Thursday is for Discipleship
This exchange took place on a Facebook private message last year. A church planter asks about discipleship material.
Hi Marty!
Real quick, what material do you use/have used for discipleship in your church?
We (the elders at the church I pastor) really want to make a concentrated effort toward leading our people in making disciples. Any suggestions would be very appreciated.
All the best,
XXXXX
—————–
Hey XXXXX,
- Decide what you think are the basic issues/topics that a disciple needs to know to grow.
- Pick anyone of a two or three dozen approaches off the shelf that approximates your perspective (or write your own material). Teach around its deficiencies, i.e. supplement, change, adapt, etc..
- Make sure the material includes evangelism–actually doing it.
- Hold everyone accountable to pass it on to someone else within two months of finishing the material themselves.
If you do these four things, the material you use is immaterial.
The actual material we used was from Multiplication Ministries, the publishing arm of Church Dynamics. It was simply called One-to-One Discipleship. It had nine lessons but needed an introductory lesson, a major revision of one lesson, a minor revision of another, and one lesson was impossible to do in one week. Our women generally completed it in 11-13 weeks and our men completed it in 13-16 weeks with some of both groups taking a bit longer.
It drove our evangelism. Nine years in when did a survey of our men and found that 24.8 % of them had led someone to faith in the previous three years. Over those nine years, I personally worked with about 18-25 guys, my wife worked with an equal number (maybe more) women. Over that span well over 600 men and women where trained and equipped to share their faith, study the Bible inductively, pray, depend on the Holy Spirit, … to live passionately for and like Jesus.
If you have more questions. Just give me a call. Best days are Monday or Tuesday’s.
Serving the King with you,
marty
This is great! Thank you very much Marty. I might give you a call early next week to talk about this more. I really appreciate you taking the time to help.
God bless!
XXXXX
ChosenRebel's Blog 