For the past few weeks, Pelita Graduate groups were reading a Christian book and discussing it together.

Most of the groups was reading The Trellis and The Vine.

I am asking two guys from the group to prepare a summary on what they’ve learned from the book.

Here is mine.

Work in a church can largely be divided into Vine work or Trellis work. Vine work is discipleship work like training, evangelism. Trellis work is structural work like organizing events.

The author observed that churches inevitably shift focus from vine work to trellis work, from growing people to organizing and maintaining activities and program. And hence the challenge of the book is for churches to go back to its root (the Great Commision), that is to make disciples of Jesus Christ.

And then the rest of the book explains on how this can be done.

Vine work happens through prayerful teaching of the word. In Chapter 4, which I think is the best and most relevant chapter for our group, the author argues that disciple making (vine work) is for every Christians not limited to those who are in paid ministry. Vine work can be done in many contexts and situations, the author grouped the contexts into Home, Congregation and Community. Vine work at home can be bible reading and prayer with spouse.

The later chapters I think are addressed more to those who are in some sort of leadership capacitiy at church, as these chapters expand on how training in church should be modelled. Chapter 8 + 9 challenge pastors/leaders to see themselves as trainers (disciple makers) with the multiplying disciples (someone commented that this sounds like a mutli level marketing 🙂 ). Chapter 10 talks about how to spot people at church who might be suitable for full time (paid) ministry. Chapter 11 talks about apprenticeship model (based on Ministry Training Strategy I take it).

What do I think of the book? I think it’s a good book overall, Chapter 4 was a good reminder and a challenge to me personally. I feel that chapters are not transitioning as well as they could. The first few chapters seem to be addressing all Christians while the later chapters seem to be addressing pastors specifically (more on that later) – I missed the transition from first to the later.

Is it a good book to read with the group? Yes, but maybe only the first half of the book. The training chapters (ch 8 onwards) while they are good, but I am afraid, not really that relevant for people in the group, who are not in the capacity of training in the church context. We were scratching our heads for the last few weeks of our discussion meetings on how we can apply these chapters in our lives.

The book did prompt me to think about Indonesian churches. I am under the assumption that Indo churches are big on structures and maybe less in discipleship (I can be wrong). And giving the book to the leaders and pastors of Indo churches would be a good thing.