Blog PostsThe iFollow Discipleship Resource
by Dan Day, Director
NAD Church Resource Center
March 10, 2010
People have been asking for more details about the iFollow discipleship resource we've been discussing here in the pages of Best Practices. When will it be available? What will it contain? How will we use it? Let me begin to open the door a bit more widely, so you can begin to think about how the new resource could impact your ministry.
The first elements of the new iFollow resource will be introduced at the NAD Pavillion of the General Conference Session in Atlanta, which will take place during the end of June and the beginning of July this year. It will be fully rolled out by the time of the NAD Ministries Convention, in January.
Over five years in development, the new iFollow discipleship resource is a product of the Adventist church in North America, developed in response to research findings with Adventist pastors who said it was the most important resource they could be provided. It was developed by teams of Adventist writers and editors, under the direction of the NAD Church Resource Center, who contracted with the Center for Creative Ministry for the early work. It is a content-rich tool that will enable pastors and congregational leaders to access a broad set of discipleship resources, and is being engineered to serve the local congregation in discipleship training in several different ways.
How will it all work?
First, each church in North America will be provided with a special edition of the Pastor's DVD that will contain a complete library of discipleship content. That means it is free to you and your congregation. This content will be searchable, so it can be assessed to set up training sessions and mined for sermon content. It's going to be so cool.
Second, there will be a website associated with iFollow that will mirror the DVD. What that means is that the content can be accessed there, too, providing a wide assortment of ways it can be used. The website will also contain additional elements as they become available.
Third, a series of books is going to be offered (with the first ones available at AdventSource during the GC Session), drawn from the discipleship content and written to address specific discipleship themes. These books, written by experienced Adventist authors and editors, will be unlike anything you've seen before. They will be specifically organized for use in small group settings. Not only will the discipleship themes be addressed in powerful ways, but additional content will in each book, providing things like: a Bible study for each chapter, specific discipleship comments from Ellen White and various contemporary writers, and activities for the group to use in making the content more accessible. There will even be a section in each chapter that shows how the theme of that chapter intersects with one or more of the Fundamental Beliefs of the church.
In short, the iFollow discipleship resource will be a powerful new tool for strengthening the vitality of the local congregation and deepening the spiritual life of the individual Christian. It will be specifically developed with the end-users in mind, and it will continue to grow as more titles are added and additional content is made available. That means if you want to begin discipleship training in your church, you will be able to continue the process over however long you wish-with content you can trust, organized to make the process easy and effective.
Previous Articles
The iFollow Journey (Jul. 2, 2010)
The iFollow Discipleship Resource (Mar. 10, 2010)
Discipleship Elements: How to Become a Nurturing Community (Feb. 24, 2010)
Discipleship Elements: How to Grow in Christ (Jan. 28, 2010)
Discipleship Elements: How to Follow Jesus (Jan. 13, 2010)
iFollow: What It Is, and How to Use It (Jan. 1, 2010)
Discipleship: Learning a New Language (Dec. 16, 2009)
Discipleship: What Is It, and Why Should We Care? (Dec. 9, 2009)
Discipleship: Just About Being Spiritually "Buff"? (Nov. 18, 2009)
Discipleship: If We Saw It Would We Recognize It? (Nov. 6, 2009)
