A Leader's Responsibility in a Discipleship Environment

 

In my last update, I mentioned that discipleship leaders (in any discipleship environment) have two main responsibilities.

Two responsibilities of a discipleship leader are to:

1. Understand people’s spiritual maturity

2. Understand people’s next step to greater spiritual maturity.

Once we identify where people are spiritually, our task is to help them take the next step of spiritual maturity.

Lincoln Christian Church has adapted a discipleship process from Real Life Ministries in Post Falls, Idaho.  This illustration identifies what steps are needed to help people take their next steps.  For example, to help a person in through the Discover phase, we need to: Share our lives with them, Share new basic truths with them, and Share new habits of a Growing Christian (prayer, Bible reading, giving, serving, sharing their personal testimony).  The second page of this tool gives some more specific “Growth Goals” for each phase of spiritual maturity.

This is a powerful tool to help leaders encourage and guide people into greater spiritual maturity. Here is your leadership challenge:  For each person in your group/class/study, can you identify where they are spiritually?  Can you identify a next step for them to take to increase their spiritual maturity?