The Discipleship Explored DVD

Discipleship Explored is supported by a DVD written and presented by Barry Cooper. Each episode is beautifully shot on location around the UK, with settings as diverse as Highgate’s gothic cemetery, an East End boxing ring, a huge athletics stadium, a decommissioned observatory, an eerily empty underground station, and a scrapyard, filled with towering stacks of long abandoned cars.

It’s a visual treat, with a gorgeous soundtrack and a rumbling voiceover from James Cosmo, the Scottish actor perhaps best known for his work on Braveheart. The director is Steve Hughes, Cooper’s long-time friend and collaborator, who has just recently finished work on the BBC’s Dr Who. But the star of the series is the script, based firmly in God’s Word.

Barry explains his thinking behind the scripts: “I think one biblical idea clearly understood is better than three dimly grasped. With something as theologically rich as Philippians, it’s tempting to try and say everything—and end up saying nothing. So I wanted to make each episode as lean as possible, to hit one point and keep hitting that point as clearly as I could. Each episode has a single pulse that runs all the way through it, and hopefully there’s real power and clarity that comes from that.”

See the Discipleship Explored trailer here to get a feel for this DVD.

And please note: The DVD has been redesigned as part of developing the 2nd Edition of Discipleship Explored. However, the contents are unchanged from the previous version of the DVD, so you do not need to buy a new DVD if you already have an existing one.

On to a Good Thing

Andy Fenton, music leader at the London Men's Convention a couple of weeks, talks through how he played Be Thou my Vision at the conference.

6. And finally...

Introducing our video of the week, the trailer for the next evangelistic course in our Jesus and You series, Close Encounters:

Found something that you think should make it on to the On to a Good Thing weekly round-up? Send it to: ontoagoodthing@thegoodbook.co.uk

Philippians - a letter of joy?

“Philippians is a letter whose time is coming. And it’s coming soon. We’ve enjoyed an unprecedented period of ease and goodwill in recent times. But when you look at human history—and other parts of the world—you soon realise that all this comfort is just a blip. Don’t expect it to last, because it won’t. Suffering is coming.”

For Barry Cooper, hearing Dick Lucas say those words proved to be the decisive moment as he wrote and presented Discipleship Explored, an eight-part DVD series based on Paul’s letter to the Philippians. It’s the follow-up to the hugely popular Christianity Explored, a course that is now running in thousands of places and dozens of countries at any one time.

“I was sitting in this classroom in London, and Dick was saying that Philippians prepares the church to suffer well. It struck me as odd at the time, because everyone says: ‘Oh Philippians, that’s the New Testament letter of joy.’ So my job as a writer was to try and see how those two things—joy and suffering—fitted together.”

The answer, Barry says, comes in Philippians 1 v 29. “Paul makes a staggering statement which I think I’d lost sight of. He says, ‘…it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for him…’ So Paul is saying: ‘Just as your belief in Christ is a joy-filled gift, so is your suffering for him.’ And I remember thinking, ‘Well, is that really how I see my Christian life?’ I think we spend most of our lives trying to avoid any kind of suffering or discomfort. We certainly don’t see it as a joy-giving gift. It never occurred to me that when we try to dodge the discomfort of discipleship, we are actually denying ourselves good gifts from God’s hand.”

For these reasons Discipleship Explored prepares people for the reality of living wholeheartedly for Christ—both the joy and the suffering. New Christians need to know this, but so do those who’ve been following Christ for some time. Our hope and prayer is that Discipleship Explored will help Christians walk confidently in the footsteps of Christ.

Following Christ. What's it all about?

The new Discipleship Explored course - designed to give people the time and space to think about what it really means to live the Christian life - is now available. It's an eight-week journey through Paul’s letter to the Philippians which helps new Christians think through what it means to be a genuine disciple of Jesus Christ.

2nd Edition: the same…

Discipleship Explored has been widely used for several years. Churches and groups have found it a valuable tool that God has used to change many lives. We’ve now launched the 2nd Edition of this popular course. The core strengths have stayed the same:

• a commitment to let God’s Word speak into people’s lives
• simple-to-use format including Bible studies, talks, group discussions and home Bible reading
• supported by the Discipleship Explored DVD, which was nominated for media product of the year at the CBC awards

…but different

This second edition has been completely redesigned to tie in with the hugely popular Christianity Explored course, for which Discipleship Explored is an ideal follow-up. New features include:

• comprehensive notes on setting up and running the course
• expanded training material for course leaders
• help in answering questions from Philippians as well as tough questions about Christianity in general
• the group member’s Handbook has been developed to match the Christianity Explored Handbook, so that it will feel familiar to those who have done the Christianity Explored course. Additions include summaries of previous sessions, talk outlines, a dictionary of Bible words and phrases, and background material on Philippians.

More to come

This week on the blog we're going to be talking to Barry Cooper, who wrote and presents the DVD. He'll be explaining some of the thinking behind developing Discipleship Explored. And on Friday there will be some great special offers on the new Discipleship Explored material.

The UK: Still a religious country (#Pray4Muamba)

Richard Dawkins must be turning on his soapbox.

There’s been a lot of praying going on—and a lot of people telling other people to pray—since Fabrice Muamba collapsed on the White Hart Lane pitch nine days ago.

Other players prayed on the pitch. Twitter was alive with prayer requests from celebrities such as Wayne Rooney. “Pray 4 Muamba” T-shirts sprung up everywhere. And all this before Muamba’s family had requested prayer.

And wonderfully, God seems graciously to have chosen to save this man’s life. Though his heart stopped for 78 minutes, he is now talking and moving—and was able to watch Bolton’s 2-1 win on Saturday (they may yet avoid relegation—see, miracles do happen!)

So what do we make of all this? Two things, perhaps:

1. Britain is still a religious country.

When the chips are down, people pray. And people preach prayers to others, too. Wayne Rooney may be a surprising preacher, but that’s what he was doing—telling others to act in a certain way to the Almighty. Despite the best efforts of active secularists and militant atheists, prayer is still our default action when confronted with the shocking reality of a broken world where 21-year-olds nearly die (and, sometimes, do die).

2. Britain is NOT a Christian country.

Let’s not kid ourselves. These were not prayers offered in faith to a Father who was being trusted to act for the good of His children and supremely for His own glory. Nowhere in the celebrity/sporting twittersphere did I spot a prayer which began “Lord, if it is your will” and ended “for the glory and in the name of your Son”. These prayers were offered to an unknown god, a genie in a bottle. A kindly deity who we can ignore every day except the day we need him, and who we can then whistle up, tell what we need, get it, and carry on as before. That’s not who God is. He would be no more or less God if He had decided that Muamba had come to the end of his life (as he will, one day—just as we all will).

And there are prayers which God won’t answer—prayers which come from a heart which has the wrong attitude, to which God says: “Even if they call to the Most High, he will by no means exalt them” (Hosea 11 v 7). God saving Muamba isn't the result of the prayers of people who treat the Creator of everything as though He were a God who can be taken off the shelf, dusted down, given His orders and then returned. It may be the result of the prayers of His children, who know who He is, who seek to treat Him as God, and who ask for His forgiveness through His Son when they fail to. And it certainly is because He is a gracious God, who gives us every breath we enjoy as a gift, whether we recognize that or not.

• Ultimately, the difference between pagan folk religion and real Christianity—between twitter-prayer and real-prayer—is about what we pray for, and why we think we’ll be heard.
• Do we pray first and foremost for what we want, or for Jesus to be praised?
• Do we pray because we think prayer works, or because we trust that God works?
• Do we pray because we think prayer is an offering—we’re doing something for God, so He’ll do something for us? Or because we know prayer is speaking to our heavenly Father—we can do nothing for Him, but Jesus has done everything we need to be able to enter His heavenly throne room as His children?
• Perhaps here’s the crunch: do we pray because we need something, or because we simply love our Father?

So the reaction to Muamba’s heart attack—and let’s give thanks to our Father that He has mercifully saved his mortal life—is at once heartening, and disheartening.

Britain still believes in something. But most of us have no idea who He is.

The fire alarm

Church packed. Songs sung. Prayers said. Notices read.

There was a calm and silent atmosphere as people sat in quite reflection. But then the peace was shattered by the insistent shrill wailing of a fire siren. As the deafening racket continued, an announcement came over the PA system:

"There is a dangerous fire in the building. You must calmly get up out of your seats now, and leave the building."

The siren continued to wail for a time, but eventually it stopped, and the worshippers sat in their rows looking nervously around at each other. Eventually, they began to talk:

"Wasn't the sound of the siren interesting!" said one woman.
"Yes", replied another, "Once you got used to it, it was really quite lovely."
"I though the announcement was very clear and helpful", said a man.
"I've made some great notes that have got all the main points down" said another.
"I didn't find it that interesting - no funny stories or jokes at all" said a sullen teenager.

The excited buzz of conversation continued as the smoke slowly filled the room…

Q: How do we know when people have truly heard the fire alarm?
A: When the building is empty.

Q: How do we know when people have truly heard a sermon?
A: suggestions below please...

Based on an illustration heard from Mike Cain at the Planting for Christ Conference last week.

Fighting the Monday feeling

Sing to the LORD a new song,
for he has done marvelous things;
his right hand and his holy arm
have worked salvation for him.
The LORD has made his salvation known
and revealed his righteousness to the nations.
He has remembered his love
and his faithfulness to the house of Israel;
all the ends of the earth have seen
the salvation of our God.

Psalm 98

If we begin to grasp the incredible way God has rescued us, so that one day we’ll join all creation in His perfect world, praising Him… if we just begin to appreciate who God is and what He’s done for us… then we’ll want to sing and shout His praises. And we’ll sing in the way this psalm tells us to: loudly, with joy and jubilation.

How to stop being boring

So you've done the prep. The main point is clear in your mind. The structure is sketched out. And your application thought-through. All that remains is to put the pieces together, write the talk and deliver it.

You're faithfully explaining the word of God so you're confident that it's going to be relevant and transformational. In the hands of the Holy Spirit, there's no doubt that it can be used to glorify God. But there's still a nagging suspicion that the talk that you end up with might be, well, how can I put this? Just a little bit dull...

If that scenario sounds familiar, why not spend an hour today listening to Pete Woodcock's seminar on how to stop being boring.

As an experienced speaker, Pete shares his top tips for passing on God's truth in ways that engage and enthuse. Originally given at the Bible-centred youthworker conference, there are hints here for anyone who has to teach Jesus from the front of church. If you listen, your talks may never be the same again ...