If you’ve not found Margaret Feinberg yet…you might want to pick up Scouting the Divine (comes out in paperback on March 1, 2011).  Having only read The Organic God, I wasn’t sure what I’d find.  I was amazed to find myself 35 pages in before I knew it.  Better, I was enchanted by an captivating retelling of an encounter with a shepherdess and her sheep.  Part of the bargain?  A great collection of new insights into the world of the Great Shepherd.

The subtitle of Scouting the Divine offers a hint: “My Search for God in Wine, Wool, and Wild Honey.”  Can you tell where Feinberg is going?  I found myself pulled into the work by this quote from her introduction:

What does it mean to know Jesus is the Good Shepherd and the Lamb of God when the only places I’ve encountered sheep are petting zoos and Greek restaurants?  How do we learn to wait for the harvest when we live in a culture of easy access?  How can I understand the promise of a land overflowing with milk and honey when the only honey I buy comes in a bear-shaped bottle at my local grocery store?  Can I grasp the urgency of Jesus’ invitation to abide in the vine when I shop for grapes at Costco?

Scouting the Divine is artfully divided into four parts; engaging firsthand encounters with a shepherd, a farmer, a beekeeper, and a vintner.  Much like W. Phillip Keller’s, A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23, Feinberg has given us two things: a devotional experience that will awaken a more personal read of Jesus’ teachings in the Gospels and a resource that will bring a fresh approach for teachers and communicators.

Like The Organic God, I think this will also be a resource for groups looking for a book to read together.  Although it doesn’t come equipped with a fully functional set of discussion questions, skillful leaders will have an easy time guiding their members through the journey by incorporating a journal and companion readings in the Gospels and Psalms.  Scouting the Divine will be a good addition to your recommended list for devotional reading.

Looking for a way to equip disciples who make disciples?  You may want to take a look at the real life discipleship training manual, written by Jim Putman, Avery Willis, Brandon Guindon, and Bill Krause.  New from NavPress, the manual is designed to provide the content for a 12 week experience.  Each week in the manual contains 5 daily assignments (each assignment can be completed in 20 to 30 minutes).

The real life discipleship training manual was developed as a companion to Real Life Discipleship (reviewed here last week).  As I mentioned in my review of Real Life Discipleship, making disciples is serious business at Real Life Ministries in Post Falls, Idaho.  One of the fastest growing churches in America, they’ve seen more than 4,000 conversions as they’ve grown to 8,500 in 9 years.

Describing the training manual, founding pastor Jim Putman notes that “there isn’t much theory here.  Instead, it is the day to day, boots-on-the-ground game plan that we use every day at our church.”  In the introduction of Real Life Discipleship he wrote that “the overriding goal is to train disciples who know how to disciple others.”

The 12 week journey takes you through the same process described in Real Life Discipleship (share, connect, minister and disciple) and works through the issues of how to disciple a person through the stages of spiritual maturity (spiritual infant, spiritual child, spiritual young adult and spiritual parents).  The individual sessions help develop the ability to put these principles into practice.

The final week provides a detailed examination of the storying methodology developed by Avery Willis (known as orality).  This concept is very transferable and is a way to fully engage the members of every group.

The training manual features a Leader’s Guide section in the appendix.  Because the manual is intended to be a group experience, the Leader’s Guide includes instructions on how to begin and commitments to be made.  The weekly meeting of the group will center around a guided discussion of the daily experiences (completed in preparation).

You can clearly see the influence of Avery Willis in the workbook pages.  Willis, the author of MasterLife, passed away earlier this year but not before he had a chance to play a part in the discipleship process at Real Life Ministries and the development of the real life discipleship training manual.

Many churches without the time to develop their own process will find this off-the-shelf resource to be exactly what they’ve been looking for.  If you’re looking for ways to raise the discipleship bar in your church, this is a training manual you’ll want to see.

One of the books you need in your library is The Naked Truth About Small Group Ministry by Randall Neighbour.  You don’t need to agree with everything.  I don’t.  But this is one of those books that you need to read because it will bring balance and perspective to whichever small group philosophy you choose.

In the Naked Truth, Neighbour takes a look at 7 of the key challenges in small group ministry and provides a healthy dose of truth about:

• the American Church
• Lead Pastors
• Small Group Strategies
• Relational Discipleship
• Small Group Leadership
• Intergenerational Small Groups
• Small Group Driven Churches

That healthy dose of truth is the best part about the book and Randall Neighbour’s ministry.  He pulls no punches.  He doesn’t waffle.  He takes a position…and writes from that perspective.  His position, his perspective, is that of the holistic small group* movement (think cell church model).

If you’ve been a reader for very long here, you know that I am an advocate of a lowered bar for leadership and that is definitely not in the toolkit of a holistic small group strategy.  But here’s the thing…you’ll learn a lot from Neighbour and The Naked Truth and that’s important.  Although there is no problem free strategy or philosophy, it is really helpful to understand all of the possibilities and choose the set of problems or challenges you’d rather have.  This book will give you some important perspective about the upside of a holistic small group strategy.  With that perspective you’ll be able to better compare options.

I definitely recommend adding The Naked Truth About Small Group Ministry to your reading list.  The perspective you bring to it will have you nodding your head in agreement or throwing it across the room.  Added to your overall knowledge of the challenges and benefits of small group ministry, the book can only bring a more comprehensive and balanced understanding.

*”A healthy small group is comprised of 3-12 persons who have chosen to live together in biblical community for the purposes of Christ-centered worship, edification, relational evangelism, and discipleship (p. 16, Naked Truth).”