Skip to main content

Four Foundations of a Disciplemaking Culture

  by Eric Geiger

As a football season is about to begin, imagine a head coach stands in front of the team he leads and, with great passion, declares, “Here is our strategy. We are going to win! We are about winning! Let’s go win!”

The team breaks from the huddle with no idea how they will win. Practice each day is a bunch of running around, hitting each other, and executing some basic drills. But as the first game approaches, the team has no clue what the game plan is. The team knows they are “in it to win it,” but lacks any direction on how they are to play as a team, what plays will be called, how those plays fit into an overarching team philosophy. What started as inspirational is now very burdensome. While winning may be the goal, the mission of the team, it is not a strategy. A big goal without a strategy will demoralize a team in the long run.

In the same way, church leaders who articulate the mission of making disciples without providing a strategy for accomplishing the mission can lead a ministry into frustration. Ministry leaders must not only preach the church’s mission of making disciples, but also must provide a strategy for how the church fulfills her mission.

Good strategy is simple and this has implications for ministry leaders who seek to make disciples. There are at least four essentials in a simple ministry strategy to make disciples (articulated more extensively in Simple Church):

1. CLARITY

People cannot engage in a strategy they do not understand. Understanding always precedes commitment, so a simple process for making disciples is straightforward and clear. The how must be articulated so people understand how all the church offers fits into the discipleship process.

Lincoln Christian Church has a clear definition of a disciple, based on Matthew 4:19:  A disciple is a person who is: 1) following Jesus, 2) being changed by Jesus, 3) on mission with Jesus.

2. MOVEMENT

Because discipleship brings us closer and closer to Christ, a discipleship strategy must seek to move people more and more into the image of Christ. A simple strategy utilizes the programs the church offers to move people towards greater understanding of Christ and greater commitment to Him. Instead of people being servants to programs, programs must be servants of a church’s discipleship process. In a simple discipleship strategy, programs are strategically placed along the discipleship process and used as tools to encourage people to be more and more like Christ.

Lincoln Christian Church utilizes the graphic of a discipleship wheel to describe how a person moves from being “spiritually dead” to becoming a “spiritual parent.”  Those two items create movement.

3. ALIGNMENT

In a local church with a simple discipleship process, the discipleship process is embedded in every ministry in the church. Instead of a federation of sub-ministries that just happen to share the same facility, an aligned discipleship process moves the whole church in the same direction.

Lincoln Christian Church demonstrates alignment in three core documents: 1) our mission statement, our 2) vision statement, 3) our disciple profile.  The mission statement guides us with our overall focus.  The vision statement articulates a picture of the future at the church-wide level.  The disciple profile demonstrates a picture of the future on the personal-disciple level.

4. FOCUS

Without ruthless focus, ministries will always drift towards complexity and away from their essential core. A simple strategy can help a ministry stay focused on her core. Focus requires saying “no” to that which falls outside the discipleship strategy.

Leaders must remind people of the mission over and over again. But leaders must also ensure there is a strategy designed to accomplish the mission. A simple strategy is best.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Key Discipleship Tool: The Phrase from the Stage

  One of the key ways that we can help people grow in their faith is by understanding where they are on the discipleship process.  By really listening to people, we can learn what is important to them, what their beliefs are, and what their goals are. Then, you can help determine next steps. Listen to how the book  Discipleshift  by Putmam and Harrington describe it. Again, we teach our people to recognize these phrases so that they can know where a person is — not to judge them or condemn them but to help our people better know how to pray and respond, to understand what part Jesus wants to play in their lives right now. Just as a teacher will assess a student to better grasp where he or she needs help, a discipler can use these identifying phrases to assess a disciple (or potential disciple) to better understand where he or she needs help in their journey toward spiritual maturity in Christ (p. 62) For a review of “Phrase from the Stage,” re-read pages 211-215 in t...
Post a Comment
Read more

Key LifeGroup Goals

  A few years ago, I came across information published by Community Christian Church in Naperville, Illinois.  They identified three key tasks of their LifeGroups that I thought made a lot of sense for Lincoln Christian Church as well.  I have taken some of their material and placed some of our material and put together goals for LifeGroups. (You can also see that information in the LifeGroup Leader Handbook). Connect the Unconnected Invite and incorporate new people into the group. Encourage group members to invite and incorporate new people into the group. Follow-up on everyone who expresses interest in your LifeGroup. Model the pursuit of Christ-likeness to your group members. Ensure regular personal contact with LifeGroup members is made. Prepare, plan, and facilitate LifeGroups each week. Be trained in and intentionally utilize the discipleship process to help group members grow spiritually. Be trained in and utilize ChurchTeams to maintain accurate LifeGroup roster ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Role of a Discipleship Leader in Helping People Grow

1. Understand people's spiritual maturity 2. Understand people's next step to greater spiritual maturity. One of the tools that Lincoln Christian Church has adopted to help with these responsibilities is the "Phrase from the Stage."  People will often let you know their level of spiritual maturity by the kinds of questions they ask and the kinds of responses they give. Remember, a person's level of spiritual maturity is not a statement of their value to God (He loves us all!). It is a statement about what a person's next steps need to be.
Post a Comment
Read more