Go and Make Disciples
Go and Make Disciples
An Interview with Mark Earley
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Editor's Note: In 2007 PFM will mark the first year that ministry operations start changing as a result of the new mission launch last year. Some important new strategies and principles will become visible. Jubilee talked with PFM President Mark Earley about these changes and how they will affect our prison and worldview ministry.
The ministry is preparing to shift the way it does business. Would you explain transformational discipleship?
The Greek word for disciple is a learner. A disciple of Jesus Christ is someone who is learning to follow Him more every day. He is intentionally about the business of learning how to allow Christ to transform every area of his or her life. Transformational discipleship puts an exclamation point behind the idea that discipleship is really about being changed into the image of Christ. Just as Dietrich Bonhoffer said there is no such thing as cheap grace, there is no such thing as halfway or cheap discipleship.
Is this approach new? Didn’t Chuck Colson start off our ministry with discipleship seminars?
It’s a good example of the ancient made new again. We went through a two-year process of refocusing our mission, vision, and values. Again and again we heard that what our staff, volunteers, and partner churches get excited about is transformed lives, which is true for both sides of the ministry. So it’s really not new, but rather a clarification of what everybody’s heartbeat is in this ministry and what it has been over the last 30 years. Chuck’s life is a legacy of transformation. And yes, the discipleship seminars that Chuck began were the earliest program efforts to have prisoners learn biblical truths from volunteers over two weeks so they could return and make an impact in their facility.
