Disciple Making for a New Generation

This is a book for people who want to disciple others but may not feel qualified because they are struggling with their own issues. All of us are struggling with something; still, each person has something special to contribute to another. I hope to set before you a road that Christ wants you to walk, with him walking at your side. I hope to inspire you to help others enter into a closer communion with Christ and into a richer experience of joy, peace, and purpose. This is not meant to be a manual on disciple-making. This is more a book of inspiration, a clear biblical perspective of what kind of person you should be trying to develop, along with disciple-making principles to help you succeed in this marvelous adventure. Interspersed with the principles, are practical tips for bringing you and others to a greater maturity. A central point of the book is the need to fulfill the Great Commission that Christ left for his new followers and for all future generations. People have changed over the years. If we want to be effective, certain established patterns of discipleship and disciple-making must change. Bill Tell, Senior Vice President, Chief of Staff, The Navigators says, “Most discipleship programs today are just that, programs. Jack Blanch in this wonderful book on discipling others takes us in a refreshingly different direction, a direction that is not just theory, but is the result of helping men grow in their relationship with God for over fifty years. This book has the fingerprints of experience on every page. Jack knows better than anyone I have ever met that discipling another man or woman is not a matter of passing on a curriculum or downloading information. It’s not giving someone a new philosophy of life or a new set of rules and duties to keep. Investing in the life of another is not passing on a series of pod casts and videos. Discipling another individual to fall in love with Jesus and to trust God starts with the life of the person doing the discipling; it starts with their walk with God. Investing in others is all about relationship, people on a journey of living life together through the good and the bad. Jack helps us understand that if we are going to disciple another person life-on-life, it won’t happen in a church classroom, at the local coffee shop, in an office, or by appointment. It happens in all the places where real life happens, at a soccer game on a cold day, rescuing someone from a broken down car at the most inconvenient time, in an anger filled living room where divorce is the topic.Disciple Making for a New Generation doesn’t try to improve our techniques or skills so that we can get “our disciple” to do the right things. Being a disciple is not about doing the right things, but about being the person God created us to be when he planted a new nature in us. And so rather than a list of things we want the disciple to do, we are challenged to think about developing areas like faith, hope, love and holiness, areas that don’t develop as the result of information and study, but grow as a result of an intimate love relationship with God. Fifty years of discipling men around the world has allowed Jack to fill this book with countless stories and illustrations, of real people with the woundedness and brokenness that comes from living in the real world. To read this book is like spending time with a personal mentor, one with whom you cannot get enough time. By the time you have finished the last chapter, you have walked with Jack through fifty years of ministry and will have a new paradigm of what it means to make disciples. You will have a glimpse of what it might look like to impart our very lives to the next generation.”