Building strong relationships of trust is a key factor in discipleship. But many of us are not good at building friendships, or we seem too busy in our lives to make the investment of time that it takes.
In this episode of the Everyday Disciple Podcast, join me as I mine the wisdom of author Twyla Franz and uncover practical ways to start growing deeper friendships today.
Everyone I know feels maxed out on their schedules with the commitments they already have. Yet we are all living with a rhythm that provides one of the most valuable and recurring opportunities for discipleship in our families: Dinner.
This week on the Lifeschool Podcast, we show you how to re-tool and repurpose your Family Dinner Nights in a way that will make them fun, more focused, and a perfect way to naturally engage in discipleship and missional rhythms as a family.
Leadership development is really just apprenticeship or discipleship further along the path of faith, knowledge, and skills. Discipleship further up the slope. If you have trained people in such a way that they can now reproduce and train others, in turn producing future leaders, you have the makings of a true movement.
I have found it helpful to think about life in a MC through two filters: organized and organic. My buddy Mike Breen turned me on to this way of looking at it and it has been very helpful.
In the same way that natural, healthy family life contains both of these elements, some aspects of life together are “organized” and structured and some aspects are more “organic” or natural.
Think for a moment about your immediate family or a group of friends. You probably don’t think about that time you spend with them as a succession of events you need to attend (or worse, something you might skip if you’re too busy). We don’t generally tell our friends, “We already met once this week; why do we need to get together again?” They are our friends. We enjoy getting together.
We don’t think of our time together as one more night out or as some kind of obligation we need to fulfill. And when we think about our families, we don’t count up the number of events per week that we attend with them. We live with them! There is a fabric to our life together that cannot be reduced to a series of “events.” This doesn’t mean that events and planned activities aren’t good or necessary.
A healthy family life includes planned-out events and reoccurring activity, but we don’t see these as something separate and distinct, because it’s all mixed into the normal rhythm and flow of our life together.
Things like bedtimes, meals, homework, and chores often do take place in an organized way. These are important, and they need to get done, so we put them on a calendar of some sort, and they come around time and again. But we don’t see these things as the sum total of our life together as a family.
Recently my family was together celebrating Thanksgiving. There are definitely parts of this holiday that we plan out. In fact, we almost follow a script in preparing our favorite Polish foods cooked “just like Grandma used to make,” or in using the old pink platters made out of indestructible Melamine that we must use as plates for the meal, or watching a favorite holiday movie and several football games on television. You probably have similar organized aspects, traditions, and reoccurring things you do during the holidays as well.
These activities provide continuity and they hold great value for us. But those organized things we do together are accentuated and enlivened by the myriad of spontaneous interactions and stuff we do in between—the jokes told and conversations had while cooking together or watching the game, while on a walk to the neighborhood store, a trip in the evening to a favorite pub, or a last stroll in the park to look at the lights. Often, just the hours spent on the couch under blankets watching nothing in particular on TV become cherished and important aspects of our time together.
Life happens in these unplanned, ordinary moments. Ideas and dreams are shared, correction and forgiveness are extended, and our bonds as a family are renewed and strengthened.[clickToTweet tweet=”Discipleship happens in all of the normal, mundane (yet important) rhythms of life together.” quote=”Discipleship happens in all of the normal, mundane (yet important) rhythms of life together.”]
Think of it as being like a piece of cross-stitch artwork. The initial fabric with the pattern on it provides the framework and structure; the colorful stitches and needlework that you add to that bring the whole thing to life. Without the regularity of the pattern, you would have nothing, and the stitch work would be random and meaningless. On the other hand, no one hangs up a white canvas cross-stitch pattern with a black-and-white outline on it. The true beauty comes when the different colors and textures are added in.
If you’ve been struggling with life in community–either too structured or too loose with no real intention, the next best time to focus on organized and organic rhythms is now.
Question: So which do you most naturally lean towards– organized activities or organic interaction–when it comes to disciple-making?
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As Christians, consistently praying for your kids may seem obvious. To pray for your child’s future spouse may be less obvious, but it’s a privilege that carries with it some pretty awesome blessings.
This week on the Lifeschool Podcast, we’ll show you seven ways and reasons to pray for your child’s future, and their potential spouse. The earlier you get started, the bigger the blessings!
Our kids were a little younger at the time, probably around 3, 5 and 7 years old. And like a lot of parents, we had at least one (all) of our kids who was pretty strong-willed. We were increasingly having to deal with actions and attitudes that required discipline, and some days it seemed like we were running our own little detention center.
