Welcome to Membership Class!
Every story has a beginning, and ours started with a question: How can we follow Jesus best? Not to win a religious contest, but to know Jesus as much as we can, to experience life to the full right now, and to constantly invite more people to the table. How do we do that? We started digging in to the Bible, praying like we never had before, and learning as much as we could from Jesus himself. In short, we lived like students of Jesus. We embraced life as disciples, walking and talking with Jesus while we lived our everyday lives.
Then we had another question: How do we invite others to live this way? Everyone in the church talks about following Jesus, but, how do we teach people to actually do it? How do we move from wanting to make disciples, to actually making disciples? That inspired Pastor Phil and Pastor Megan (who were working at the same church) to create the beginnings of what would eventually become the Discipleship Pathway; a specific, strategic journey that inspires people to band together and live as students of Jesus, using some of the most elemental and time-tested practices of the faith. As we created this Pathway, four directions emerged. Students of Jesus pursue God (up), create belonging (down), do justice (out), and make disciples (back). These are the directions the people of God move.
This of course led to another question: Could a whole church operate this way? In a time when the American church seems scattered or even tumultuous at times, could returning to the simple practice of making disciples reorient us? Dallas Willard said that there’s nothing wrong with the Church today that discipleship can’t cure. If that’s true, we wanted to find out for ourselves.
In this same season, several things happened at once. At first, many doors were open, and one by one we just tried to take the next right step as God led us. Eventually that led to a weekend trip to Des Moines that sealed the deal for Phil, Natalie, and Pastor Megan and her husband, Jim. Many people have asked, “Why Des Moines?” And the short answer is, we followed Jesus here. That’s it.
The purpose of this class is to help you understand who we are and why we’re here, and to invite you in to what we’re doing here in Des Moines. We’re glad you’re here!