Obedience in Baptism: Stories of Transformation

Despite a canceled flight and threats of persecution, Justin and Barnabas followed the prompting of God to travel, directly from a new Disciple Making Movement (DMM) training to a group of believers among an unreached Muslim people group in a South African country (we define a movement as at least 100 churches with at least 4 generations of multiplication).

When they arrived, the country leader expected formal training to equip the new disciples. But Barnabas felt led to get to know each person by sharing their testimonies. After Barnabas called on a man to share, the man turned back to Barnabas, asking him to share his own testimony! Barnabas shared how God saved him from alcohol addiction, and when he began to follow Jesus and obey him, his life was transformed, and people followed Jesus in baptism.

Barnabas then turned to the women in the group one of whom had 11 Discovery Bible Studies (DBSs) going with her friends and family, when she shared, she felt convicted that though she had become a follower of Jesus she had not yet obeyed his command of baptism. The next woman to share confirmed that she too wanted to get baptized immediately.

The country leader encouraged them to pray about it overnight (getting baptized in a Muslim context is a very serious step; they often face persecution). In the morning, there were now 4 women and 2 men waiting by the lake. One of the brothers had recently tried to kill the country leader by placing a bomb in his car. When it failed to detonate, he felt it was God who had protected him, so he decided to join the others with great joy in baptism.

DMM leaders regularly teach about immediate obedience; the importance for every disciple to daily discover how God is leading them through His Word, to follow all of Jesus’ commands. This wave of new disciples taking steps of faith to start Discovery Groups, and then get baptized themselves, is leading to a chain reaction of disciples making disciples and churches planting churches.

The post Obedience in Baptism first appeared on New Generations.

Because of the importance of intentionality in disciple making, we at Discipleship.org are going to emphasize this skill set and mindset over the next four months. Please join with us and seek to share understanding, insight, and practical tools so that you can become skilled at intentionality in relational disciple making and you can help those on your team or in your leadership group to do the same. There are four ways in which we are emphasizing intentionality to help you in the next four months.

Discipleship.org City Tour Forums – our four City Tour Forums are designed to help you and your team both understand and develop an intentionality posture. The tour is comprised of one day, high impact forums where there will be teaching and round table discussions. Every attendee also gets a copy of Brandon Guindon’s new book, Intentional: Living Out the Eight Principles of Disciple Making.

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Take the FREE Individual Disciple Maker Assessment – we designed this assessment with a team of national and international disciple making leaders to help each individual be able to evaluate their disciple making mindset and skill. Just by taking this assessment, you will gain an appreciation for the value of intentionality, along with a sense of how you can increase your own level of intentionality. Click the image below to take the assessment.

Read the short FREE book, Becoming a Disciple Maker: The Pursuit of Level Five Disciple Making – Bobby wrote this short eBook with statistician Greg Wiens to help you understand the mathematical and practical impact of one person’s disciple making efforts and skills.

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Read Brandon Guindon’s book, Intentional: Living Out the Eight Principles of Disciple Making – Brandon wrote this Discipleship.org book and Zondervan is publishing, because the understanding and practice of disciple making is so crucial. Every attendee at each of our City Tour events (Nashville, Houston, Dallas and Raleigh), as mentioned above, will receive a FREE copy of Brandon Guindon’s book.

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Please join with us in this quest to better understand and practice intentionality. It will help us all to become more and more like Jesus, the world greatest disciple maker.