Discipleship
Posted: Mon Jun 02, 2014 4:20 pm
If you were given the job of overseeing the discipleship of over 200 Christians... what would you do?
About a year ago I was given this job description at our church. The first thing I did was go to the Scriptures and take a fresh look at what 'discipleship' really is according to God's word. This ultimately led me to create a list of the 7 MARKS OF A DISCIPLE. I don't claim that the list is infallible, but I do think all of the key components of a disciple fit in there somewhere.
The 7 Marks
1. Disciples get baptized
2. Disciples worship together
3. Disciples pray
4. Disciples learn Jesus' teachings
5. Disciples grow (in the fruit of the Spirit)
6. Disciples serve (using their spiritual gifts)
7. Disciples multiply (they are missional)
The next step was deciding on specific ways to help make these 7 things happen in a local church context. I was not working from scratch since our church has been around a long time. But here's what I've come up with so far
1. Baptism
- We have connection cards that are filled out each Sunday by all attendees (in theory) on which a person may express interest in baptism
- I offer 2-4 baptism classes per year (I developed a simple 1.5 hour class that, I feel, covers the topic very well)
- If anyone takes the class and wants to be baptized, we schedule a baptism service that month
2. Worship
- My goal, here, is to create some mutual accountability. I created Microsoft Excel roster that lists all the known disciples in the congregation
- We track attendance. If someone misses 3 weeks, we call to see what's up.
- We encourage voluntary participation in official membership within the Wesleyan Church (gives us increased authority to shepherd them)
3. Prayer
- We already had a prayer chain, a weekly prayer meeting, an intercessory group that meets weekly, a published prayer request list, and prayer at all of our church gatherings
- I am trying to develop a prayer team specifically assigned to pray for the morning services for 15 minutes prior to the service
4. Learn
- We already had Sunday School, Jr. Church, & AWANA
- We've increased the # of adult SS classes, re-organized the curriculum for Jr. Church, and continued a thriving AWANA program
- I still would like to streamline the curriculum a bit more as there are various ministries 'doing their own thing' here that might create a lot of overlap and/or leave some gaps.
- We've encouraged people with teaching gifts and passion to lead short term Christian Education seminars on various topics or Christian books that have been influential in their lives.
5. Grow
- Perhaps shockingly, there was really nothing structured to gauge growth
- I determined that small group meetings had strong potential for helping individual believers grow together
- We had 3-4 existing small groups
- We have been able to increase that number to 6 so far
- My aim is to have enough small groups so that everyone in the congregation could participate with a ratio of 1 group per 10 attendees
- I determined that to really get a feel for how people are doing, I'd have to meet with each disciple 1 on 1 at least once a year for a sit down meeting in which we will specifically discuss how they are doing in their life with Christ
6. Serve
- We have a great group of lay volunteers doing the ministry of the church
- I developed a spiritual gifts assessment survey specifically designed for our local church context
- On the 'roster' mentioned above, I keep track of who is involved in what and who is not involved in service at all (That i know of)
7. Multiply
- I consider that if we do the first six well, this will happen almost naturally
- That being said, I aim to develop some specific training courses on evangelism and some specific outreaches
- I've encouraged each small group to do at least 1 outreach event per year
- Our church missions program also fits under this category
- I feel like this section has the most refinement to come b/c I felt it was most important to make sure we are producing actual disciples before we aim to bring tons more people into the fold, haha
I am posting this b/c I genuinely am interested in the input of this forum as to whether there are major blind spots here.
About a year ago I was given this job description at our church. The first thing I did was go to the Scriptures and take a fresh look at what 'discipleship' really is according to God's word. This ultimately led me to create a list of the 7 MARKS OF A DISCIPLE. I don't claim that the list is infallible, but I do think all of the key components of a disciple fit in there somewhere.
The 7 Marks
1. Disciples get baptized
2. Disciples worship together
3. Disciples pray
4. Disciples learn Jesus' teachings
5. Disciples grow (in the fruit of the Spirit)
6. Disciples serve (using their spiritual gifts)
7. Disciples multiply (they are missional)
The next step was deciding on specific ways to help make these 7 things happen in a local church context. I was not working from scratch since our church has been around a long time. But here's what I've come up with so far
1. Baptism
- We have connection cards that are filled out each Sunday by all attendees (in theory) on which a person may express interest in baptism
- I offer 2-4 baptism classes per year (I developed a simple 1.5 hour class that, I feel, covers the topic very well)
- If anyone takes the class and wants to be baptized, we schedule a baptism service that month
2. Worship
- My goal, here, is to create some mutual accountability. I created Microsoft Excel roster that lists all the known disciples in the congregation
- We track attendance. If someone misses 3 weeks, we call to see what's up.
- We encourage voluntary participation in official membership within the Wesleyan Church (gives us increased authority to shepherd them)
3. Prayer
- We already had a prayer chain, a weekly prayer meeting, an intercessory group that meets weekly, a published prayer request list, and prayer at all of our church gatherings
- I am trying to develop a prayer team specifically assigned to pray for the morning services for 15 minutes prior to the service
4. Learn
- We already had Sunday School, Jr. Church, & AWANA
- We've increased the # of adult SS classes, re-organized the curriculum for Jr. Church, and continued a thriving AWANA program
- I still would like to streamline the curriculum a bit more as there are various ministries 'doing their own thing' here that might create a lot of overlap and/or leave some gaps.
- We've encouraged people with teaching gifts and passion to lead short term Christian Education seminars on various topics or Christian books that have been influential in their lives.
5. Grow
- Perhaps shockingly, there was really nothing structured to gauge growth
- I determined that small group meetings had strong potential for helping individual believers grow together
- We had 3-4 existing small groups
- We have been able to increase that number to 6 so far
- My aim is to have enough small groups so that everyone in the congregation could participate with a ratio of 1 group per 10 attendees
- I determined that to really get a feel for how people are doing, I'd have to meet with each disciple 1 on 1 at least once a year for a sit down meeting in which we will specifically discuss how they are doing in their life with Christ
6. Serve
- We have a great group of lay volunteers doing the ministry of the church
- I developed a spiritual gifts assessment survey specifically designed for our local church context
- On the 'roster' mentioned above, I keep track of who is involved in what and who is not involved in service at all (That i know of)
7. Multiply
- I consider that if we do the first six well, this will happen almost naturally
- That being said, I aim to develop some specific training courses on evangelism and some specific outreaches
- I've encouraged each small group to do at least 1 outreach event per year
- Our church missions program also fits under this category
- I feel like this section has the most refinement to come b/c I felt it was most important to make sure we are producing actual disciples before we aim to bring tons more people into the fold, haha
I am posting this b/c I genuinely am interested in the input of this forum as to whether there are major blind spots here.