"Imitate Me, As I Also Imitate Christ"

Jesus came to seek and save that which was lost (Luke 19:10). Everything He did was part of a discipling process that led to life in Him. He preached to masses, equipped 72, trained up 12, took aside 3, and still spent time alone with the Father. Everything we do in Cleveland should be intentionally done in that same vein. We are on God’s mission for this city, and it is encouraging (and easier to process CityView's building-less essence) when we see how all the ministry spokes coalesce into Jesus-following discipleship.

The big push coming out of this must be more prayer for more mentors. There are plenty of people that need that 2-on-2 level of discipleship. (Being in like in two units myself, I can speak to the meaningfulness of this for the mentor and the mentored.)  Having heard that the harvest is plenty and the laborers are few, we must pray earnestly for laborers (Luke 10:2). However, training willing people to be effective mentors is just not something that churches actually do. (Maybe it’s so close-at-hand that people might feel uncomfortably compelled to act on it.) Processing the idea of 2-on-2 discipleship in our ministry setting, this is what it ideally looks like:

We want to do life with teens. Like spiritual big brothers and sisters, we want to look out for them with a sort of a piritual oversight so that no one falls through the cracks. In the 2-on-2, we can be drinking coffee at Gypsy or shopping at Aldi, but the relationship is Jesus first; it’s totally based in our mutual dependence on and submission to Jesus. We both ask and answer the hard questions, study and memorize Scripture, and last but not least, have the position in a someone's life that can sustain incoming and outgoing open-fire criticism.

1 Corinthians 11:1

“Imitate me, as I also imitate Christ.”