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    Making Disciples: Mentor Guide
    Making Disciples: Mentor Guide
    Making Disciples: Mentor Guide
    Ebook87 pages53 minutes

    Making Disciples: Mentor Guide

    By Bishop William H. Willimon

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    About this ebook

    Making Disciples is a 13-session mentor-based confirmation program that pairs confirmands with adult mentors and guides them through a variety of learning experiences that will strengthen the student's understanding of the faith while connecting him or her with the community of believers in a personal way. It can be used as a stand-alone program, or in conjunction with your current curriculum as a special experiential unit.

    This is a confirmation program that is more like a process and less like a reading assignment, more engaging and congruent with the nature of the Christian faith than existing programs.

    Using an “apprenticeship” approach to confirmation Will Willimon produced a series of learning experiences where adult mentors and confirmands are both teachers and learners at the same time.

    This time-tested approach has been extensively revised and updated for usage in today’s churches that take seriously Christ’s command to be engaged in disciple making

    The bulk of the Mentor Guide is exactly the same as the Confirmand's Journal. You are encouraged to work through the activities right along with the confirmands and to complete the activities and writing assignments just as he or she does. By working along with your confirmand you will demonstrate the need to keep learning and growing.

    Topics explore the basics of Christian faith:
    •God
    •Jesus
    •the Holy Spirit
    •worship
    •the Bible
    •gifts
    •ministry
    •baptism
    •spiritual life
    •death and resurrection
    •the church

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAbingdon Press
    Release dateJun 19, 2018
    ISBN9781501848193
    Making Disciples: Mentor Guide
    Author

    Bishop William H. Willimon

    Will Willimon is a preacher and teacher of preachers. He is a United Methodist bishop (retired) and serves as Professor of the Practice of Christian Ministry and Director of the Doctor of Ministry program at Duke Divinity School, Durham, North Carolina. For twenty years he was Dean of the Chapel at Duke University. A 1996 Baylor University study named him among the Twelve Most Effective Preachers in the English speaking world. The Pew Research Center found that Will was one of the most widely read authors among Protestant clergy in 2005. His quarterly Pulpit Resource is used by thousands of pastors throughout North America, Canada, and Australia. In 2021 he gave the prestigious Lyman Beecher Lectures on Preaching at Yale Divinity School. Those lectures became the book, Preachers Dare: Speaking for God which is the inspiration for his ninetieth book, Listeners Dare: Hearing God in the Sermon.

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      Book preview

      Making Disciples - Bishop William H. Willimon

      Introduction

      Welcome to MAKING DISCIPLES! You are about to embark on an adventure that invites you to grow in your service to Christ’s church and in your discipleship.

      Confirmation is a rite of the church that is linked to baptism. In confirmation, the church confirms that a person has been baptized and is confirmed in his or her discipleship in the way of Christ.

      In the rite of baptism in The United Methodist Church, the worship leader asks the congregation, Will you nurture one another in the Christian faith and life and include these persons now before you in your care? The congregation answers with an affirmation that they will take responsibility for the guidance and nurture of this new Christian: With God’s help, we will proclaim the good news and live according to the example of Christ. We will surround these persons with a community of love and forgiveness, that they may grow in their trust of God, and be found faithful in their service to others. We will pray for them, that they may be true disciples who walk in the way that leads to life.

      In serving as a guide and teacher for an emerging Christian, you are helping to fulfill this congregational vow. You will be participating in an experience that is at the heart of the Christian faith.

      How did you become a Christian? I expect that in one way or another you grew into this faith and affirmed it as your own by watching others live the Christian life. No one is born a Christian. This faith comes through witness—one Christian by word and deed handing over the faith to another, as a gift from one generation to the next.

      MAKING DISCIPLES is a program that facilitates that process of witnessing and testimony by linking a novice, growing Christian with a more experienced and knowledgeable growing Christian (that’s you!). You will serve as a mentor. A mentor in this confirmation process is not one who knows all the answers, nor one who can cite vast portions of Scripture from memory. A mentor is one who has a genuine faith and who is involved in trying to grow in that faith from day to day. A mentor is one who is willing to share his or her journey of faith with another person who is an apprentice in the faith.

      This adventure called MAKING DISCIPLES assumes that you will grow in your faith by helping another to grow in faith. As Saint Francis famously said, In giving you receive. So, in being called by your church to be a mentor, you not only are being given a major assignment but also you are being given a grand opportunity. Indeed, I hope that being a mentor in the confirmation process called MAKING DISCIPLES will be one of the most rewarding experiences of your Christian life.

      You will be encouraged to grow in your own faith because MAKING DISCIPLES allows you to be a growing disciple who is involved in the same activities as your confirmand. You are sure to be blessed by receiving new insights in the faith by interfacing with a newer Christian who will help you see the Christian life with new eyes.

      Think of yourself as a partner in this process. The bulk of your Mentor’s Guide is exactly the same as the Confirmand’s Journal. You are encouraged to work through the activities right along with your confirmand and to complete the activities and writing assignments just as he or she does. While the confirmand may be looking up to you as an example, he or she also will see you as a growing disciple. By working along with your confirmand, you will demonstrate that, as the theologian Karl Barth said, In the Christian faith, we are all armatures. None of us becomes so adept at living the Christian life, or so wise in Scripture or the way of Christ, that we don’t need to keep learning and keep growing. You will be modeling, for a relatively new Christian, the lifelong importance of constant, continuing growth as a Christian.

      This course contains thirteen sessions. Each session addresses a particular topic and always includes several activities for you and your confirmand to do together. As a mentor, you may want to review all thirteen sessions in the beginning so that you can progress through them in an order that is convenient for you.

      The learning activities are designed to make the process active and engaging. Rather than simply conveying information, by their active nature they demonstrate that the Christian life involves more than simply knowing;

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