Please note the following for
the Catechized Bible Study (CBS) light of the Gospel of Mark:
The CBS light of
the Gospel of Mark is to be facilitated using the document Guidelines for the
Facilitator of the CBS .
Please DO NOT use
the document Guidelines for the Facilitator of the CDMCPM Session for
facilitating the CBS light of the Gospel of Mark.
Each chapter of
this 1-hour version of the CBS carries not more than 35 questions to ensure
that it can be completed within 1 hour.
The CBS light of
the Gospel of Mark is for the purpose of discovering who Jesus is as depicted
in the gospel of Mark. This 1-hour
version is used for helping uncommitted disciples become committed in a CBS
group.
Looking for
answers from the bible for real-life problems is part of discipleship
training. Participation in the CBS would
instill that discipline in the uncommitted disciples right from the beginning
of the discipleship process.
Most of the
questions of the CBS have been phrased in such a way as to carry half of the
answer to make it possible for uncommitted disciples who have never read the
bible until they join the CBS group to provide the complete answer so that they
would utter and hear the truth of the bible from their own lips.
Many questions
carry a verse reference to facilitate the formulation of answers in order to save time and to minimize the frustration of
uncommitted disciples who are new to the text not knowing where to look for the
answers.
The CBS light of
the Gospel of Mark is to be used in conjunction with the CBS of Cost of
Discipleship and the CBS of Repent, Believe the Good News and Be Baptized
from the short-term discipleship series for church formation for the purpose of
evangelism. There are two options for
using the 1-hour version of the CBS light of the Gospel of Mark for evangelism.
Option #1 is to finish the study in 13
weeks while option #2 is to finish it in 17 weeks.
For option #1 the
13 CBS light sessions are to be facilitated as follows:
1) CBS light of Mark chapter 1.
2) CBS light of Mark chapter 2.
3) CBS light of Mark chapter 3.
4) CBS light of Mark chapter 4.
5) CBS light of Mark chapter 5.
6) CBS light of Mark chapter 6.
7) CBS light of Mark chapter 7.
8) CBS light of Mark chapter 8.
9) CBS light of Mark chapter 9.
10)
CBS light of Mark
chapter 10.
11)
Please read out
loud the texts for Mark chapters 11 through 16 without discussion for the 11th
session.
12)
CBS of Cost of
Discipleship .
13)
CBS of Repent,
Believe the Good News and Be Baptized .
For option #2 the
17 CBS light sessions are to be facilitated as follows:
1) CBS light of Mark chapter 1.
2) CBS light of Mark chapter 2.
3) CBS light of Mark chapter 3.
4) CBS light of Mark chapter 4.
5) CBS light of Mark chapter 5.
6) CBS light of Mark chapter 6.
7) CBS light of Mark chapter 7.
8) CBS light of Mark chapter 8.
9) CBS light of Mark chapter 9.
10)
CBS light of Mark
chapter 10.
11)
CBS light of Mark
chapter 11.
12)
CBS light of Mark
chapter 12.
13)
CBS light of Mark
chapter 13.
14)
CBS light of Mark
chapter 14.
15)
CBS light of Mark
chapter 15.
16)
Please do the following
for the 16th session:
CBS light of Mark
chapter 16.
CBS of Cost of
Discipleship .
17)
CBS of Repent,
Believe the Good News and Be Baptized .
Upon completion
of the CBS of Repent, Believe the Good News and Be Baptized , uncommitted
disciples should be asked if they are willing to repent, believe the good news
and be baptized.
Uncommitted
disciples who answer in the affirmative should be baptized at once.
The evangelism collection
gives uncommitted disciples who participate in
the CBS the opportunity to deliberate on whether they are willing to bear the
cost of discipleship for a lifetime before they are called on to repent,
believe the good news and be baptized.
Another reason for using the evangelism
collection is that at one point Jesus intentionally caused many of his
disciples to turn back so
that they no longer followed him.
Please take a look at the following passage of
the bible.
John 6:48-71
48 I am the bread of life.
49 Your ancestors ate the
manna in the wilderness, yet they died.
50 But here is the bread that
comes down from heaven, which anyone may eat and not die.
51 I am the living bread that
came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is
my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.
52 Then the Jews began to
argue sharply among themselves, How can this man give us his flesh to eat?
53 Jesus said to them, Very
truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his
blood, you have no life in you.
54 Whoever eats my flesh and
drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day.
55 For my flesh is real food
and my blood is real drink.
56 Whoever eats my flesh and
drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them.
57 Just as the living Father
sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one
who feeds on me will live because of me.
58 This is the bread that
came down from heaven. Your ancestors ate manna and died, but whoever feeds on
this bread will live forever.
59 He said this while
teaching in the synagogue in
60 On hearing it, many of his
disciples said, This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?
61 Aware that his disciples
were grumbling about this, Jesus said to them, Does this offend you?
62 Then what if you see the
Son of Man ascend to where he was before!
63 The Spirit gives life; the
flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you they are full of the
Spirit and life.
64 Yet there are some of you
who do not believe. For Jesus had known from the beginning which of them did
not believe and who would betray him.
65 He went on to say, This
is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled
them.
66 From this time many of his
disciples turned back and no longer followed him.
67 You do not want to leave
too, do you? Jesus asked the Twelve.
68 Simon Peter answered him,
Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.
69 We have come to believe
and to know that you are the Holy One of God.
70 Then Jesus replied, Have
I not chosen you, the Twelve? Yet one of you is a devil!
71 (He meant Judas, the son
of Simon Iscariot, who, though one of the Twelve, was later to betray him.)
Jesus sifted his disciples in order to make sure that those who followed him did so
with strong conviction. The outcome is
that the early church would be built on a strong foundation. Regardless of the sifting, Jesus did not have
a perfect success rate with the twelve apostles though it reached eleven out of
twelve with Judas falling away at a later time. Without the sifting Jesus would have wasted
much of his time and effort on those who would not be able to hold up under the
demands placed upon them by discipleship when testing came.
CDMCPM adopts the above
discipleship strategy in order to make sure that the
churches reproduced will be on a strong foundation. Efficiency in the handling of resources for
making disciples will go a long way in maximizing the outcome of disciple
making and church planting.