If you are interested in the unique gifts Methodism and the Wesleyan tradition has to offer the world, then you’ll definitely want to pick up Kevin Watson’s A Blueprint for Discipleship: Wesley’s General Rules as a Guide for Christian Living. He does a great job of offering a simple yet challenging description of Wesley’s General Rules and the Methodist “method” for discipleship in a way that can help Methodists understand the beauty of intentional growth in grace.
The book is well-written, easy to read, and includes discussion questions at the end of each chapter. This makes it perfect for leading a group of laypeople through a class to help them understand the rich discipleship tools we carry in our “Methodist tool-belt.”
mattjudkins.com 
Matt – Thanks for the review, and thank you for taking the time to read the book.
The UMPH needs to get on the ball and make more stuff available for the Kindle. I’m going to order and read this book but it sure would be nice to download and read it immediately.
I understand the UMPH has a new service kinda like Kindle. For double the price of the book, they’ll photocopy the pages and fax them to you.
LOL! You know, the funnier (or sadder) part of that is that it sounds like something we’d do. “Amazon has the Kindle, here’s our version! A photocopied and faxed version. It’s kinda the same, right?”
Or, “Well, there’s Alpha, here’s our version! Beginnings. It’s kinda the same, right?”
Rinse. Repeat.
Or, hey this whole “social media,” Facebook thing seems to be a big deal. Let’s offer 7villages, everyone will love it! You’re so right…it’s sad.
OK, so here’s a question that my friend and colleague has challenged me with. How do we keep from being critical in a negative sense and move to thinking critically to impact positive change? In other words, how can we influence change that improves the denomination rather than simply pointing out all the mistakes in following after trends rather than taking advantage of movements?
Good question, Matt. I think we’re all aware that if we leave it to a denominational level it’ll take forever for innovation to get around to the local churches. In fact, by the time it gets to us from the top down it won’t be innovative.
What we need is bottom up innovation at the local level. Alpha was a church program that grew into an international movement. What can we do where we are that causes spiritual transformation? Wesley didn’t wait for the C/E to dictate a program, he preached in fields and organized people into class meetings. Real change will happen when we innovate in the local church.
And yet our funding is still based on a top down model of “equipping” our churches. Sounds like some structural change is in order to reflect Wesley’s genius of organizing and facilitating spiritual transformation and innovation in service to the gospel.
Thanks for the conversation!
I suspect there is going to be a lot of grumbling at Annual Conferences all over the country in May in June. If we are going to weather the current economic climate we’re going to have to do something at the General and Conference levels. We aren’t spending money wisely.
I’ve been talking to some folks in our church and friends of mine and a couple of loosely related things have come up. The first is something I’ve told a couple of church members today: we’re are finally in a place where it is more of a risk to keep doing the same things than it is for us to radically do things differently. The second is more of a question and observation: have you noticed that youth ministry is still being done the same way it was 15 years ago when I was in high school? The haircuts and books have changed but not much else. Across the denomination there is a lot of lip service paid to “mission over maintenance” but when it comes down to it, we are okay with maintaining the same ole things and the General and Conference levels do very little or nothing to reward risk and innovation.