The Strategic Discipleship Workbook: Converting High Ideals into Everyday Ordeals

This workbook is intended to be a companion to The Last 15-Minutes: Living Life in the Choice Space. As with the book, the workbook will have its greatest effect if the concepts are transformed into actions, and this supplemental material is designed to help you do that. It is the author's fondest hope and prayer that all believers who read The Last 15-Minutes and continue to the workbook find great benefit and encouragement. The spiritual transformation model described in the book can be profitable when the objective is organizing one’s spiritual growth efforts. A significant percentage of those that enthusiastically begin the salvation and discipleship process may never finish the work. There will be a lot of reasons, but the predominant one will be because, though many like the idea of discipleship, far fewer embrace the actual task and work of discipleship. Let’s be honest: Discipleship is not much fun most of the time. Hebrews 12:11 tells us "no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful; nevertheless, afterward, it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it." That means you have to do the stuff before you enjoy the benefits.

This workbook incorporates a “meta-analysis,” approach to discipleship. Don’t let the term, “meta-analysis,” scare you; it simply means, “a study of the studies.” That is, it is a study about the system of how to think about discipleship to enable one to do discipleship. The goal is not holding theoretical concepts so much as translating them into daily, practical discipleship action—converting high ideals into everyday ordeals. This workbook is like reading the instructions before assembling a complex mechanism or tool. The selection of the term “strategic” for the title was intentional because we will concentrate on multiple methods working in concert and applied to discipleship. The result is a thought model that guides a believer through the maze of how to think about daily choices before him/her rather than telling them what to think. The thought model takes the form of a 9-piece puzzle, each piece presenting one strategy, each contributing a piece of the path to uncovering God’s mysteries. The Holy Spirit is a marvelous instructor-coach Who is well-able to hone our thinking in specific “What do I do today?” and “What do I do this moment to be His disciple?” decisions.