CDM Archive

Discipleship Ministries of the PCA

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The Big Picture Story Bible

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The jacket cover reads, “The Bible is a big book about a big God who keeps a big promise!” The Big Picture Story Bible delivers exactly that message. A great story Bible to read with young children, this Crossway publication gives the story of redemptive history in a way you and your children will love.

The illustrations are amazing – simple, yet filled with symbolism. Scrolls depicting pictures of Christ throughout biblical history illustrate the section entitled, “God’s Promise is explained.” Although this volume paints the big picture, great attention is given to detail in both the telling of the stories and the drawings for each. This story Bible will greatly enhance your family devotion time as you and your children worship our covenant making and keeping God.

A Geerhardus Vos Anthology, Biblical and Theological Insights Alphabetically Arranged

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Here is a resource book that every pastor ought to have in his library. As the title indicates, it contains quotes from the writings of Geerhardus Vos, who has been referred to by some as the “father of Reformed biblical theology.”

Vos taught biblical theology for 39 years at Princeton Seminary. Among some of his better writings are: Redemptive History and Biblical Interpretation (still in print), The Teaching of Jesus Concerning the Kingdom of God and the Church, (available), The Self-Disclosure of Jesus (available), and Eschatology and the Old Testament (available).

I am grateful to Danny Olinger, Executive Secretary of Christian Education in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, for compiling this present volume. Having recently written Making Kingdom Disciples, I can say that Vos, along with Abraham Kuyper, had profound influence on my understanding of the topic. Though I found his section “Kingdom of God, and the Church” a bit difficult to read, it was well worth the effort. Olinger has drawn from Vos’ books, reviews, articles, sermons and poems. He placed topics in alphabetical order making the hundreds of topics easily accessible.

When I think of those who have worked within the Calvinistic tradition, men such as Kuyper, Herman Bavinck, John Murray, Ned Stonehouse, J. Gresham Machen, and Cornelius Van Til, I cannot leave Geerhardus Vos off this list. Once when asked a question regarding the topics in the Westminster Confession of Faith, I said, “If the WCF had been written after Geerhardus Vos’ works, there would definitely be a chapter on the Kingdom of God.”

If there is one thing addressed by Olinger that stands out about Vos, it would be his belief that “liberal Christianity and historic Christianity could not exist side by side,” and a compromise can not be reached between the two. Like the other men mentioned above, Vos was a true defender of the faith and contributed more than any other to the historic, redemptive understanding of the Bible. As Olinger highlights, Vos was unflinching in maintaining that the Christian life could only stand on communion with Christ. Olinger writes, “He sought to point believers to the Scriptures that they might see their life there in the text and in their God, that God might receive the honor and glory, and they might be built up in the faith.”

Need more be said to convince you to buy this book and use it often in study, teaching, and preaching, as well as devotionally?

Partnering With Parents in Youth Ministry

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I was having lunch with a group of youth workers who meet on consistent basis and we were discussing the updated version of The Youth Builder by Jim Burns and Mike DeVries. In this version a chapter was added to the Foundation section of the book. The chapter was called “Family-Based Youth Ministry.” It was very general, short and did not have a lot of depth to it. I didn’t understand why they added such a brief and general chapter until I saw their book Partnering With Parents in Youth Ministry. They simply touched on the subject in The Youth Builder because they devoted a whole book to the topic of partnering with parents in youth ministry.

The purpose of the book is to develop a “mind-set shift that moves into every aspect of our ministry. If we limit family-based youth ministry to putting out a newsletter or have a quarterly parent event, we have missed the essence of what family based is all about— partnering with parents to help them assume their God-given role for spiritual influence in the lives of their children.”

The book is divided into two major sections: The Strategy and The Application of partnering with parents in the whole youth ministry arena.

The Strategy section deals with the biblical philosophy behind looking at parents as teammates, not opponents in youth ministry. As mentioned in the quote above, it does not stress a deep program-centered emphasis but rather a mind-set that is carried into ministry to and with students.

The authors include a helpful chapter on how the family, in general, has developed and changed over time. The chapter helps us to better understand everyone in the family, not just the students.

Burns and DeVries also value the extended Christian family (the church) and see Christians within the church in a complementary fashion instead of a competitor in ministering to youth.

The second section of the book on Application gives great ideas on how to bring about a youth ministry that truly honors Christ and honestly partners with parents to have a strong spiritual impact in the lives of students.

The resources noted at the end of the book can be used as a tremendous springboard into further discussion on family friendly youth ministry and the impact it can have on both students and their families.

Partnering With Parents In Youth Ministry is a book that all youth workers, session members and youth ministry leadership teams should read. This strong, biblically healthy view of helping students and their families come to know Christ and grow in Christ could help churches across the country.

Educators vs. Indoctrinators

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By Joel Belz. Having spent the last fifty years as a student, a teacher, an administrator, and a board member in a variety of schools at all levels, I can tell you that I have yet to meet a professional educator who will stand up and say unambiguously: “We’re here not to educate but to indoctrinate your child.”

Why is it that the one term gets such good press and the other one such a bad rap? Why is it that in most people’s minds education is a high and lofty thing while indoctrination is the work of Puritans and Nazis? Why is it, in contemporary parlance, that liberals are portrayed as the educators while conservatives get consigned to the role of indoctrinators.

Why, as a result, does almost everyone want his or her children educated, while almost no one wants them indoctrinated?

In fact, the definitions of the two words highlight no radical distinctions. “Teaching,” “training,” and “instruction” are part of both education and indoctrination, according to my trusty desk dictionary.

Yet the two are different in modern usage, and only a fool would deny it. Part of the difference has to do with twentieth century distaste for doctrine. For most people today, the word doctrine has a harsh, narrow-minded, and intolerant sound. When evangelical ministers, youth leaders, professors, and other leaders can go around saying, as they regularly do, that they don’t want to get hung up on doctrine, it shouldn’t be surprising that the population at large has a negative view of the word. To call someone “doctrinaire” is rarely a compliment.

Modern people, in fact, have been taught that it’s arrogant to assert very much at all to be true. The becoming posture is not to affirm, but to question. Within education, especially in the context of higher education, we are told the assignment is to examine, explore, and evaluate, rather than to assert, proclaim, or indoctrinate.

There’s just enough truth in those assertions to be believable. (But weren’t we doing away with assertions? Is somebody trying to indoctrinate us about the nature of education?)

You have to be a pretty clumsy and amateurish communicator not to have discovered that a frontal approach is rarely the best means of being persuasive. It is far better to walk tentatively about the subject, probing cautiously here, poking hesitantly there, and joining everyone else in a certain air of detachment before saying what you maybe believe. Even the parent of a teenager knows that such a roundabout approach is typically the best way to make a point.

But let’s all stop pretending that the disjunction is between the truly objective folks on the one hand (the educators) and the sneaky, opinionated people on the other hand (the indoctrinators). In fact what we’re really talking about are effective indoctrinators on one hand and blunderbuss indoctrinators on the other. Some are deft at their work (they’re the really good educators), and some are awkward and transparent in their efforts to win the hearts and minds of their students.

Where is the effective educator who has no mission? Where is the master teacher who hasn’t got a list of goals and aspirations for every student? What does it mean to instill those values and those standards in the thinking process of another human being?

No matter how it’s done, isn’t it indoctrination?

Modern state education, pretending to be valueless, is one of the greatest-and most monolithic-purveyors of a value system in all of human history. As such, while pretending to be open-minded, it is also one of the greatest indoctrinators in all of history. That’s what education does.

But Christians have also often tended to get especially gun-shy on these issues. We’ve become scared to admit that we are indoctrinators. Instead, we should admit it right up front. Then we should explain quite openly how we go about the task of indoctrinating our young people and anyone else who will listen.

We do it by saying crisply, clearly, and winsomely what we believe. And then we say: Now let’s take all that apart. Let’s see whether what we’ve affirmed can withstand the light of day and the arguments of our opponents. Let’s explore whether we’ve left out some criticisms and counter-opinions, which, if we had included them, would have prompted us to make our assertions in a different way.

Do you call such a process “education” or “indoctrination”? I suggest it’s the best of both.

A few days ago, I found myself following a station wagon down the street. It was, of course, a Volvo. The back end was plastered with a predictable array of bumper stickers, including a pro-abortion slogan, a “Support Greenpeace” encouragement, and a call for “Free Needles for All.” The sticker that really got my attention, though, in the middle of the mess, was one that said: “A Mind Is a Terrible Thing To Clutter Up.”

I pity the teacher (or the magazine publisher) who expects his or her assertions and proclamations to be believed just because they’ve been asserted or proclaimed. But I pity even more the critics of indoctrination who don’t seem to have a clue what they themselves are doing.

Making Kingdom Disciples: The Kingdom Framework

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Editor’s note: The following is an abridged interview with Dr. Charles: Dunahoo given by pastor R. J. Umandap over station TBC 88.5 FM in Kingston, Jamaica. Dr. Dunahoo gave the interview during a recent visit to teach his new book, Making Kingdom Disciples: A New Framework.

Listen to the Entire Interview (47 minutes):

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R. J.: The church has been regarded as being “personally engaging but socially irrelevant.” This is the way one philosopher has described Christianity. Unfortunately, it has become all too true in our day. Recognizing this problem, Dr. Charles Dunahoo has written a book entitled Making Kingdom Disciples. He has graciously accepted our invitation to be interviewed today so we are welcoming Dr. Dunahoo to our program.

You say that we have been operating, often unintentionally, with more of a man-centered rather than a God-centered approach to making disciples. Would you explain?

Charles: Thank you for the opportunity to talk about something that is very dear to my heart. Clearly, we are not being effective in making disciples and it’s being demonstrated by the reality that Christians are living like non-Christians. It’s hard to tell them apart in the culture today. I have researched, studied, and interviewed people involved in disciple-making and concluded there are elements not being incorporated in our methodology, especially the concept of the kingdom of God. Many approaches…tend to focus on us and our spiritual development more than on God and His perspective, which of course will affect our spiritual development. The kingdom aspect helps us understand that Christ is the King in all of life. There is no area of life over which Christ has not said “Mine.” I have to be more than a “Sunday Christian.” I have to do more than just read my Bible and pray. I have to learn how to interact with the world as the salt and light because Jesus said His disciples are to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world. Our presence is to be known and felt in the world. Being a kingdom person, “thinking God’s thoughts after Him” as we learn them in the Scriptures and apply them to all of life, I believe is the key missing element. Actually the name of my book, Making Kingdom Disciples: A New Framework is not a new framework; it’s all in the Scriptures. It’s a biblical framework that we have not been using.

R. J.: You talk about living under the reign of Jesus Christ and I guess you need a bit more of a framework for understanding what it means to live under the reign of Christ.

Charles: One of the things often missing in a person’s Christian life is that ability to see the Christian life as a total life system–a total way of life. Christianity not only refers to my relationship to Christ and my church but to my family, my work and my friends, as well as the decisions and choices I make. I have to do that consciously as a kingdom person because Jesus said, “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.” A kingdom disciple is someone who is committed to seeking that righteousness in everything they do.

R. J.: To consider that Jesus Christ is king over all of my life and every aspect of my life seems to imply my way of viewing the world itself must change. Would that be a fair statement?

Charles: Absolutely! Because of our relationship to Christ. If I understand what the Scriptures are saying, it’s a perspective that not only affects my personal relationship to the Lord, but also to the world around me. Jesus, in His Great Commission before He ascended to heaven, said that we are to go into the world and make disciples by teaching them. Christianity has a broader implication than my own personal growth, development, and service in the church. The church is the central part of that kingdom that trains and equips us to live for Christ every day of the week. One of the problems we have in western Christianity is that people don’t know how to incorporate their faith in Christ into their every day life. They bought into the idea that “here is a part of my life that belongs to God and I’ll call that the sacred and here is the rest of my life and I call that the secular.” We don’t see how God is involved in our work and in our family and in our friendships and in everything we do. In reality, it’s not about us but about Him and our whole way of life should reflect this.

R. J.: You’re talking about a world and life view and what you’re saying is that many Christians have…a dualistic world and life view. Can you explain this or talk about it?

Charles: Every human being as the image of God, has a worldview. God has put us together wonderfully and fearfully, as the Psalmist says, to live and act in certain ways. [We] may not know what [our] worldview is, but we all see the world through our worldview. It’s the spectacles through which we see life and affects how we interpret life. What has happened in Western Christianity over the past 200 years is that we have bought into a non-Christian notion that we call dualism, which grew out of the ancient Greek philosophers’ view that there is a part of life that is secular and a part that is sacred…There is a part of life that focuses on the supernatural and a part of life that focuses on the natural. What we have to do as Christians is realize this is not what the Bible teaches. The Bible teaches a unified total life. There is no dualistic secular and sacred.

David says, “How precious are your thoughts to me, oh God; how vast the treasure of them.” He did not say, ‘how precious are my thoughts about you’ One of the things I found that Christians often do that lead [us] in different directions is we spend most our time thinking our thoughts about God from our command center…Without starting with God we will not reach the right conclusions. Therefore, our responsibility as kingdom disciples is to think about God the way He tells us in the Bible how to know and think about Him. For example, we lost a five-and-half month old grandson a few years ago. He died after a heart transplant. The only way I could make any sense out of that was having God as my framework in trying to figure out why my grandson went through that. Five and a half months of his life was spent in the hospital waiting on a heart and then getting a heart and then it not working. That was hard for me to deal with until I stepped back and got God’s perspective on this and it helped us as a family to cope with that crisis.

Continued, page 2.

The Six Habits of Spiritually Happy Men

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By Patrick Morley


I’ve been meeting with men to talk about where they are on their spiritual pilgrimage for over three decades. Many of those men exude a contagious joy and contentment. Their lives are peaceable, orderly, and recommend Christ. They’re downright happy!

Most of these happy men exercise six spiritual habits that keep them “abiding in Christ.” The dictionary says a habit is, “an acquired behavior pattern regularly followed until it has become almost involuntary.”

These six habits are no litmus test that you can use to judge a man’s walk with Christ. That would be extremely dangerous. These habits create no special merit with Christ. They do nothing to improve a man’s record with Jesus. They are, however, indicators or “clues” of a deeper commitment to live by faith and make a difference in the world.

The six habits of spiritually happy men are:

  1. They read the Bible regularly. They love God’s word, and want to regularly read and meditate on the Bible.
  2. They pray with their wives. This symbolizes a depth of relationship with God and his wife.
  3. They tithe. I’ve never known a man who tithed who was not happy.
  4. They are in a small group. They are personally vulnerable and seek to be held accountable by other men. This group might be with a few men, or only one other man. It might meet for Bible study, discussion, fellowship, prayer, or a combination.
  5. They are active in a church. Active involvement is the overflow of a deeper work that Christ is doing in a man’s heart.
  6. They are serving the Lord. They have a passion that their lives will make a difference in the world. They pursue a life of significance. They view everything as serving the Lord.

I certainly don’t mean to imply that these are the only six habits that reveal the depth of a man’s walk with Christ. Nevertheless, those of us who are leaders would do well to practice and encourage our men to practice these six habits. The change of heart that underlies the visible habits can change the course of a man’s life and family lineage for generations to come.

Together in the Battle for Men’s Souls!

Patrick Morley is the founder, chairman and CEO of Man in the Mirror, a ministry dedicated to equipping leaders in the local church to disciple men. He has a led the Man in the Mirror Bible Study outside of Orlando since 1986. You can get more info and view these Bible studies at www.maninthemirror.org/biblestudy/series.htm