic and highly relational discipleship settings), I found the prescribed methods to be a bit dated or perhaps only ideal for people who have large families and heavy time commitments there (making a weekly meeting one of the only viable environments for deep life-sharing and challenging via the Word).

Another "pomo" complaint of mine would be that there isn't much of a discussion of the relational struggles and difficulties that come with this method of discipleship. He didn't much deal with issues of loss of motivation, the tendency toward co-dependent relationships when relationships get deep for the first time, or the jealousy or relational struggles of transitioning from one discipleship group to another.

If you've never read a book on this topic before, this isn't a bad place to start (though I'd still recommend Master Plan of Evangelism first, though it's a bit less practically-minded). But if you're looking for more in-depth discussions on the battle to foster life-transforming discipleship relationships in your church, this book is a bit sparse.

Ogden's message is clear: maybe our focus doesn't have to be evangelizing the world, but evangelizing the Church first. In America we are so focused on evangelism that real spiritual maturity is seldom seen. Jesus' own focus was not on numbers, but on investing Himself into a few men who would continue when He left. Jesus ministered to many, but focused on a few. But we have done the opposite by focusing on crowds.

This book is wonderful for people who are new to the idea of mentoring/ discipleship. Today we have assigned disciple-making as the responsibility of those specially trained and paid to give organized lessons and sermons. But Jesus meant for all disciples to be disciple-makers, regardless of what we do for a living. Ogden helps put that in clear perspective. Then he offers some tools and principles to go about doing it.

This book lays a clear groundwork for the problem we face today as well as principles from Jesus' ministry to fix those problems. Then he goes into a step-by-step process for implementing this into a local church setting.

Overall I really enjoyed this book and highly recommend it. What it was lacking in was personal stories in discipleship (other than the first chapter) as well as some practical advice for disciple-making outside of the weekly meeting. But for the size and purpose of the book, this is a great read.

I found this book to be very timely in my own life. I have been involved in ministry for over 10 years. After the 10 years I found that I was involved in mostly program based ministry that showed almost no transformation in the lives of the believers I worked with. God began to do a work in my heart to search out what discipleship really is. After 5 months of personal study and many revelations, I read this book which was an absolute confirmation of what God was already doing in my heart.

I found the book to be right on and a wonderful read.

After reading the book, I bought 5 more copies to give to my small group and a few key pastors that I have relationships with.

This book is a must read, it not only has the theology but the real world application t back it up.

I can't recommend this book highly enough. I'm now praying about who I am going to invite into my first discipleship group.

Wow, its explicitly discipleship compelled me to make disciples within my church. Triads were created to grow spiritually in the Lord. The book is fully recommended if you are interested in growing your church numerously.