Grace Men’s Leadership Cohort
This cohort for men is aimed at men who are currently on one of our Gospel Community leadership teams. Their Gospel Community will be the context in which the learning will be practiced and lived out.
We want men and women to be grounded in the biblical teaching on who God is, what the gospel is, what it means to be a man or woman who follows Jesus, and what it looks like to live a holy and gospel-centered life, as well as to teach and model the glory of these good things to others. We want our men and women to be trained and equipped to be all that God has called them to be and do, so that they may lead others to follow Jesus as well.
God does amazing things when people gather together to pursue Him in the context of community.
Through this Cohort we hope to:
- Train disciples theologically and practically to disciple others in one-on-one relationships, in their gospel communities, and in other relevant settings.
- Serve as a means for assessing and calling men and women to further leadership training and service in their local Grace Fellowship congregation.
Requirements for Participants
- A faithful and active leader connected in a Gospel Community
- Strong desire to disciple others long-term in Grace Saskatoon
- Demonstrated track record of service, reliability, and love for the people of our church
Commitments
- Attendance/Preparedness at all sessions
- Commitment to participating and learning in community.
- Transparency/Confidentiality in all conversations
- Commitment to complete the entire year training and then to live out this training by intentionally making disciples and loving others as a part of Grace Fellowship.
- Share what you are learning in each session with others.
- Time commitment of 3 sessions per year
The Sessions:
During the cohort sessions time will be devoted to peer discipling, and equipping. The training portions will focus on:
1. Our Doctrinal Emphasis
These are the core foundational convictions that frame who we are and drive all that we do.
You will find our complete doctrinal statement in our constitution. We have designed the constitution with footnotes taking you to specific passages that can become a Bible study aid for those wanting to pour through it.
2. The Heart
God is after our hearts. The Gospel is the means to heart transformation which changes our loves, our motivations, our desires. In our discipling, teaching, preaching, exhortation, and counselling of others we want to reach their heart – leading to repentance and faith. This is where real transformation takes place.
3. Word and Spirit
We want to grow deeper in our conviction that the Spirit works through the words of Scripture as we hear, study, love, believe, mediate on, submit to, and apply them in our lives and the lives of those we are discipling. We want to intentionally embed the Word in all our discipleship conversations and settings; and grow more confident in our ability to approach, understand, teach, and apply a text of Scripture.
4. God-designed masculinity and femininity
We appreciate our Triune God’s wise and good design and intentions were in creating men and women as he did. We are created and redeemed as men or women for the glory of God. We’ll also consider the effects of sin on these good intentions.
5. The Church
We will consider the creation and design and purpose of the church in God’s plan.
6. Gospel Fluency
Gospel Fluency is the skill of applying the gospel in the making of disciples. We’ll do this on two fronts. One is how to call people away not only from outright sin but also from moralism/self-righteousness and toward gospel belief, repentance, and obedience. Two is how to freely and directly address sin in a way that is redemptive.
7. Handling Conflict
We will talk about resolving conflict as it arises in your making of disciples and your leading of gospel communities and within the church. We understand that conflict is normative, and that to be Christians living in community is not to never experience conflict but to energetically work by faith to resolve conflict in a holy, loving, gospel-centered way. Often the root of conflict is our sinful wiring, or as James puts it, “the desires/passions at war within us.” Our desire is to grow familiar with some of the basic heart postures and tools required for resolving conflict as we lead and make disciples.
8. Missional Living
Jesus was known as a friend of sinners. The fact that he came to seek and save grimy, unlovable, lost sinners, and not moral, likable, highly-functional people is central to the good news of the gospel, and so it should be central to our identity and practice. Yet strangely, as John Stott put it, “there has always been a strong tendency for Christians to withdraw into a kind of closed, evangelical, monastic community.” We want to talk about what it looks like to give ourselves to missional living in a sinful, secular, Canadian context where the people we are sent to generally respond to the gospel with either disinterest or disdain.
9. Questioning Christianity
In this session, we want to address some of the big questions that people in our culture struggle with – both within and outside the church. We will consider issues such as:
- Why trust the Bible?
- Suffering and evil
- Only one way
- Sexuality