Helping people become disciples of Jesus is what God has created the church to do. As we think about how to accomplish this, Jesus is our best model to follow. We’ve often said that discipleship is best accomplished face-to-face and life-on-life. Yet, in our current culture we have so many helpful digital tools for spiritual growth.
Here are a few of the ways Vineyard pastors are putting these tools to use:
Digital Tools for Spiritual Growth: Flipped Sanctuary
Sharon McCarter, Maryville Vineyard Church
“Flipped Sanctuary” is a great interactive church experience. You ask your community to listen to the podcast of your sermon before coming to a gathering. They prepare by asking God to highlight things or even questions that they might have. If they had questions, we asked that they would text their questions before the service began.
Once we gathered, we would worship and then we give a quick re-cap of the sermon. After the recap, we answered the text questions and gave space for people to come forward and share something the Lord has put on their hearts or a testimony of something that God had done that past week.
It was incredible to hear all of the God-stories and those things really served to build-up the faith of everyone who was there. People came more prepared, more expectant, and had more time to just be in God’s presence and “do the stuff”. We saw many healings in these services which we was an incredible blessing!
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The Flipped Classroom model was refreshing and faith-building and for that we are grateful for it. For us, it was a very fruitful season. It created fruit that will bear fruit that will bear fruit that will last. It was a great training ground for many of our leaders who are now taking what they learned and are using those tools in their small groups and during our Sunday services again.
