Disciplemaking Dimension of Multiplication Course: Module 5 Notes

Lately I’ve been taking online courses as part of Exponential’s Multipliers Learning Communities which I’m completing as part of my work with Lancaster Mennonite Conference’s NYC District. You can see the first post in the series here which explains more about the process and framework of this experience. I’m on to the second course required before our field trip to Cross and Crown Church in Seattle in a few days: Disciplemaking Dimension of Multiplication: Module 5 “OPTIONAL: Key Elements to a Disciplemaking Movement”.

The last “optional” Module of this course is Shodankeh Johnson, a leader of the New Harvest Global Ministries discipleship movement, speaking on the power of God — experienced in prayer and fasting — and its effect to submit three things to the Will of God: the discipler, the lost, and the spirits. It is good to hear from someone who has seen a legitimate Gospel Movement with his own eyes. It should humble us that we, despite all our slickness, tech, money and resources, we still have no movement like this in the modern West to point to. Johnson knows what he’s talking about because he lived it. The rest of us are dreaming. There’s nothing wrong with dreaming, but when you meet someone who has walked in the reality of what you dream, you should be excited and listen like your life depended on it.

I’ll have to admit, I love ideas. A course like this is great because its full of ideas: Ideas I can converse with. Ideas I can argue with. Ideas that let me bring out my own ideas. But I should be ashamed to think that ideas are the same as the power of God. Whatever I know or think I know pales in comparison to the incomprehensible and unfathomable depths of God.

I have seen the power of God. It works. It works better than anything — even our ideas. I admit I’m much more comfortable with working with ideas than living the kind of life bathed in prayer and power that Johnson describes. But who really wants to be comfortable anyway?

Guess I have some real homework.