Title

A Call to Transformation: Unlearning and Learning Again How to Follow Jesus

Date of Award

2014

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts in Ministerial Leadership (MAML)

College

College of Christian Ministries and Religion

Department

Department of Christian Ministries and Religion

Primary Advisor

Charles H. Gaulden, D.Min.

Abstract

Our Western version of Christianity has compartmentalized faith to being a good, moral person who attends a few hours of spectator activity each week with no clearly defined understanding of what it really means to follow Jesus Christ. Unchurched and churched alike have bought into a selfish, self-centered, fear-based, consumer-defined, individualistic vision of humanity that is driven by lust and greed.

This thesis will examine the need for the present-day western Church to exchange the fundamental mental model of what it means to be a follower of Christ. For that to happen, leaders must see themselves not as church members, but as catalysts, that "as they are going into places where they live their lives, they connect and mobilize other followers of Jesus to the mission he calls them to engage. For our culture to be transformed, a new movement must be fostered in which the disciple-making efforts of the Church are refocused on teaching people how to love like Jesus loved, in their families, neighborhoods, schools and businesses and third places...."

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