peterson

Peterson Feital

Peterson Feital Peterson is our Cambridge connection. He is a charismatic speaker and Pioneer who loves getting people to talk about their faith, to encourage mission, and deliver change in faith communities. A Brazilian who looks good in orange, dislikes football and enjoys good coffee (Brazilian naturally!), he works out of Cambridge, has a wonderful wife and a beautiful daughter and an MA In Emerging Church Studies.

Peterson's network profile page can be found here, his LoF blog can be found here.

You can contact Peterson here...

Peterson writes...

The Churches of the 21st century, whether Emerging, Mission Shaped, Fresh Expression or Traditional, are facing the same challenge: How do we connect with people from outside the Church?

There seems to be agreement that "doing mission" is the way forward; but we're talking a lot, and the church is still declining.

Mission has become an urgent matter for the church leaders; however there are strong indications that the Church is declining because there is a distinct lack of discipleship in our churches. The assertion is that if the Church is not making disciples mission will simply not happen.

In the book, "Let my People Grow", where different theologians of this country such as Martyn Atkins, Phil Meadows, and Jason Clark write about the importance of making disciples, one statement stands out:

One of the primary reasons for our decline is not that society has changed - though it has - but that on the whole in today's churches we don't make disciples, we make converts.

We don't make apprentices of Jesus, people who are moving forward in their ability to live the life of Christ in every aspect of their lives and to show and share that life wherever God has placed them.

Furthermore, a disciple is not just someone with a concern for personal holiness and integrity or for evangelism; he or she has a desire for all that is on the Lord of all's agenda.

Disciples, then, are called to be the yeast, agents of transformation seeking to see Christ's Kingdom come in every aspect of human culture - intellectual and emotional, economic and artistic, political and domestic, local and global, private and public.

M. Greene & T. Coterrell (eds.), Let My People Grow: Making Disciples Who Make a Difference in Today's World
(Bletchley, Milton Keynes: authentic Media, 2006), pp. 14-15


The question is this: is the 21st century Church as committed to discipleship as the early Church? Is it post-modern culture or the Church that is shaping discipleship?

We are living in a society that presents itself as hedonistic, pluralistic, individualistic and materialistic. Materialism shapes values relating to money, status and power, and people are measured by what they do rather than who they are. Because of this people are often obsessed with the idea of doing and achieving as opposed to being - resulting in busy lives, stress, and loneliness; it seems that we have become "human doings" as opposed to human beings. Passionate about mission

Discipleship, on the other hand, is about being - and being Christ-like. It is no good creating new forms of church if the Church is not teaching the meaning of being a disciple. However, in most of the literature about Church and its mission in society today, little is ever mentioned about discipleship. Why is this? Is it because we are so interested in making church relevant and evangelistic that there is an assumption that discipleship will happen naturally?

Or is it because discipleship touches areas of our individual lives that cause us, as part of an individualistic society, to be uncomfortable? If this is the case, then we may as well close our church doors once and for all; if Christians are not living lives of continuous transformation through discipleship in the knowledge of Christ and the Scriptures and being filled with the Holy Spirit, then how can they be true representatives of Jesus?; and if the Church is not offering Christ's message of liberation, salvation, sanctification, transformation and love, can we really say it is Church?