A Look at local and Global Discipleship

As someone who is interested in technology, I can be one of these people who love technological advances even if they are no particularly useful, just because there "neat", "fun" or "out-there". But quite often I look over things, "Big Picture" them (one of those terms I couldn't quite put my finger on until my friend Marty Stephen mentioned it the other day) and realise, "Wow that works so well, and actually changes something" The Internet has really been one of these things, and its affected my personal discipleship. Back in the day, you would go to church and collate this linear storyline of people who affected your life in a discipleship sense. e.g. Your Pastor, a guy you get on with, someone you look up to. Through spending time and experiences with these people they would input into your life, work through things with you, even just share things that made your day better. While I would contest major pastoral issues and accountability are probably safer kept with you local community eg. Your Church, Your Family and local friends, the Internet has allowed an information exchange which can contribute to this. This leads to global discipleship, Discipleship from people who you quite probably have never met, or even seen, but can impact your day, month, year or even life. Like it or not, our influences in life can rarely be tracked in a linear fashion, constantly external forces are "helping us" think certain though, for example, Apple Advertising "helps me" know what I would like to buy in the next 6 months! But this is not always an adverse influence...Case in point (and the background to my thinking of this post) is I often check through my Google Reader list (RSS feeds) which are some favourite blogs that have posts delivered to me, and one has been sticking out for me as an influence to my day. Jim Martin - A Place for the God Hungry - Now Im far from claiming this blog as a discovery, as its pretty popular but I have been amazed in the last few weeks how much this blog has really inputted into. There are two streams of reasoning why I think this blog can be classed as Global Discipleship - It is a Blog for such a time as this - It is content for such a time as this Jim hasnt filled his blog with the bells and whistles of some of the more techie blogs, but that has been the beauty for RSS/feed readers, Jim's content has been the driving force for the blog, not necessarily the page attractiveness, and as blogging progresses I think we'll see more of this trend, people who are able to produce great material and access blogging without the need for technical wizardry, or even aesthetics. Jim also seems to be able to be concise without loosing the heart of the material (an attribute this post is revealing I don't have). Jim has also set a default, a dependability, When I see his posts on google I know they wont be War and Peace, they'll be deep enough but not too much, involve scripture, maybe some bullet points, and hey even a little picture on the top left! It feels to me often to be a "word for today" type of thing, but there is reality in there to. So now that you've tired of me going on about it, add it to your reader, He's churning out some great stuff, around subject that are really close to me heart, and hes a good bit down the road on them than I am at 21, so its also full of explanation of the journey to it. So Global discipleship, the blogdom can really be a tool for it, for breathing life into us....Ive lost my steam on this post now!...how very un-everything I said was good!