Dr Paul Allen

Why has Christianity grown so weak? It’s because of sin, and especially one in particular. Not the sin you’re probably thinking of, though. It's one you may never have thought was a sin. There’s nothing even slightly hidden about this instruction in the Bible. It’s the most frequently taught theme in the whole New Testament. It’s in the Great Commandment. Disobedience to it earned one group the most stinging rebuke in all the New Testament epistles. The Church as a whole is disobeying it right and left, yet totally oblivious to it. What is this long-forgotten sin? Intellectual laziness. It’s the failure to keep learning. To keep growing in knowledge. To pursue God with all our minds. And I’ll bet you never thought of that as sin. But it is. Yes, We’re Lazy The Church is definitely lazy. We’re not learners. We’re not disciples. (The word means “student.”) Most of our sermons are mere reminders of what we already knew, and besides, that, who remembers on Tuesday what the preacher sai...

I think that all of us would say that the main purpose for small groups in a church is to make disciples. If we are not making disciples, then we might as well call them social clubs. The question then becomes – what is a disciple? For the sake of this discussion, I am going to use the definition that a disciple is simply someone who is taking their next steps to be more like Christ. The really tough part is how to evaluate your groups for effectiveness in discipleship making. We can make it complicated and have the wrong assumptions about spiritual growth. Here are four wrong assumptions that you can make about discipleship in groups: Everyone grows at the same pace. The worst mistake that we can make in churches is trying to microwave the growth process in our people. If we don’t get results quickly, then we feel like we have failed as leaders. Lasting growth takes time and cannot be rushed. Everyone grows in the same way. We are all wired differently as human beings, so we ...