Thanks to the tremendous work of Jesse, Dave, and Ben, Austin City Life now has several equipping and interactive blogs embedded into our website. You can visit our site and click through to this changing content or you can visit specific blogs and bookmark them in your browser.
I’ve had a number of folks contact me for discounts on Fight Clubs: Gospel-Centered Discipleship, so I will periodically post coupons that LuLu sends me.
Luke Gilkersons kicks off a week long interview with me over the book Fight Clubs: Gospel-centered Disicpleship. Today’s episode focuses on the problem with accountability groups.
Doug Wolter interviews me regarding the recent release of Fight Clubs: Gospel-centered Discipleship. He asks some good questions, pulling out thoughts on “gospel-centered”, the Holy Spirit, accountability and starting FCs.
It’s been encouraging to hear how many people have read Fight Clubs: Gospel-centered Discipleship and are beginning to start these small fighting communities. People are emailing and calling every week to share their stories, learn more about starting Fight Clubs, and to say thank you for the book. Thank you all. May these increase to God’s great glory!
More on Fight Clubs
What People are Saying
Jonathan has done us a huge favour in writing this book. The best endorsement I can give it is simply that as I read it, a growing sense of wanting to fight sin grew within me. I want to be a card carrying member of a ‘Fight Club’ so that in community we can take sin seriously, encourage one another to believe the gospel deeply and pray for each other to respond to the Holy Spirit passionately. What else can I say? This is an excellent book. Buy it. Read it. Do it.
Steve Timmis // Co-author of Total Church and Co-Director of the Porterbrook Network
Fight Clubs is a timely book about gospel-centered accountability and age of anonymity and shallow relationships. Dodson has done a masterful job highlighting how the Holy Spirit uses gospel truth to give us new Christ-centered affections that dispel our thirst for sin…For those still playing at religion through surfacey pseudo-accountability, this book is a welcome killjoy. You’ll never look at accountability the same way again.
Luke Gilkerson // Internet Director for Covenant Eyes, Inc.
I just read your book, and I wanted to thank you for it. I am a student at Southwestern Seminary, and for the last 6 months a serious lack of progress in my sanctification has been bothering me. I seem to fall into legalism often, and I have always expected perfection from myself in every aspect of my life. It has really caused me to question my salvation, and its just not a happy place to be in life. Anyway, thanks for writing Fight Clubs…it is a very helpful book in rethinking my concept of what discipleship is about.
Travis, Seminary Student
Where to Get Fight Clubs
In response to the Fight Clubs book, I recently received an inquiry about a particular sentence I wrote in the introduction:
“I can tell people my sins because my identity doesn’t hang on what they think of me.”
I wrote up a response, which Boundless published on their blog. In it I argue that most people approach others from one of two places, above (strong pride) or below (weak pride). Self-doubt sets us off in search of approval and pride sets us up for applause. We need something to free us from our search of approval and applause in order to confess our sin. Here is an excerpt and you can read the rest here.
When our identity is hung up on what people think of us, it becomes difficult to be honest with them. Some of us approach others from below, fearing their rejection or disapproval. In order to keep their approval intact, we refrain from allowing them to see the real, broken us. We may not lie to them (though we probably do), but we certainly don’t confess our sin to them. Why? Because we treasure their approval more than we treasure Christ.
Today is the last day to take advantage of the LuLu Discount to get a $100 off an order of 100 Fight Clubs books or more! Just enter the coupon code “FRANKLIN” to get the discount.
My first book, Fight Clubs: Gospel-centered Discipleship, is now available! Click here for an explanation of the book and the Table of Contents. You can get it in the following formats:
This book was written for the church, for disciples who struggle to follow Jesus well. It’s intended to equip you to fight the fight of faith in the power of the gospel, and to do so as Jesus intended, in community. My hope is that it will strengthen your resolve to fight the good fight of faith well (1 Tim 6:12), and in the strength that God provides (1 Pet 4:11). I hope it helpfully dismantles legalistic and loose patterns of discipleship and frees you to follow Jesus by grace. May it inspire you with the rich gospel motivations God has given us in the Son and the Spirit to follow hard after God!
Over the next three days, The Resurgence will run three excerpts from my forthcoming book Fight Clubs: Gospel-centered Discipleship. I’m excited to announce that on August 1st the booklet will be available in three forms:
Check out the first excerpt here. Keep an eye out for the Fight Club website. Also, check out the unrelated but a similar vision of gospel-centered discipleship among men at the Fight Club conference.
Less than a year ago I preached a sermon on Gospel-centered Fight Clubs vs. Eckhart Tolle’s higher consciousness. As I closed the sermon I dreamed out loud that one day our city would be filled with lots of little fight clubs, gendered groups meeting to help one another beat up the flesh and believe the promises of God. The response was remarkable. People started asking for tools and methods right away. I wrote up a “how to” piece and then published an article on Fight Clubs. They became viral in our community. As a result, people are fighting sin and treasuring Christ more than before.
We vowed that Fight Clubs would remain an organic, viral thing that is relationship based and would not compete with our primary community structure—City Groups. No sign-ups. Now that our church has grown considerably, I preached another message on Gospel-centered Mortification this Sunday from Colossians 3:5-11. Again, the response was remarkable. Even unbelievers are interested.
Our minister of Missional Community will be leading a three week discussion group on Porn Again Christian at a local bar for the next three weeks to help guys fight sexual sin in particular. Our hope is that this will serve as a stepping stone into Fight Clubs. We’ve seen a lot of fruit from this peer-based discipleship. Not only does it fit our generation, it promotes Christ-adorning discipleship, and it can be missional.
