New Life Together: New Publishing Project Launched to Enhance Discipleship
Church of God Ministries, Inc. (CGM), has launched a new effort to promote effective discipleship within the movement. Called “New Life Together,” the effort focuses on discipling new Christians through their relationships with more mature believers. Joe Allison, CGM coordinator of publishing, introduced “New Life Together” in a report to this week’s General Assembly.
“Spiritual maturity is not simply a matter of acquiring enough knowledge,” Allison said. “Spiritual maturity is becoming like Christ. It’s being transformed by the Holy Spirit to have the character, values, and life purpose of Christ. This happens best in deep relationships with other Christians.”
CGM has opened the website www.newlifetogether.org to promote communication about discipleship within the Church of God. The national office is hosting a series of discipleship roundtable discussions in various regions of North America to raise the church’s awareness of discipleship ministry. Allison said that the church publishing house, Warner Press, will introduce a “new generation of discipleship resources” alongside its traditional Sunday school curriculum.
These resources will “encourage people to form life-changing relationships within the body of Christ,” he said. “That’s how Jesus prepared the twelve apostles to change the world—by modeling the kind of life they should live, by allowing them to see him deal with the same temptations and challenges they would face every day.”
An example is Lloyd Bowen’s First Steps in Following Christ, a workbook for a growing Christian to complete alongside a more mature believer. First Steps is not only for new converts, but also for those who’ve been Christians for years and need to step up to a higher level of commitment to Christ.
