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INVERT YOUTH SPECIAL IT IES
Duplicate This!: Showing Your Friends How to Live Like Jesus
Copyright 2008 by Andy Braner
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment
of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access
and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted,
down loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information
storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical,
now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of Zondervan.
AER Edition January 2009 ISBN: 978-0-310-56950-3
Youth Specialties products, 300 S. Pierce St., El Cajon, CA 92020 are published by
Zondervan, 5300 Patterson Ave. SE, Grand Rapids, MI 49530.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Braner, Andy.
Duplicate this! : showing your friends how to live like Jesus / Andy
Braner.
p. cm.
ISBN-10: 0-310-27754-X (pbk.)
ISBN-13: 978-0-310-27754-5 (pbk.)
1. Discipling (Christianity)—Juvenile literature. 2. Evangelistic
work—Juvenile literature. 3. Spiritual formation—Juvenile literature. 4.
Christian teenagers—Religious life—Juvenile literature. I. Title.
BV4520.B635 2008
248'.5—dc22
2007041813
All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible,
®
Today’s New International Version™. TNIV . Copyright 2001, 2005 by International Bible
Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted in any form or by any means — electronic, mechanical, photo-
copy, recording, or any other — except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without
the prior permission of the publisher.
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CONTENTS
ON YOUR MARK...: A SHORT INTRODUCTION TO AN ATYPICAL BOOK ON DISCIPLESHIP ........6
SECTION 1—DUPLICATION FOUNDATIONS
Chapter 1 Imitating Truth .................................................................................... 14
Chapter 2 Cut and Run ........................................................................................33
Chapter 3 Transfer of Information ......................................................................50
SECTION 2—DUPLICATION SPECIFICS
Chapter 4 Why Do You Ask Me That? .................................................................58
Chapter 5 I’ve Got to Tell My Friends .................................................................63
Chapter 6 The Wonder of Multiplication ............................................................70
Chapter 7 What Are the Requirements for Being a Discipler? .........................75
Chapter 8 Who Should I Disciple? ......................................................................82
Chapter 9 How Often Should We Meet? ............................................................86
Chapter 10 Can Guys and Girls Disciple Each Other? ........................................ 91
SECTION 3—DUPLICATION FAQS
Chapter 11 The Bible…True or False? ...................................................................98
Chapter 12 Who’s This “Person” Everyone Prays To?.........................................113
Chapter 13 What about This Jesus Character? .................................................. 128
Chapter 14 Is the Holy Spirit Really a Ghost? .................................................... 142
Chapter 15 If I Sin and Don’t Know It, Does God Hate Me? ............................ 158
Chapter 16 Why Did Jesus Have to Die? ............................................................ 169
Chapter 17 If I Don’t “Feel” God around Me, Has God Left Me? ..................... 177
Chapter 18 Does Prayer Really Work? ................................................................ 185
Chapter 19 Why Do I Need to Read My Bible?
(I Mean, Weren’t There Generations Long Ago
That Didn’t Even Have Bibles to Read?) ................................................ 194
Chapter 20 My Church Is So Boring! Do I Have to Go? ....................................200
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Chapter 21 How Am I Supposed to Love Others Like I Love Myself? ...........208
Chapter 22 Okay, Loving Others Is One Thing…but Loving My Enemies? ... 217
Chapter 23 How Did We Get Here? ..................................................................226
Chapter 24 Why Do They Sing So Many Songs at Church? ............................233
Chapter 25 Do I Really Have to Give All My Money to God? ..........................239
Chapter 26 Baptism: Where Did That Come From? ........................................245
Chapter 27 What Did Jesus Mean When He Commanded Us
to Eat His Body and Drink His Blood? (All about Communion) ..... 249
Chapter 28 What’s the Deal with Left Behind? ................................................256
A Final Word What If I’m Asked a Question, and I Don’t Know the Answer?
(Then You’ve Arrived) .........................................................................265
About the Publisher ...................................................................................................273
Share Your Thoughts .................................................................................................274
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ON YOUR MARK...
A SHORT INTRODUCTION TO AN
ATYPICAL BOOK ON DISCIPLESHIP
Read this fi rst!
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DUPLICATE THIS!
y previous book, Love This!, asked teenagers to re-
think their ways of looking at Jesus by seeing that
M one of the biggest things he stood for was intro-
ducing people to practical ways they could love those
around them. In fact Matthew 22 reiterates the urgency
of Jesus’ calling: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
Now teenagers are doing just that: Redefi ning what
it means to have a neighbor and love a neighbor. There
are literally thousands of students reaching out to the
homeless, helpless, and hopeless of their communities.
A revolution is beginning.
So I thought it important to write about another
one of Jesus’ commands and how teenagers could put
it into practice. Matthew 28:19-20 says, “Go therefore
and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in
the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy
Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have com-
manded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the
end of the age.”
Disciple? What does that mean? Go and make dis-
ciples?
Traditional discipleship typically tends to resemble
a sort of follow-up program. Kind of like a “training”
session for new Christians—all those who’ve decided
to come to the altar and pray to Jesus to come into their
hearts. You see, our church culture tends to place disci-
pleship after another big word in Christian theology—
evangelism. In other words, after a person is evangelized
and becomes a Christian, that person is then discipled
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ON YOUR MARK...
and trained the ways of the faith. Like I said—a sort of
step-by-step method of coming to understand the infl u-
ence of Jesus in a personal way.
But what if we missed it? What if discipleship means
more than “the next step”? It surely doesn’t seem that
way from Jesus’ teaching—that we need to accept him
in our hearts fi rst, then undergo a radical teaching time
to understand more. The understanding more about Jesus
and the coming to Jesus “parts” seemed to happen to-
gether with most folks.
So why should we be any different?
Maybe another way to talk about discipleship is to
use a word like duplicate. That seems to capture the es-
sence of it. After all, isn’t the main goal to go out there
and help other people understand the love and grace
given to you from God? To recreate in others’ lives all
the amazing things that have happened in your life?
To duplicate.
To make like an original.
To recreate oneself.
To share.
To discuss.
To explore.
To understand.
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DUPLICATE THIS!
If I were to boil this book down to a main theme, it
would be to reinterpret Jesus’ command to make disci-
ples from a “Welcome to the club” approach to a “Hey!
Who here wants to know about the greatest message
on earth?” perspective. Duplicate This! attempts to do
just that.
Of course this book works if you’re looking to dupli-
cate what you already know (and live) about your faith
with another Christian—but you’re not limited by that
parameter, either. This book is also about evangelism
coupled with discipleship. You can duplicate your faith
with Muslims, Jewish people, Buddhists—people of any
faith you choose. Or people of no faith at all. The point
is that everyone should have the opportunity to know
about Jesus and the life-giving message he preached and
accept him and follow him. And it’s up to you to take an
active role in this process with those around you.
NOT A DEVOTIONAL, BUT A DISCUSSION
This book started off as a devotional—a book in which
you might fi nd answers to your spiritual questions. But
well into the process I discovered that you don’t need
any more of those kinds of books. Instead what we
need is a big, wide-ranging discussion. A book that be-
comes a place where students of any level of faith (or
no faith at all) can ask each other the hard questions
and explore the challenging answers.
See, you won’t fi nd “A+ B = C” Christianity in Du-
plicate This! Coming to faith and growing in the faith
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