Course 4: Discipleship and Spiritual Growth

Course 4: Discipleship and Spiritual Growth designed to equip participants with biblical insights and practical tools for fostering spiritual growth at personal and congregational levels. It covers the principles of effective discipleship, its importance in ministry, and strategies for implementation.

Cultivating Faith: A Comprehensive Guide to Discipleship and Spiritual Growth is not a book about church attendance. It is a book about becoming, about the slow, purposeful, grace-driven process by which ordinary believers are shaped into mature disciples of Jesus Christ who are capable of shaping others in turn. Drawing on decades of pastoral experience, leadership development work, and a life story marked by remarkable personal resilience, Townsend presents discipleship not as a curriculum to be completed but as a way of life to be inhabited.

Cultivating Faith Starts In The Dirt - Course Overview, a title that ties directly to the book's central agricultural metaphor of cultivation while echoing Townsend's personal faith in God's faithfulness through hard seasons.

Seven Sections, Each Anchored in the Book:

1. "The Foundation Has Not Changed" — Returns to the Great Commission (Matthew 28:19–20) from Chapter 1 and 2 Timothy 2:2 from Chapter 2, reaffirming the unchanging mandate beneath all twelve chapters
2. "The Non-Negotiables" — Gathers the book's four pillars: Scripture immersion, prayer, community, and holistic formation, including the "door frame vs. scale" assessment language from Chapter 12
3. "Every Believer Is Called" — Pushes back against the professionalization of discipleship using the T.I.T.E. framework (Chapter 11) and the book's emphasis on relational multiplication
4. "The Power of Endurance" — Weaves in James 1:2–4 from Chapter 1's biblical basis and the discipleship stages model from Chapter 2
5. "The Ground Is Not Finished" — Draws forward the cross-cultural (Chapter 7), technology (Chapter 6), family (Chapter 9), and youth (Chapter 6) threads into a unified forward-looking charge
6. "A Personal Word" — Written in Townsend's direct, pastoral voice from Passionate Pursuits, expressing the farmer's confidence and naming the theological conviction beneath the entire book
7. "The Final Commission" — Closes with the T.I.T.E. empowerment principle and returns to Matthew 28:20's promise, landing on Galatians 6:9 as the benedictory scripture

Instructions: Select the single best answer for each question. Circle or write the letter of your choice in the space provided to the left of each question number. All questions are drawn from Chapters 1 through 12 of Cultivating Faith. The Introduction and Conclusion are not assessed. Each question carries equal weight.

Point Value: 4 points per question  |  Total: 100 points  |  Passing Score: 80