1. Theology of Church Planting
(Original Content Only) (Kate Turabian Format) (7 pages) (Kate Turabian Format is a must)
(Rubric is attached)
Gifting and calling are essential elements in all aspects of Great Commission obedience. Understanding the direct nature between spiritual warfare and church planting is crucial. A church planter is a sent apostolic movement maker and pioneer. The church planter seeks to follow the Spirit of God into unreached and unengaged gospel areas, glocally (local and global). It is imperative for the planter to have a healthy understanding of his or her spiritual gifting, not only for deployment but for development.
The student will compile one 7-9 page paper by utilizing three assessments: (1) , (2) , and (3) the Spiritual Gifting Assessment. The Fivefold Ministry Assessment and Risk Factor Analysis Assessment are found all in the Resources section of Canvas, under week 3. The is a link found in the Content Resources section of Canvas. The student will partake in honest evaluations and then identify which of the components/gifts are their strongest and weakest. The student should arrange their findings in four equal sections, analyzing and providing personal insight regarding the evaluations.
- Fivefold Equipper (pages 1-2)
- What is my dominant Fivefold gift? Do I agree or disagree?
- What does my gift (hard-wiring) reveal to me? Pros and cons.
- Would my dominant fivefold gift be utilized more as a lead planter or team member? Why?
- Risk Taker (pages (3-5)
- Provide insight regarding your two highest scoring questions? Why?
- How was or wasnt the overall assessment outcomes illuminating?
- If Im honest, Im nervous about __________?
- Spiritual Gifting (5-6)
- The spiritual gift assessment was eye-opening because
- How can your revealed gifts assist in the mission of church planting?
- I am most surprised that _________ gift was one of top gifts. Why?
- Interconnected Gifts (7-9)
- Evaluate interconnected traits among the three assessments (similar)
- I believe my interconnected gifts/traits compliment each other. Why?
- What is your overall summation.
The paper should follow Turabian 9 formatting, double spaced, 1 margins, Times New Roman 12-point font, with a formal title page, table of contents, introduction, four main parts, and conclusion. The paper should be written in first-person; I want to know about you, not how the assessments work, be specific (i.e., One of my greatest strengths from ______ assessment is apostolic. I believe I scored high on this specific topic because I.).
2. Theology of Church Planting
(400 Words) (Kate Turabian Format) (Summarize Transcript below)
We’re going to go over this week the aspect of the gifts and how they align, even biblically.
So more of this course is geared toward the theology of church planning, but unless we really understand how the gifts are kind of put into place, maybe sometimes we don’t have a good understanding of the premise. So on the picture here, I have three circles and of course Venn diagrams always solve the world’s problems, but we have orthodoxy, which the church is very well known or very well understands the concept of orthodoxy, which ortho is just a meaning that means right. So you have right theology and then orthopraxy, which is probably right practices that we need to do, but it’s rarely that we think of orthopathy, which is the right alignment and more specific, it’s the alignment with the Spirit of God.
So when we talk about church planning, we want to be able to have the right missional alignment. Now we looked at like a few weeks ago how everything kind of starts in Genesis and from that where the Tower of Babel is in Genesis 11 and God disperses the people all over the world and of course even the cultural mandate is multiplicative, be fruitful, multiply and fill the earth and the Lord fulfills that with the great commission through the power and blood of Christ and then of course with the sending of the Spirit, says wait for the promise. So we know that when we’re talking about this multiplicative reproducibility, fancy words for church planning, a lot of times we have the orthodoxy and we have the orthopraxy, but our orthopathy is off.
We’re not really being guided by the Spirit and how to move and how to work and what the, I would say this, I think orthopathy also really is defined by being led by the Spirit but also co-joining what the Spirit is already doing at work within that community or within that region because if God’s sending us somewhere or we’re working somewhere, well then he’s at work and he’s already started the work and so it’s imperative for us to have that. Now I would align these three with what we say adaptive ecclesiology and so most of the western churches in this traditional ecclesiology, meaning that they are more into the norms and sort of procedures and liturgical outliers that we’ve always done before. For instance, I’m gathering on a Sunday morning because it’s the Lord’s day, which is true in a sense, like we’re not going to say, oh that’s not true.
It is true, like we see even the early church we know gathered there. However, obviously Paul was gathering and making disciples every day, so it’s a little bit, there’s a little bit different, you know, of an aspect of that. We even see in Acts 17 where it says Paul’s reasoning with those in the marketplace.
So Jeffrey, I love that you’re actually on the council. Just your presence there is important for that ability for others to know that you care and that you’re part of that community and that could rightfully be what the Lord is wanting to do within the realm of that place. So when we talk about adaptive ecclesiology, it means that we’re already adapting, the church itself is going to adapt to some of the cultural aspects of it to reach it.
Now, this isn’t like seeker-sensitive, right? The way you should kind of look at this is in prior to the birth of Christ, even after the exile with Israel, they didn’t have synagogues. Matter of fact, the synagogue is a Greek construct. It’s not Hebrew.
It’s not Hebraic. The word synagogue is Greek. It’s not Hebrew.
And when they were, after they were put into exile for several hundred years, and then even after they came back, they developed this synagogue system. And where they got that system from were from Hellenistic societies. So the very form of meeting, like we don’t see that in the Old Testament.
We don’t see where they’re gathering at synagogues, right? That’s occurring after the exile. They came and they met at the temple. They didn’t meet there.
So that was an adaptive ecclesiology. And we can say ecclesiology because even in the Old Testament, ecclesia is still mentioned. So the concept of the gathering of the church or called out ones is noted in the Septuagint.
So I bring that along because I think that’s a good way to look at what adaptive ecclesiology is. How do we utilize the things of that, especially within church planning, because maybe the Lord wants to do something different than what he’s doing. And with that said, if we don’t have a firm foundation on these three orthodoxy, orthopraxy, and orthopathy, we’re probably not going to understand the gifting.
And this is why I think a lot of churches have a misconception of how some of those gifts work or which gifts within the Bible are, which ones are practices, which ones are sort of vocations, which ones are manifestations of the spirit. We’ll kind of look into that this evening as well. But before I move to the next one, you have a question, Jeffrey, are you scratching your head or you’re like, this is the first time I heard this or what are your thoughts? Yeah.
So, I mean, I’m, I’ve been pretty familiar with the orthodoxy and then orthopraxy, but the orthopathy concept is, this class has kind of been my introduction to that. I think that’s caused me to just think a little more on that. Yeah.
So, John Wesley, yeah, Wesley is the one who really started coming up with this thought, you know, in the late 1700s, early 1800s and saying, if we have right beliefs and we have right practices, we ought to also have our right alignment, our right path with God, that alignment with the spirit of God. And he was the one, but he never defined it. This is the problem with when you start digging into orthopathy, like some of my colleagues like Alan Hirsch and others, we really push this, especially in church, because we’re talking about people who are pioneers.
And that was Wesley. Wesley was, you know, was a great planter, so to speak. They made these disciple making movements.
And regardless of where we’re going to align, because I’m actually a little, like, I’m a little bit more reformed than some, but I would say that I just try to keep a right view with what the spirit of God wants to do. So whether, you know, whether someone would say, oh, well, you know, that’s Wesley’s, you know, Wesley’s orthodoxy. But the reality is, I think we can really align this with the book of Acts in a way where we see Luke is very prominent about stating that the Holy Spirit is doing the work and leading and guiding, like Acts 16, and Paul is about to go to Turkey.
And I’m pretty sure he prayed about it. I’m pretty sure he had a good plan. And then it says, you know, the Lord says no.
And then it says the spirit of the Lord. So it says no. And then he’s told them to dream like, hey, this is a guy from Macedonia who needs you.
And I think that’s sort of the concept that we’re saying here. What does the spirit of God want to do? Not only where does He want me, but how does He want me to connect with that community to glorify Himself the most, right? And we want to make much of Jesus everywhere. So it may be kind of like a newer concept that you’re hearing, but it’s not really a new concept.
It’s a couple hundred years old. It’s just that churches that are in developing countries where I work with a lot of disciple making movements, church planning movements. Matter of fact, one of my books that I just endorsed and I love and huge shout out, Cabbage is in the Desert.
This is written by a guy who was a Muslim from Kenya and has planted over a thousand churches in Africa. He’s come to Christ and he is just an amazing, his story is in it. It’s just an amazing book.
And there are several chapters in there that talk, that actually explain how to create a church planting movement, the things that are there. So yeah, I was really excited about endorsing his book. But they’re doing that.
That’s their adaptive theology. They’re not just saying, okay, we have to do X, Y, and Z first. And most planters do that.
They say, I need a building. I know it’s going to be at this time. I know I need to do this.
And here’s the things that we’re already going to design the service to look like X, Y, and Z. And without saying, hey, hold on a minute, timeout. What does the Spirit of God want to do here? Are we really praying actively through that? Now he may want that. That may be a traditional way.
There could be a community that that’s exactly what they need. But I think it’s important just to promote that aspect and look at it that way. So I’m going to jump onto there because we have the spiritual gifts assessment.
Now gifts, these assessments are only, they’re just tools and tools are only as good as you use them. So what we have in this one is three different ones. And I did it this way on purpose.
So where you have this fivefold, an easy fivefold ministry assessment, which is just a past, you know, apostle, prophet, evangelist, shepherd, teacher, a risk factor analysis assessment, which kind of lets you know like, eh, what are your hangups? What aren’t your hangups? What are you scared of? What aren’t you scared of? And then a real spiritual gift assessment. And then you take the three of those, like you answer the questions as you see in the module here for each category. And then at the end, you know, do any of these, do I see any similarities between the three and are they interconnected in any way? And this is a good way for you to be like, ah, you know, hey, maybe there’s something I’m not seeing here that, you know, God wants to open his door or wants to utilize me.
And maybe I’m a little apprehensive about that. And that’s something that he wants to do. So I would align this paper, like introduction, then fivefold equipper or fivefold ministry for the first section, maybe one to one and a half pages, because you already have your introduction in there.
And your introduction should only be like a paragraph, two paragraphs, you just explaining what the paper is about. And you’re leading the reader into that. Then a good, you know, two more pages on the risk assessment, and then two on the spiritual gifting, another heading.
And then the last heading is how they’re interconnected. And then finally, just a one paragraph conclusion that summarizes all of your thoughts. And that should basically be the part about it.
But as I say in the bottom, like this is a first person written one, because I want to know about you. So I want to know because I want to be able to respond if I can and give some insight if I if need be, if I can see, but I don’t need to know how some people, you know, the risk assessment does blah, blah, blah, I’m like, I know what it is, I wrote it, you know, I know what, so I don’t need to know what it does. I want to know, like, one of my greatest strengths from the assessment was blank.
And this is, you know, I believe I scored high on this topic, because I see this and this and this in myself, and others have told me this, and that will help when I do X, Y, and Z. So, you know, it’s all about, in reality, these aren’t papers to meet an academic need, they’re sort of practicums. This is the only one out of the church planning courses, this is the only one that really doesn’t have a complete practicum. All the rest that I designed have a practicum where you actually work it out, one of them, you can even work out with other people with a core group.
Actually, there’s kind of several like that, if, if it helps. So hopefully, that explains that assignment that that’s due. And I think we’re in, we’re in week three now, I think.
Yeah. So all over the place. So any questions on the paper? Good.
And that paper is due end of this week. So yeah, Saturday evening, if you need extra time, just send me an email and let me know like, hey, I could use, you know, a couple extra days or some grace on this. That’s always good.
Because as I explained to everybody, these courses are all audited. And so to cover everything, if you’re just not handed in, that’s a zero. But if I know and I get an email, like, hey, sorry, I’m a little behind.
And he told me, okay, I have, you know, I have the ability to say, look, I received the note. So I waited, and then was able to grade full grade later. It just covers everybody.
Yeah, so end of the end of this week. All right. This is just something I share one of my other classes, but I, but I think it, it helps with understanding how certain gifts align.
Now, we’re not going to look at the disk model, that’s a different one. But it does show you the differences in the measurements. And, and whether it’s a someone with a dominant, you know, dominance kind of trade, someone who is, you know, has the high I, you know, in their personality level, or SRC, and basically shows you how fast it excels or how slow.
And I would say this, though, every time I explain this to students or planters, I always say, there’s not one perfect personality trade, like, I know, I know, a, a principal, who left, he left being a principal to church plant, and he was like, a high, you know, C on this, and with like, kind of like an S, like a CS. And, man, he’s crushed it. And he’s planted, like, four churches.
And the one he’s got now is like, 14 years old. Like, he just keeps doing it. So I don’t necessarily look at these, like, it’s a cookie cutter, it just kind of gives you an idea of to think about, why would I be? Why would I excel in planting? Why wouldn’t I excel in it? When you look at those, those sort of things, it helps you.
So I just present that as an aspect of it. But we’re not going to get into the disc side of this course. But it just goes to show that gifting does kind of align with planning in itself.
Here’s, so there’s three different times we see in the Bible, these gifts, right, like Romans 12, Ephesians four, and then in First Corinthians 12. Well, they all have different, different specifics, right? So we know that Romans 12, there’s prophesying, serving, teaching, exhorting, giving, leading, and showing mercy. Now, that’s expressly written there in Romans 12, that it’s a praxis in the Greek.
So we know that that’s an activity of the Lord. This is, these are nouns, or basically verbs that describe nouns, like almost like adverbs, right? These are the prophet prophesying, right? The servant who’s serving, the teacher who’s teaching. So these are ones that we believe that are given innately at birth that God grants to people.
And when someone is redeemed and rescued, then they really come alive to glorify the Lord and to edify His church. And obviously, as we see here, purpose-wide to display the Father’s character throughout the world. And then Ephesians four says that Jesus is the one then who gives these, and He sets up apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, and teachers.
So these are identities, or almost, as it says, vocational extensions of the ministries of Jesus, right? So these are people who are doing that. And interestingly, if you go through the book of Acts and circle every time you see one of those, worry one of those five, you see it a lot. You see apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherd, the word for shepherds that’s there, and for teachers.
And that’s really, really interesting because Luke is showing us something that a lot of people say, well, that’s only in Ephesians four, but it’s not true. I mean, Paul even says like, hey, I’m an apostle and a teacher. He mentions, says that to Timothy.
And then these are given by Christ after the ascension. So these are gifts that Jesus is gifting to the church for people so that they can edify the people of the body of Christ, right? And then equip the saints for ministry. And then 1 Corinthians 12, we see different kind of gifts.
These are like manifestations, and that’s what the Greek word that is used there. These are gifts that are used as expressions of the spirit that the spirit does. And as it says here, purpose next to it, why these are situational to meet a need of a ministry situation, right? A word of wisdom, a word of knowledge, faith, gift of healing, miracles, prophesying, discernment, tongues, interpretation, administration, and helps.
And as you being in hospice chaplaincy, you would definitely understand that sometimes these things are employed, and it’s just phenomenal, like how God works, you know, in certain ways. I remember we had a woman who was close to 100 years old and had not, she had been just like every time her medical evaluation came up, she was renewed because like congestive heart failure, like she’s 90 something years old, like, you know, what are you going to do? And she hadn’t spoken in years to any of the nurses, to anybody. She was almost like catatonic half the time, and she had dementia.
And so she never spoke, never said anything. First day I go to see her, I sat by her side and I knelt down, put my arm on her arm. And I said, it’s so good to be with you.
And I said, would you mind, I said, if we just sang a little song for a moment, I said, I heard that you were a strong believer in Christ, and I want to see if you know this one. And I just started singing, Jesus loves me, this I know, and I’m not a great singer, but she started singing it. And the nurses were like, what? And they were like, well, it’s there’s differences in the brain.
The music triggers something else. And they’re like, that’s crazy. And it wasn’t, I didn’t walk in there with that type of knowledge.
I think like the Lord just gave me that at that moment was like sing to her. And so I didn’t do that with all my patience. I just did.
And so it’s phenomenal. It’s situational. And that’s how I look at that aspect.
When the Lord gives you that kind of knowledge to you, it’s to glorify himself and to help others. So those are the biblical things. And I’m going to share the whole with you so you can have that.
And once again, here’s Ephesians 4, 11, 12, kind of look at this one a little bit more. He gave apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry for building up or edifying the body of Christ. Now, I know there are people who will claim that shepherds and teachers are the same thing.
There’s some who really push that. I don’t. And the reason I don’t is because I see in the book of Acts, like I just said, there’s separations.
I see it constantly. Now, could a shepherd be a teacher? Obviously, without a doubt. I think a prophet can be a teacher.
I think an evangelist can be a teacher. Same with, you know, apostolic teaching. So I think they’re all there.
Same thing with shepherding. I don’t see it as the same, and I know that, you know, we don’t have the word really pastor in the Bible. It’s not really there.
This is the only time where it’s translated as pastor. But regardless, that’s how we use it nowadays, and so it’s interchangeable on that. I don’t like to kind of argue about those things.
I’m just noting it in case someone says to you, like, oh, I heard that there was that. So is your professor teaching that there’s five? There’s really four. And yeah, I think there’s five.
There’s five words that are there. So I think that’s important. And so here, if we look at this aspect of it, let’s see if I can pull this back down a little bit.
There we go. This is from Alan Hirsch, and Alan’s such a good guy. Like, we could have had him come in and teach in here.
Like, he’s a good friend. Sometimes he does. He comes in to some of my courses and teaches that.
But the apes continues the movement, right? You have apostles continue the movement by starting new expressions of the church, or scaling existing ones that are already there. There’s prophets that continue the movement, and they do that by revealing who God is or reforming our communities around God’s heart, right? Those are the prophets are the one who are like, oh, hold on. Thus saith the Lord.
We need to wait on God for that. Evangelists, they continue the movement by generating excitement about the good news or inviting people to encounter it in contagious ways. Because that’s what evangelists are.
These are people who are very, very infectious with their heart and with the gospel message. They’re very magnetic and drawing people to them. Shepherds continue the movement by protecting the community from harm or providing for its needs, right? They’re shepherding the flock, as Peter says, shepherd the flock.
And then teachers continue the movement by explaining truth or training people how to live it out, right? So, we know that Timothy was an evangelist, right? That’s what Paul tells Timothy in his letter in 1 or 2 Timothy 4. And he says, continue the ministry that has been given to you. Do the work of an evangelist, right? And so, Timothy is that type of evangelist. Silas is a prophet, right? Barnabas is an apostle with Paul.
So, we see this continually all the way throughout Scripture. Apest functions, which I like. Once again, I have Alan’s graphics that I like.
A-P-E-S-T and the A, you see a person, it’s movement, right? They’re moving. And then the P, the prophet, they receive a message and then explain that message. Or the evangelist that is outwardly projecting and moving continually.
The shepherd that’s working in a communal sense. And then a teacher who’s receiving information and always outwardly teaching. And it’s a reciprocal sort of thing.
Teachers are always learning and they’re always teaching. So, we have here apostles. Apostles are catalytic.
They’re catalytic and they are commissioned. They’re pioneers of the faith. Those who will go where no one has ever gone before, do things that someone has never done before, and they’re not scared about it.
They’re going to go do it and they’re going to do it because they’re energized to do it. That’s how they’re hardwired. The prophets, yeah, a prophetic person can often, and I don’t mean like prophetic in like, I mean, as in the description of this gift.
So, the prophetic gifting, they definitely expose certain things and they can be kind of black and white people, right? Like the saint, the Lord. So, if you ever come into someone or meet someone who’s maybe abrupt, a little abrasive, they might have that prophetic gifting. So, just be aware of that, which is good.
When I was, because they’re going to work a little slower, right? The prophet just a little bit slower and they’re thinking they’re like, timeout. Let’s listen to what God has to say and let’s see if that’s right. Now, this can frustrate the apostolic person because they’re like, I need to go, go, go, like I have a mission.
I have a vision. I’m going to do it now. Anything that gets in my way, it’s causing turmoil.
And then the prophet’s like, hey, slow down. For years, I found the prophetic person and yeah, just confession. I found that to be a hindrance and I didn’t want to have like that prophetic type person in my core group.
By the time I got to my second plant, I was like, that’s exactly what I need. I need to make sure that I’m orthopathically aligned, right? That I’m listening and hearing from God the right way, not just through me, but through the body of Christ from what he wants to do. They have evangelism, evangelists.
These are people who are always exciting people. You want the evangelistic person where not just because they’re inviting people in, but because they’re exciting people. Those are my top ones.
3. Spiritual Formation
(7 pages) (Original Content Only) (Kate Turabian Format) (Kate Turabian format is a must) (PDF directions are attached)
Students are required to complete and submit the first three items of the Christian Formation Portfolio. View the attached documents for further directions. Submit all items in as one document with appropriate headings and Turabian formatting.
Item #1:
- Carefully review the attached Beginning Retreat PowerPoint. Students will reflect and answer questions 1-5 (50-100 words each).
- Evaluation Criteria: For full credit, each question must be addressed evidencing a thoughtful, reflective response that indicates your commitment to the retreat process. As with all assignments, the quality of writing including spelling, grammar, etc. will be part of the evaluation.
Item #2:
- Follow the directions on the attached Spiritual Autobiography assignment. This assignment should be approximately 4 or more double-spaced pages in length and expresses your “spiritual history” by addressing specific questions as stated in the attached requirements.
- Evaluation Criteria: fully addressing each of the stated questions; quality of grammar, spelling, Turabian style for margins and spacing.
Item #3:
- Follow the directions on the attached Faith Community Profile.
- Evaluation Criteria: For full credit, the assignment requires that each of the above-mentioned areas is addressed as stated and contained the information required. Margins, spacing, spelling, and grammar will be part of the evaluation.
4. Spiritual Formation
(Original Content Only) (250 Word summary of Transcript Below)
Father, we just thank you for this opportunity that we have to gather together tonight and discuss the wonderful things that you are doing by the power of your Holy Spirit in Jesus’ name, forming us and transforming us more and more into the image of your Son Jesus. We come just acknowledging that there are so many different things that each of us are bringing into this time of discussion and community, and we just ask that you would give each of us the ability and the strength to lay all those things at your feet, lift up our eyes beyond whatever hill or valley we may be experiencing, set them on you, and invite you to have your way during our time of discussion on tonight. Lord, our expectation rests solely in you.
We thank you for the strength that you’ve given us thus far to be able to navigate this and any other classes that we may be taking in addition to everyday life, some of us jobs, families, children, dot dot dot. We thank you for that thus far, and we pray you would continue to be faithful to your word, to uphold us with your strong and righteous right hand, giving us everything that we need for life and God, and to accomplish your perfect will for us. We thank you for how you’re going to move in our time on tonight.
We give you praise, we give you honor, and we give you glory in Jesus’ name. Amen. All right, so a couple of housekeeping notes.
So some of you may have realized that there are two dentus in our regent.edu, so please make sure when you are emailing, you email Matisha or mdentu so that I can get your emails in a timely manner. A couple of people emailed the other dentu, and it prolonged my ability to respond to their emails. So just want to give you that little tidbit of information so it can be helpful to us all.
Also, just FYI, you guys have done an excellent job with your discussions and your modules. Many of you have already gotten some level of feedback from your assignments, so you guys have done a great job. But just for good information is to make sure you meet the required word count, because that’s one of the first things I’m looking for is the word count, right? So just make sure you meet that required word count for your first submission as well as your responses.
The responses are 150 to 200 words, and your initial posts are 300 to 400 words, or no more than 300 depending on where you are, but three to 400 words. So just make sure you meet those requirements so that you don’t get points deducted for that. Before we jump in on tonight, does anybody have any questions about any assignments, anything you need to know? I think we’ve done pretty good this week.
Anybody who emailed me, I tried to get back to you in a timely fashion and says 24 hours. I try to have some grace because I know sometimes you guys are putting in assignments and you’re doing it in the time that you’ve allotted, so I’ve tried to respond quickly. However, as we get on into the semester and I get more and more and more and more assignments that I have to grade, it may reach those 24 hours of response time, so please be mindful of that so that you don’t get behind the curve and not get a response in time to get your assignment in when it’s before it’s due.
I have a question. Yes. This is Rich Harpster.
I totally screwed up and misunderstood the last assignment, and I thought you just had to hand in the first 10 questions or the first of the set of 10, so if I get those in by tomorrow night, will that be soon enough? Am I going to lose the 75 percent of the grade? No. What I tried to do with everybody this week is give you grace. If you got it in late or there was some small thing, not word count, but any corrections that I made, I didn’t take off points for the first assignment because we’re all learning, so you can just make sure you hand it in as soon as possible, and then we’ll be able to move from there.
The word count, are you more concerned about the men or the max? Because there were some where you see something that somebody wrote and you want to tell them a story you think can help them. There’s no way you keep it inside the 200. Are we going to be penalized for exceeding? No, I’m not going to penalize you for exceeding the word count, but I would ask you to stick as close to it as possible.
There are a lot of you and one of me, and I’m reading everything that you submit, and I’m trying to not just read it, but I’m trying to read it in order to respond thoughtfully to each of you when I can. One of our greatest privileges is to be able to step onto your holy ground and read the things that you share, and I want to respond thoughtfully, so just when you are responding, keep that in mind that I’m reading your 300 words, then your 200 words, so I’m reading 500 at least, 500 words from each of you, and this is just one class. I’ve got more than one class.
It’s my pleasure, however, just be mindful of that when you are writing. Now, if the spirit leads you to write 300 words or 500, 700 words, you follow the spirit, but the spirit will probably make me stop reading at about three or four hundred words. The last question I have is that in the grading, you commented, I’m Roman Catholic, and my entire transformation is the Catholic school.
There’s absolutely nothing in the transformation that references anything in my transformation, and I didn’t understand how I could basically, unless I lied in my transformation, there was nothing to reference from that. There was nothing to cite, yet it looks like I was docked 10 points for no citations and no references, and I don’t know how to. Literally, I would have had to lie in my transformation.
I mean, I try to lay it out. We were Catholic grade school, Catholic high school. It’s a structured system, and literally, there was nothing in the reading that I would cite from, so what do I do in those instances? I will send you an email, and we can set up a time, and I’ll give you a call, and we can talk it through.
I mean, I wrote a comment to you saying Okay, I’ll respond to that comment. Yes, but no, I’d love to talk to you, because I mean, it’s one of the difficulties. I don’t think there’s, I don’t know, maybe I’m wrong, but Well, we can, there are creative ways where you can Well, like I said, I didn’t know what to, I didn’t want to lie, and I was honest in the transformation, and you know what, when I saw that, I go, what am I supposed to do, so We’ll talk through it.
You’re welcome. Anybody else? I do have a question. Yes.
On the assignment for the KMF Q&A, it said Times New Roman in 12 font. Does that still matter, that’s still Times New Roman in 12 font size? You want to follow the format of the So I kind of messed that up as well. I sent you an email, an updated copy, and an email as well.
I didn’t take off any points if the font was wrong, or the sizing, or the, I didn’t take off any points for that. Again, I tried to extend as much grace as possible. If even, and so if points were deducted, it was probably because you either didn’t have any citations at all.
And remember, these discussions are opportunities for me to see that, hey, Polly Jo, I don’t think we have any Polly Jo’s, has read her, you know, read, so hence the citations. And when you put citations, make sure they’re Turabian in-text citations with a bibliography. Remember, I said, you don’t have to have a cover page, but you do need everything else.
Because when you write, when you write, I’m checking, I’m like going through each one, saying, oh, yes, that’s on page 37. Oh, yes, that’s on page 24. Oh, yes, that’s on page 16.
So if you make a citation, and you don’t tell me where it is, then I don’t know where it is. And if you are using, let’s see, if you are using a, if you are not using our book, like the physical book, please tell me, because if you’re using like an ebook, then you’re the place where you if you say it’s on 61, it’s really not going to be on 61 in the book, it’s going to be on a different page. And so if you tell me you’re using an ebook, I can like once I find the initial one, then I can say this is three or four pages off.
So that will help me look for your citation where it is. All right. Anybody else? You’re very welcome.
I just had a quick question on the assignment. Let’s do this week, the portfolio. Do you want that in one document with the headings broken down for the three different parts? So the portfolio is a build upon assignment.
So you’re doing part of it now part of it, there should be a sample or a, so let’s, let’s be on a follow up. Okay. Thank you.
That’s a good question. All right. So let’s go.
Yes. Yes. Yeah.
That you miss Veronica. It is I have two questions. First, I can’t seem to get back into the discussions.
I, I just have, will I allow me to get back into the actual discussion? And I’m not sure if I’m doing something wrong, or if there’s just something wrong with the site? Or did you close them off? I don’t. So I cannot get back into the discussion. Which discussion are you referring to? The one that was just the first week, week one.
Yeah, I’m just, I’m trying to make sure I’m not getting your class mixed up with another class too. Well, either class, I would encourage you to reach out to it simply because I, I, I can’t see what you’re doing to say. And I’m, of course, I’m going to be able to get into it, but you would probably want to reach out to it and have them help you.
And I, if I knew I would say, Oh, do this, this, this, but I just don’t know. So I’ll do that. And the other question I had was about the, the questions one through four, kingdom questions.
It was a, there’s a similar tool that’s being used. And it said something like a 49%. I I’m, I’m assuming it’s looking for citations and that’s, that’s fine.
And I don’t, and that’s okay. I’ll try to do better next time. But what I also noticed is that you said to write the question down and then tagging there as yeah.
Okay. So I’m not, I am not, I recognize that there are, there is quite a bit of similarity in your work. One, you’re repeating the question, you are quoting the book.
So there’s going to be high similarity, but as I’m reading, I am right. Like, like you have quotation marks around what you’re quoting. You are paraphrasing a lot of things that are in the book.
So as I’m reading, I’m reading for your thoughts. Right. So just make sure you are responding with your thoughts to the book.
Okay. So like there was one that says lists the 10 elements. And so do you want me to paraphrase those elements? No, you can list the elements and then it says list, I believe, and explain, right.
So it tells you to explain them. So you’re going to list them, but then you’re going to say element one. Now there’ll be some similarity, but you’re going to tell me what element one says, and then you’re going to give me your thoughts and your explanation of element one through, I think it’s 10.
Yes. Okay. Thank you so much.
You’re very welcome. Anybody else? All right. So let’s jump right in.
So today, as I was praying and preparing for our class, just a beautiful thought dropped into my head that I felt the spirit of the Lord leading me to share with you guys on tonight. And we’ll start there and then we’ll jump right into the plethora of things we had to enjoy for our study on this week. So the thing that dropped, the phrase that dropped into my head was, if you are struggling with sin, you are winning.
The struggle itself is proof of life. So oftentimes we get discouraged as we process through our journey of spiritual formation, we become discouraged or disheartened or disappointed with ourselves when we make mistakes or when we are wrestling with some of the ungodly thoughts in our mind. But the reality of the wrestle or the struggle is proof of life.
That is proof that the spirit of God is alive on the inside of you and that he is bearing witness with your spirit, that you are a child of God and there is real warfare happening on the inside of you. And I just want to encourage each of you that as we navigate through these remaining of our eight weeks, don’t get discouraged as the spirit of the Lord brings up things and you’re going through it. And not just over the eight weeks, because I want to point out also that this is just the beginning or a mile marker in your journey of spiritual Christian, spiritual transformation.
All of us have been on this journey, whether we’ve known it or not since the day we broke forth, right? The Lord has been beckoning us. The spirit of God has been wooing us and calling us to himself. And there are markers along our timeline of Christian spiritual transformation.
And this eight weeks is a marker. And as we navigate and as we journey through, for sure, the spirit of God is going to bring up things and draw your attention to things that he wants to put his finger on and change and transform and deliver you from. So as he does that, try not to get distracted with, I can’t believe I thought that.
I can’t believe I’m doing this. I can’t believe it. And it’s okay.
And wrestle through it until you get to the other side, because you will. You will get to the other side. So I just want you to be encouraged.
And even as I was thinking about it, my mind went to the excerpt that we had to read from the imitation of Christ. The excerpt from chapter 16, at the beginning, it says, bear patiently what we cannot correct in ourselves and in others. So in other words, be patient with yourself.
The Lord will finish the work that he has begun in you. But he’s going to do it in his own timing. And the reality is there’s some things, I don’t think there’s any of us on this Zoom session who has not said to ourself, I want to be right.
I wish I could get it right. I wish I didn’t struggle with this. All of us have had that.
And we all wish we could just be perfect, just like Jesus. And we will be one day when we hear that we’re caught up. But today we’re going to have to keep wrestling through.
So I want to encourage you in your process. I want to just be present with you, even in that moment, and remind you that the spirit of God is with you. And he will complete the good work that he began in each of you.
Amen. So in our face-to-face, face-to-face day 10, they talk about the character. One of the sections is the character I want to cultivate.
And on day 10, it says, grace to grow or progress in godliness. And as we navigate, you want to keep that in mind that, yes, the struggle is proof that you are winning. And you want to keep grace, the grace of God, in the forefront of your mind, that God’s grace is sufficient for wherever you are in your spiritual journey and in your formation.
God’s grace is sufficient. And you want to receive God’s grace to grow in godliness and allow, as we receive that grace to grow in godliness, then we can extend that same grace to others as they grow in godliness. And it makes for grace, grace, and more grace.
So you can have patience with yourself and patience with others as, again, God, by the power of his Holy Spirit through the work of Christ, completes the good work that he began in us. A good scripture to kind of piggyback off that is 2 Peter 3, 18. And it says, grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
But I think a good question is how, right? How do we do that? How do we grow in the grace of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ? How, particularly, how does Christian spiritual formation actually happen? So based on what you’ve read, somebody share with me how you think, Christian. And there’s no, if you give me a totally wrong answer, I’m going to fix it in a nice way. But ultimately, based on your reading, right, there’s no wrong answer that comes from the reading.
So somebody share with me what you think. And remember, participation is important. I believe that obedience is extremely important above anything else.
Because I think that once you learn to obey the word of God, everything would just fall into place. That’s good. That’s good.
It’s so nice to see you, Diana. I’m so excited to put faces to the names. It’s so wonderful.
I see your hand, Ms. Stephanie. A lot of the reading just kind of revealed that I have a legalistic opinion of things. And I did not know that until I got into more of the reading.
I can’t even remember now where it, where was that in the book, but they talk about, if you’re doing it because you’re supposed to be doing it, you’re wrong. And that to me was like, oh, that, that took a lot, a lot off me. And I think doing it, doing whatever it is you’re doing unto the Lord with a glad heart, that that’s the base that I need to work on building from.
Not because it’s the right thing to do. But this brings me joy. It brings me closer to my father.
That’s why I want to do it. Mm-hmm. I think several of us came from probably traditions that really focused on do, do, do, do, do, do, do read your Bible, pray fast, do the right thing.
And all those things are good, but those are the results of a relationship with Christ. They are not, they don’t create relationship. They, they are the product of relationship.
And when we make that shift, it is so freeing. It makes you say, oh, like the weight is lifted off of me. And we are able to then grow in relationship with God, the way God intends without a legalistic attitude, because you can check all the boxes and still have a filthy heart.
And God is not after people who do, but people who are. So a couple of hands, I saw Ms. Janan, Janan, can you say your name for me? Janan. Janan.
And then Ms. Duffy, and then Mr. Bryant. Oh, then Ms. Veronica. And in reference to, I guess I would have to speak on my own behalf of my own experience in my walk.
Growing in grace, I had to learn that when I truly say I accepted what Christ did on the cross for me, I could stop striving to fix it myself. And so it kind of made it easier to let certain things go after I stopped focusing on those particular things, you know, because if I spent time saying, I got to stop this, I got to stop this, I was continuing to do those things. But when I truly said, okay, you know what? He already died for this.
Let me move forward. Let me do my service. Let me do other things.
I no longer thought about it. And I no longer felt the shame that kept me going back to those certain things. So for me, growing in grace was just truly accepting that he forgave me and moving on from that.
Yes, there are things that still, you know, I wish I was doing differently, but I’m trusting that that’s his job to clean me on the inside. Yeah. Wow.
What a blessed gift, right? What a blessed gift. It’s like saying, putting a big fat piece of chocolate cake in front of you and saying, I’m not going to eat that cake. I’m not going to eat that cake.
I’m not going to eat that cake. Well, what’s going to happen after about a few hours? You’re going to eat that cake, right? But if you, well, let me, I’m going to eat that cake, especially if it’s chocolate. But if I turn away and focus on, I’m not a chocolate cake eater.
I’ve been delivered. Thank you for my deliverance from that chocolate cake. Lord, help me to focus on this, these carrots and ranch dressing over here.
This is delicious. Thank you for these carrots and ranch dressing or this orange cake. I don’t know.
Then I’m going to, wherever, wherever my focus is, I’m going to, I’m going to turn toward that. So if we lift up our eyes beyond whatever brokenness, we all are experiencing in one form or another and see the fullness of Christ. We can, we will definitely walk toward that.
Excellent. Excellent. Excellent.
Excellent. Ms. Duffy, can you say your first name? Yeah. My name is Carrie Ann.
Carrie Ann. Okay. Yeah.
So the most impactful um, line I’ve read so far in the kingdom life is if you knew you were going to live forever, what kind of person would you like to become? And it kind of is mirrored on page 103, where it says, we will learn from him how to live this life from above and reflect his likeness and character in action. And that idea of not just continually striving for this self perceived salvation, but actually living in our own salvation and knowing that we can become like Christ and knowing that we can actually live as if heaven is on earth now is that’s what I’m gathering so far. But, um, it’s been really life-changing for me and just these shoe in these few short weeks already.
Praise God. Awesome. Awesome.
Awesome. Yeah. That was a phenomenal question.
And the author was talking about how that shifts your thinking. Not if you, if you were to die and go to go, where would you spend the rest of eternity? Well, what about if you were to live for the next 20 years, right? How are you? How do you want to live? Do you want to live in the grace of God or do you want to live in continued striving? God knows we can strive all we want. And we won’t, we won’t make the mark.
We have to trust the grace of God, which is sufficient. Either he died for our sins or he didn’t that, that is the bottom line. And he died for our sins, either when he hung there, our sins and our mistakes were on, on the cross with him or not.
And if they were, we have to fully embrace that. And that’s like, that is life changing because it shifts. It takes such a weight off of our spiritual shoulders.
Christ already bore the burden for our sin. We no longer have to. So then we can just walk in the grace of God and the freedom and allow his blood to do the work in our hearts and in our minds on a continual basis.
And for us to be formed, if I thought, Oh, if I was a Caterpillar, right. And I just kept saying, I’m, I’m a Caterpillar. All I can ever be is a Caterpillar.
I never yield to the process of storing up. You know, I think about that. Eric, I think it was Eric Carl, the very hungry Caterpillar.
If anybody have children, you may be familiar with that book, but it talked about how the Caterpillar ate, ate, ate, ate, ate, ate, ate. It consumed everything leaves everything that it could in preparation for its transformation. And you and I, our responsibility is not the transformation process.
Our responsibility is to consume the word of God, consume relationship with God, and it fill ourselves up so that God can then do what only he can do, which is bring about our transformation. Look, bottom line is it’s already done. Ephesians tells us we are already seated in heavenly places with Christ Jesus.
It’s just a matter of us walking it out. And we got to, we don’t have to walk it out with, Ooh, you know, fear and trembling, even though it says we’re God’s own salvation with fear and trembling. It’s not talking about that kind of fear and trembling is fear and not the, am I going to make it? Am I going to get it? Am I ever going to get right? We’re already right in Christ.
So if we release that to him, then we can certainly walk in the freedom that Jesus died for us to have whom the sun sets free is free indeed. So we can walk in that freedom, recognizing that Christ has already finished the work. We’re already there.
We’re just walking it out. And that makes a big difference. Excellent.
Thank you for sharing Perry and Mr. Stephen. Stephen. Okay.
And my parents named me after the Stephen from book of Acts. Uh-huh. Yeah.
After reading the kingdom life about the community of grace for a while, I had lived like it was a religion and therefore I developed like a distorted view where it was a narrow point of view. And I wasn’t really open to read about the community of grace. And even today’s reading were, or well, I started doing chapter five today.
So I read chapter five about, um, performance driven, um, churches where, uh, I lost my train of thought, but. Okay. Basically community of grace is, um, I learned about grace from the book.
I mean, true grace where now it’s a relationship. And I also read first John throughout the week as well, where it’s all about fellowship with God and to open up. And that’s what I got.
Excellent. Yeah, it is a grace journey and that, and, and, and I know they talked about the scripture that grace upon grace. So every day for every situation, for every circumstance, his grace is sufficient.
Mr. Richard. Thank you. Stephen.
We, uh, we had a very interesting, uh, the last Sunday of every month we have adoration of the Eucharist. And what was interesting is, is the priest at the end of the mass just says, we’re going to have adoration before everybody could leave. And basically what was interesting was to see how many people stayed and the whole time and how many people left.
And if you, if you realize this is Catholics, we believe that’s the body and blood of Christ. And like, we would want to stay every single minute. And to me, it showed like how far, uh, we have, like, just as a, if we’re going to believe that God’s there, we need to act like God’s there.
And to me, that was a pretty interesting thing to watch, you know? So it, it taught me, I mean, uh, I mean, I believe in it and I get, take the Eucharist six times a week and I, and I would tell people, I said, if we really believe that God was in the Eucharist.
