ORIGINS OF BLUEPRINT

Over a decade ago, a group of people sensed the calling of God to re-engage the ancient ways of discipleship as demonstrated in the life of Jesus.  The context of discipleship began with a small, relational church devoted to the simple, difficult ways of the kingdom of God.  

We basically started at ground zero. 

No assumptions about God.

No allegiances to man-made theological systems. 

No hurry-up-and-get-people-to-go-to-church.

Just the Word of God, the Spirit of God and a Jesus-community centered on God.  

We learned quickly that the Enemy, the world and our own flesh wanted to degrade the integrity of the foundation of it all: the Gospel. 

So we knew this is where training would have to begin.

And this is where our hardest battles would have to be fought.

And so the Narrative was developed. 

The Narrative was a training course designed to allow people to wrestle with every major facet of the Gospel…including who God is. For 12 years, multiple times a year, we’ve invited small groups of people from every walk of life to journey together for 6 weeks and just go for it.

We learned about God (principle).

We told stories about our failures, frustrations, battles and breakthroughs regarding God (picture).

We challenged one another to really try out the claims of the kingdom of God (praxis).

It’s been beautiful in so many ways!

As it turns out, a healthy interaction with God through the Gospel is only the beginning. As people grew in maturity, we continued to develop training in accordance with needs as they were expressed. We remained aware that all further training needed to partner with the Holy Spirit (in community) to ensure that people were leaning into God and not man-made tools.

This gave birth to a concept we affectionately called the “Kingdom Cake,” a way of thinking about what Jesus desires to build upon the foundation of the Gospel.

People who once didn’t understand the Gospel were soon asking from a healthy place to be equipped in utilizing spiritual gifts...and then asking how to lead others to the Gospel...and then asking how to train and commission leaders themselves. Our commitment remained to empower relationships with tools, creativity and kingdom frameworks rather than trying replace relational authority with sermons, podcasts and programs.  

We continue to keep an ear to the ground (the members of the churches) and an ear to heaven (what the Spirit prompts us to do) as we created more and more practical equipping tools for the saints. We utilize Blueprint within a growing network of churches in Greenville, SC committed to the vision of living lives fully devoted to the glory of God. Blueprint remains our best effort to serve this network of churches (and the Church) by contextualizing the commission of Jesus to know God, walk with God and partner with God into the everyday lives of his followers.