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Click for IDT 2012 Registration form in PDF
How to Register: Please download the registration form and pass it to the Information Booth at your Worship Centre (BPJ or WDL) on Sunday with payment. You can also email us at idtadmin(at)cefc.org.sg for any enquiries.
Intentional Discipleship Training (IDT) is for every believer who wants to grow to be an authentic disciple of Christ. It aims at transforming our inner lives and shaping our core values to help us grow in biblical discipleship and in the spiritual disciplines on a daily basis. As Bill Hull says, “We don’t try to be disciples, we train to be disciples.”
Since Jan 2007, we have completed 5 cycles of the two-year IDT programme. We have learnt from our experience and seek to bring IDT to a new level of engagement and effectiveness.
From Jan 2011, we will launch IDT Reloaded! This upgraded training programme provides an additional year of discipleship training for newer believers (IDT Level 1), plus an improved training curriculum for the subsequent two years (IDT Levels 2 & 3).
IDT Level 1 training sessions will be held on Sunday afternoons, whereas IDT Levels 2 & 3 training sessions will now be on Monday nights (formerly Friday nights, which conflicted with our typical CG meeting). Each training session consists of plenary teaching, followed by small group discussion and accountability -- in gender-based Discipleship Groups. Throughout IDT, we train to develop the daily spiritual disciplines of Bible reading, journaling and Scripture memory, and a lifestyle of relational evangelism.
The two or three years spent in IDT are a lifetime investment that pays great spiritual dividends for you personally. Moreover, you can use what you have learnt to mentor others!
IDT is a two- or three-year focused training programme, during which all participants seek to complete the training to the best of their abilities. Real effort is required. What they put into the training determines what they get out of it. We know that no training programme can cover nor accomplish everything. As such, we have chosen the following emphases for each year:
- IDT Level 1: Foundations of discipleship, covering the basic practices of a disciple’s lifestyle
- IDT Level 2: Lifelong Bible study skills, and Bible literacy from a walk through the whole Bible
- IDT Level 3: Discipleship core curriculum, personal leadership, and transformational mentoring
There are three distinctive features of IDT. They follow the acronym I-D-T:
1. Inner life emphasis
IDT is spiritual growth-directed training. It seeks to daily nurture and train the disciple’s inner life for growth and ministry, so that we can be disciples of “a certain kind”. The focus is on Scriptures applied to daily life. Truth does not change lives. It is truth applied that changes lives!
2. Discipleship core curriculum
A key component of IDT is the eight core-curriculum articulated by Pastor Edmund Chan in his book, Built To Last: Towards A Disciplemaking Church. This is essentially the product of his biblical reflection on discipleship over the years, stemming from years of investment in strategic mentoring. The curriculum is designed to be purposeful, practical and powerful for life-change, both for trainees personally, as well as for those to whom they subsequently teach the curriculum. Mentoring is about passing it on!
3. Transformational personal disciplines
Discipleship training is demanding as this is designed to raise our spiritual vitality and train us to be disciples of Christ. We do not train alone. We do it together in Discipleship Groups (each of 6-8 people based on gender and grouped as much as possible according to their life stage). We encourage one another and keep each other accountable to practise their daily personal disciplines. IDT is not just a weekly meeting. Discipleship involves a daily walk and active service. God, through our daily personal disciplines of Bible reading, journalling, Scripture memory and prayer, will transform our lives to become spiritually vital and fruitful, to His glory.
What does this all mean?
IDT does not guarantee personal growth. There must be a passion and a fire within each one undergoing discipleship training. The trainers can give the help but not the hunger for God.
Coming into IDT means that your priorities will be drastically overhauled and there will be personal cost involved. However, the benefits of a guided growth journey of authenticity and intentionality will leave an indelible mark in your personal walk of faith and obedience. It involves taking personal leadership of our lives to live as God intends, so that we will be transformed and leave a legacy of “a certain kind” –- the transformed lives of people whom God entrusts to us to disciple in His name.
To Apply
Download the application form HERE, scan it and send it to idtadmin(at)cefc.org.sg. You can also choose to print and pass it to the Information Counter at BPJ Centre or WDL Centre.
