Free online self-assessment tool to launch discipleship!

TOUCH Outreach is proud to let you know we've created a mobile friendly version of our best-selling self-assessment tool, The Journey Guide for New Christians by Ralph Neighbour.

Please share this link with every pastor you know!

http://www.touchusa.org/thejourney

It has been said that if you don't know where you are, you can't go anywhere. That seems to be the case with discipleship as well. To that end, we've invested some ministry money and time to put this incredibly revealing and insightful tool online for anyone and everyone to use. Benefits include:

• Helps the new believer see the need for discipleship and gives them some personal responsibility to become a self-feeder and move from infant to a child of Christ.
• Gives the group leader a better understanding of how to minister to the new believer in his or her group.
• Gives the mentor key insights into how the person they're discipling learns, what they're struggling with, and their current level of basic Bible knowledge.

So my question for you is this: why are you still reading this instead of taking the assessment yourself to see how helpful it will be in your ministry? :)

God bless, and get busy discipling!

Randall

Creating a culture of discipleship in your groups

Yesterday, I was privileged to speak to a number of pastors in Saddleback's small group network concerning the ongoing need to develop more leaders for groups.

Most of the pastors listening in, if I'm not mistaken, launch groups through a group connect strategy or do campaigns a couple of times a year... while I don't hate these programmatic methods by any means, I highly prefer organic growth. My guess is that all the pastors forced to programmatically launch new groups feel the same way, but don't know how to get the ball rolling. So that was the basis for the conversation, recorded below.

http://www.freeconference.com/Recordings/ConferenceRecording-10543361-472579.mp3

If you click the link above, it should start streaming right away. There's a bunch of beeps at the beginning, signifying people coming onto the conference call.

If you want to listen to this later or on your iPod, right click on the link and choose "save link as" and download it.

Enjoy, and please share this link with other pastors you know who need some help to seed an organic discipleship movement within their groups and church.

Randall

Pursuing organic growth

Seems like mainstream pastors today are motivated to solely use groups to support the attractional "big top" weekend event. This is more than just putting the horse in front of the cart. It's a high maintenance mentality that requires more campaigns and group connect events to keep the hamster wheel turning. Man, I'm just full of metaphors today!

I keep coming back to the fact that so few American churches have adopted a genuine definition for a disciple and then changed the way they do church to help small group members become maturing disciples of Christ. Showing up for weekend services, going to a small group, paying tithes, and volunteering when the need arises is good enough.

Well, it's not good enough to God or small group members. Both want more. A LOT more.

Now doing something about this when you're leading a growing attractional model church is tough, similar to changing the suspension on your car as you drive down the road... but it can be done with a concerted effort on the part of the church leadership if they're willing to do it over the course of a few years' time. Here's a few suggestions to do it successfully:

1. Define what being a "fully devoted follower of Christ" will look like with when that person has reached maturity.

2. Create a pathway for new believers to use to help them move from wherever they are values-wise to this point.

3. Implement the pathway for those who come to Christ as a result of a small group reaching the person for Christ, not someone walking an isle who has no relational ties to the membership yet. This gives the process a fighting chance because whomever was principally responsible for the person coming to Christ will be more than willing to disciple them through the pathway, even if they have not gone through it themselves.

As believers complete the pathway, which should include reaching friends for Christ, they will be qualified to lead a group and get this—they'll be ANXIOUS to lead well before they're asked to lead or even ready to lead. Plus, many of the previously unactivated small group members will follow their lead.

Not sure why more churches aren't doing this. It's probably more work than they're willing to do today, but compared to the time and money required to launch campaign after campaign and then attempt to connect people who don't know anyone at the church, this is a no brainer.

And last but not least, it makes God really happy because a church like this isn't attracting or producing consumers.

Paradigm-shifting answers to common group questions

This blog entry doesn't need to be long to get an important point. If you ask the right questions, you get the right answers.

For example, don't ask, "How can we launch new groups this fall?" That's the wrong question if you've not already asked yourself and satisfactorily answered this one:

"How can we launch a culture of discipleship that will require a supportive small group structure?"

What are your "right" questions?

2011 vs. 1970, 1980, and 1990. Book reading is dying a slow, painful death

Ya know, people have changed in the last forty years. In 1970, people learned by reading books and they read a lot of books too. Then in the late 70s cable TV was introduced. I remember watching HBO with my dad the first day we had it installed in 1977. It was a Saturday and we watched three movies in a row that first day. My mom came in after the second movie started and said, "This is not good." During the third movie she put a load of clothes in front of me and said, "at least fold these while you stare at the TV for another two hours." Two couch potatoes were born that day, by the way.

The Internet moved into the public space when AOL offered a cheap dial-up service in 1983 that gave people access to other people via chat rooms (early social networking as it's called now), news, information, weather, and so forth. What a can of worms that opened, huh?

Text messaging via cell phones has been around since the late 90s, but really took off in 2002. That's another can of worms entirely.

Today, people don't read books, or more accurately, don't fully read books, regardless of length. On great occasion, someone will call our ministry offices and say, "I just finished reading _________ and I have a few questions about it..." I'm always surprised, so I ask them to clarify the statement with, "Did you read the whole thing from cover to cover? If so, that's really cool!"

Lord knows I don't read books from cover to cover any longer unless I'm planning to publish the book through TOUCH. Then I read it three or four times to edit the text and give the author feedback. But other than this work-related reading and editing I must do, I don't enjoy reading. Even fiction.

Now I share all this to illustrate something really, really important. If you want to train small group leaders or disciple members, you had better not hand them a book, even a wonderful TOUCH publication and say, "read this and let's talk about the content next week." Why? It just won't happen.

You're probably going to have to buy the person a cup of overpriced coffee in a shop somewhere, ask them to turn off or put away their smart phone so they aren't inclined to tweet or text someone or post something to their facebook page, and ask them to converse with you eye to eye about the topics found in a book you're reading. And I'm not talking about teenagers here. I'm referring to people just like me, a 49 year old man!

Are books dead? Not quite. What has slowly died is our willingness to remain unplugged from computers and TVs for more than a few minutes at a time to read a printed book, which actually takes hours of time. Woah. HOURS of solitude reading a book? Are you nuts?

As a writer and publisher, I'm researching how to deliver training for group leaders and discipleship for group members in new, exciting ways for people who just refuse to sit down, unplug, and read a book to learn something.

Relational Evangelism, Rebooting for 2011

[I wrote a blog entry a few years ago for 2009 with a similar title, so I thought I'd recycle it since it's still a great concern for me and most every pastor I visit with in my consulting practice.]

Would you like your group members to be reaching friends for Christ through relational evangelism and discipling them as a part of group life between meetings?

Then prototype something this next year that you "roll out" in 2012...

Decide right now that you will not promote or appoint a group member to a place of leadership in 2012 if he or she has not personally led someone to Christ and spiritually mentored the person.

This is not rocket science. Groups that reach people for Christ are led by a godly man or woman who leads people to Christ and is passionate about personal evangelism.

I know what you're thinking. Sheesh! I will have ZERO new leaders if I made this a requirement!

So true. That's why you need to figure out how to develop those kinds of leaders in 2011 with the goal of making it one of your most basic requirements for group leadership in 2012.

If you accept this challenge, I believe it will change everything for you as a pastor of a smaller church or the small groups/cell groups pastor of a larger church. It will force you to do two things right away:

1. You will overhaul your member discipleship process (not just your leader training content) to include practical, experience-based training for evangelism.

2. You will quickly see that your role will change drastically when you are overtly spending time with next year's leaders and praying with them for their lost friends, meeting those lost friends whenever possible, and thinking evangelism first and foremost to see some movement in this area of group life.

What grade would you give yourself in this kind of leadership development for 2010? How can you raise it a grade level or two in 2011 so that 2012 and beyond can be the most powerful years of ministry you've ever experienced?
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Deep Friendship: Far too rare in the West

Most every day I visit with pastors whose members are too busy for friendships. In their world, it's all about the kids and managing a household and working a high-stress job to maintain a certain lifestyle without financial margin. It's quite evident that they think enjoying the company of others without an agenda is what the irresponsible or filthy rich do with their time.

This is jacked up. There's absolutely nothing right with the lifestyle or the mentality in which we Americans find ourselves. Plus, there's very little difference in values between those in the American church and those outside it.

Now think about your small group and how much more personally transformational it would be for the members if they valued friendship enough to actually invest in others and allow others to invest in them without an outlined agenda for their scheduled gatherings.

The western drive to attain that next level of status and personal comfort has systematically annihilated friendships, or that which God has set out to be the way the world will be reached for Christ.

At the risk of telling the cow how to eat the cabbage, I must state the obvious just in case it's not so obvious...

Small group relational evangelism will not occur if the members have no idea how to become a friend to someone (churched or unchurched), ask them for help in areas of life, help them out whenever possible, introduce them to their other friends who are far more than acquaintances, and do life together.

In fact, discipleship among believers won't happen either if deep friendships are not formed between small group members.

And I guess it goes without saying (but I will anyway) that new leaders for new groups will not be raised up if potential leaders have no relationship with their group's coach or pastor.

If you're wondering what to preach about next quarter so your members can discuss and apply it in their groups, why not go back to basics and challenge them to hold others in higher regard than themselves?

Spiritual Formation: A way of life for ALL small group members

A few weeks ago, I was invited to do a weekend of consulting and training in an energetic, soul-winning church in the Northeast part of the country. This church has implemented a discipleship pathway (what some call spiritual formation) and are enjoying the results of helping new believers become fully-devoted followers of Christ. Their main objectives for bringing me to the church were: to increase participation in discipleship; help them launch new groups that were highly missional and holistic; and move the staff and congregation deeper into a transition away from building-centric programs to relational ministry.

[In this issue of Fresh Insight, I’ll address the first issue of increasing participation in discipleship and leave the others for future editions in the months to follow.]

Group Multiplication. Goal or Result?

The more I think about it, the less enamored I am by the definitions of a healthy group that contain verbiage about group multiplication. Sure, groups need to remain small for intimacy and so the group can be a team to reach the lost. But telling a group of people who are passionately missional (to the point of great personal sacrifice) that they should form a group, become deep friends, then separate from one another in a year or less is just counterproductive!

You'll get so much push back that group life will never get off the ground and take off a life of its own. Describing a highly relational holistic small group ministry in terms of biological cell multiplication is just awful if you want my honest opinion. I avoid it like the plague and so should you.

I keep reminding churches with whom I consult to envision potential group leaders with a familial approach to group life. Groups are comprised of spiritual children, young people, and fathers and mothers. The goal for everyone is to pursue spiritual growth and personal transformation, and show others the way to the cross. When the spiritual young men and women reach friends for Christ and disciple them, they're ready to move out of the group and start a spiritual family of their own.

Has the group multiplied? Yes! One group has birthed one or more groups, and they'll probably do the same if they are supported properly and they maintained the same missional life focuses.

Yet the way the vision for healthy small group ministry is shared remains highly relational and functional. It's a family where the kids grow up and move out of the house to start families of their own.

I recommend instilling a passion to generate a spiritual legacy of passionate leadership instead of multiplying groups. You'll gain far more leaders this way.

If you tell everyone a home-run for their small group is splitting up inside a calendar year, don't expect much enthusiasm from anyone except the divorce lawyers in your congregation.
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Reading comprehension. Have you regressed?

Half of all Americans are functionally illiterate, meaning they can read restaurant menus, signs, billboards, and Facebook posts made by friends, but they are currently not able to learn much by reading a book... so they do not read whole books.

In fact, a LOT of educated Americans don't read books according to recent polls. 58% of American college grads never read another book after they complete their education.

Most of this stems from the internet delivering 500 word articles and Youtube videos, combined with one other statistic that is simply alarming: The average American watches 4 hours of television every day!

I must admit that I watch far too much television myself and while I read all day, every day in my role at TOUCH Outreach, I don't read for pleasure in the evenings and weekends.

Now here's another fact that's even more alarming than the ones I shared above:

If you don't continue to read at the same pace and depth as you did when you were in school, you will slowly regress to an 8th grade reading level, which is what it takes to read a restaurant menu and function in society.

Holy cow that's just scary on so many levels, and it reveals something important for ministry leaders:

If you want your people to read a book, you must be willing to walk them through the content a few pages per week with lots of interaction and verbal processing.

Expecting people to read a book you hand them to enhance their ministry as a small group leader is probably a waste of your time and the church's money. The book will gather dust for the most part ... or if they're resourceful like me, it will be added to the "sell yours here - new and used listings" on amazon.com within a week of receipt!

Fully grasping all this as a small groups pastor should make your head spin. The way you've trained leaders and discipled people in the past must be completely revisited.

Books are still quite relevant, and like me, you should urge your friends to turn off the TV at least one evening a week to sit and read for an hour or two, just to stimulate the part of the brain that isn't working when a person watches a show.

What does your small group org chart say about your leadership?

Lots of small group ministries struggle because everyone in the ministry views it like this standard organizational chart:



Some senior pastors view the small group ministry like a dictator. It exists to serve them and their plans for the church's growth. Other senior pastors view the small group ministry like a hierarchy. They don't see the existence of the group as serving them, but they do view the groups as an extension of themselves, doing what they are unable to do alone from the pulpit. After all, God has given the senior pastor a vision for the local church and it must be accomplished through every ministry or all the ministries working together and working hard!

On the other side, the members are challenged to do something for and with God that they didn't discover themselves or from within themselves. The leader over their group knows what they should be doing because he or she has been told repeatedly the group should be productive and not passive. The coaches over the groups are more like supervisors, checking in from time to time on the leader, making sure they know what their group is supposed to be doing and to make sure they're not doing anything wrong.

No wonder the house church movement is the hot topic right now. People are tired of being told what to do as a tiny cog in some mega church pastor's clockworks.

While the hierarchal model is far better than the dictatorship when comparing the two alone, it still isn't the way a pastor should view his small group ministry nor should it be the paradigm out of which the small group members and leaders are operating (whether it's an accurate read of the pastor or not!)

Hierarchal small group ministries always struggle. No one likes to be told what to do and why they should be doing it, even if it's the right thing to do and everyone involved knows it. The better way to diagram a healthy church's small group ministry is this way:



In the second organizational chart, the missional thrust of the church is coming from the activity within the small groups. In response to their activities, they are coached by seasoned group leaders so they achieve their goals and more. The coaches are encouraged and supported by a small groups pastor, and the lead pastor maintains the mindset that he is in place to serve the groups as they do the work of ministry.

His sermons are designed to better equip the groups, not just the individual members. The weekend services are considered a gathering of small groups for celebration, not hundreds of individuals who gather for worship and may or may not be a member of a small group.

If a hierarchy exists in a healthly small group ministry, the power belongs to the small groups, not the pastor. He gently leads them to do the right thing by example, but they often surprise him with creative ways to fulfill the mission God has given the whole church, not just the pastor.

Years ago, my boss and I took 30 pastors and their spouses to Hong Kong for a missions gathering. Over half the group had never been out of the USA before. We gave everyone instructions to gather their belongings at baggage claim and wait for everyone else so we could exit the area together and get on our bus to the hotel.

Four couples grabbed their bags and shot out a set of automatic doors. Five or six others followed them, thinking they would miss the bus. Because the baggage claim area was huge and quite noisy, no amount of running or yelling could stop our bunch from going through those doors when they saw others from our group on the move.

My boss said, "Randall, those are our people. We are their leaders. We must follow them!"

Everyone in our group knew that on the other side of those doors was an amazing world-class city with lots of things to see and people to meet. They knew the bus would eventually show up too. And they were all headed in the right direction, but the leaders weren't at the head dragging them out the doors.

When a small group ministry is healthy and growing from the activity of the group members, it's not a game of follow the leader. The leaders follow the members and run interference when necessary.

Now I know what you're thinking. "I WISH my groups were so motivated that I could spend all my time chasing after them and help them make minor course corrections instead of motivating them to do ANYTHING besides eating snacks on Thursday nights!"

You know, it all boils down to discipleship. If you reach people for Christ and teach them that a mature Christian tithes, shows up regularly, and volunteers for ministry when asked, they'll view the small groups as a hierarchy. However, if you relationally disciple new Christians to see themselves as a missionary with a big mission to accomplish with God and other believers, you'll find yourself saying...

"Those are my people. I am their leader! I must follow them!"
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Discipleship and Small Groups. What a powerful combination!

I visited a church this weekend to do some training for them in the area of core team leadership (versus the old leader-apprentice model used so widely around the world).

One thing I found in this church that I was very pleased to see was a strong push for and a healthy subculture of one-on-one discipleship, much like one might find in the Navigators.

This church has discovered that if new believers aren't discipled one-on-one for the first 90 days, they'll fall away from the church and the commitment they made to God through Christ's work on the cross.

When I asked about day 91 and beyond, I was told, "That's why you're here. Small group life takes over there and we need to strengthen our small groups."

The visit to this church clarified a couple of things for me:

1. One-to-one discipleship is far superior to classroom methods or even small group discipleship. It sharpens the disciple maker as much as it does the person being discipled, and creates a leader of one.

2. Small groups have their unique benefits, but are not enough to disciple the members of the groups. They need the one-on-one relationships in addition to the small group friendships and ministry environment.

3. The combination of the two is seriously powerful. Doing either with great competence will yield some fruit for sure, but put them together and BAM!, it's kicked up a notch to a level that is truly dangerous to the enemy's strategy in the life of a believer.

I know I blog about discipleship all the time and you're probably sick and tired of me harping on it. However, I just have to keep blogging about it until the parts of the body of Christ—who have chosen to "do church" through small groups—value discipleship every bit as much as they value the small groups themselves.

Have you hammered on your discipleship process lately?

Someone once told me that when the only tool in your toolbox is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. I looked in my small groups toolbox over the weekend and I have a bunch of tools... but the hammer needs to strike the head of the discipleship nail once again because it's still sticking out of the wood. In fact, I'm confident that some churches have never even attempted to strike the nail ( because there is no nail to be found) while others have tried but failed (considering all the marred wood surrounding the nail).

Another wise person once told me that if you ask the right questions, you'll get the right answers. So, here's some of the best questions I can find to help develop a discipleship path that actually moves people from spiritual immaturity to maturity and into leading others along the same path.

Where am I?
A couple of weeks ago, I bought a GPS unit. What an amazing little gadget and time-saver. However, as nifty as it is, the thing is worthless for providing direction to the driver if it cannot obtain the requisite satellite signal to inform the GPS unit where it is on planet Earth. Without a point of origination, it's a very expensive road map that's cumbersome and not worth the time to use over a printed map from the gas station.

Many church discipleship programs/processes have no instrument in place to help people determine a point of origination. Without some process or tool to discover where one finds himself or herself on the giant map of Christian maturity, one can never move in any direction with confidence knowing he or she is progressing toward a destination.

My father discovered this fundamental discipleship principle in the 1980's. He developed a little booklet entitled The Journey Guide For New Christians that is still for sale today and does a good job of helping a new believer—with the help of a mentor—determine where they are with a knowledge of God, God's values, their own learning style, and basic milestones for a road to spiritual maturity.

When I turned it on my new GPS for the first time, I was forced to walk outside so it could find out where I was. When a satellite signal was found, the gizmo came alive with features. It changed screens and said aloud, "Where do you want to go?"

A self-assessment tool will help a believer see where they are and where they can go with Christ. It also shows the believer how important their small group is in the process of working out your (plural use of the word) salvation with fear and trembling (Phil. 2:12). If you don't have an initial interview piece like this in your discipleship process, you no longer need to wonder why people don't start down your discipleship path in the first place or why folks don't make it through it ... they have no idea they need to make a move in the right direction. Self-assessment is an excellent inoculation for spiritual alzheimer's.


Where am I supposed to go?
I have a confession to share here. For many years, I believed (and taught) that it was vital to the small group ministry's success that we disciple new believers into strong group leaders. In other words, the core motivation was to train believers to a point to where they could expand a man-made structure inside a local church.

Friends, there are only two reasons to disciple others into spiritual maturity:
1. We're called to do it by Jesus Christ in Matthew 28:18-20.
2. It's heathy for everyone involved in the process.

Today, I firmly believe we are to make disciples to build the kingdom of God and provide individuals with a strong, driving sense of personal and corporate purpose in life. If we do this well, the church gets an endless number of people who can be mobilized as small group leaders as one of their first leadership responsibilities. You read that right. Small group leadership isn't a big thing really, and it should be the first of many leadership roles a believer embraces.

So, to answer the question, Where am I supposed to go?, a church must examine its mission and vision and create an end-goal that is in perfect alignment.

My mom was brought up in the Christian and Missionary Alliance denomination. With great regularity, her pastor invited CMA missionaries to come and share about their missions work in Africa, Asia and South America. As she aged and matured in Christ, she felt that winning the prize (Phil. 3:14) was to serve the Lord as an overseas vocational missionary.

The CMA continues to cast a strong vision for vocational missions, and they use their small groups as a support structure to raise up missionaries. What does your discipleship path reflect? Does it answer the question for the disciple, "Where am I supposed to go?"

How am I to get there?
I no longer teach there is a superior way of helping a believer get from point A to point Z. There are many learning styles and methods. However, I will say this about myself—I do not learn in classrooms or by reading books. I learn by interacting with someone who loves me deeply and is willing to walk with me into whatever I need to experience so I can learn verbally. (There are actually seven types of learning styles. Check out this web page for more information about them.

I don't profess to be a discipleship expert by any means. But I do know that offering a discipleship class ain't gonna cut the mustard. It will require small group members taking responsibility for other small group members to get the job done.

I love the analogy of hiking up a sizable mountain with a guide. The mountain is so large that part of the mountain rises above the clouds and I can't see the summit. However, I'm confident I'll make it to the top. Why? I am motivated by my senior pastor, who has been to the summit many times. Moreover, I am not alone... I have a friend who's been much higher in elevation on this climb than I have ever been, and he's come back down the mountain to show me the way.

As we hike along a steep path, I know the climb won't happen fast and we're not in a hurry. Each day, we consider the day's pace and how long it will take us to get from the base camp to the camp found at 1,200 feet. There, we will learn about the rock formations ahead and learn techniques for climbing those rocks. We'll get tools for that part of the journey, and build upon what we learned when we were hiking in the days before on lower elevations.

Where will we camp along the journey?
Most of the discipleship paths I have examined carefully have covered ground in the areas of basics of the faith such as the depravity of man, the true nature of God, the life of Jesus Christ, the work of the cross, salvation by grace, water baptism, the Trinity, tithing, avoiding sin, developing spiritual disciplines, and the inerrancy of the Bible. I'd want all this in my church's discipleship path for sure.

Yet much is missing. What about freedom from satanic strongholds and the need for deliverance? How about training for relational evangelism and mentoring/discipling a new Christian effectively? There are many other areas along the spiritual path to maturity that may not be easy for a mentor-guide to help a believer move through. That's where the church must rise to the occasion with corporately implemented events. At strategic places in every discipleship process, there must be events (camps) where the local church helps believers move to the next level.

The Vineyard church where my wife and I serve has a six month intensive program to help people walk through and out of relational and sexual brokenness called Living Waters. While I've been through this process, I am also a big fan of weekend events like Encounter God, which help the believer see the need for something much deeper.

The combination of weekend events in the form of retreats and mentoring makes for a powerful and transformational process.

Who else is going along?
I have a lot of axes to grind when it comes to the way people do church, but none needs grinding more than what I'm about to share. If the church was commanded to make disciples, why does it so often fall short of the mandate by discipling only those rare individuals who want to sign up for it? Discipleship is something every small group member should be involved with, and they should know their current position on the path. Any discipleship process for a small group ministry that's worth its weight in salt involves everyone in the disciplemaking process.

This is an easy thing to conceptually agree with in theory, but a much harder thing to do in reality. My grandfather would shout, "There's a fly in the ointment!"

Many a small group ministry has zero discipleship going on beyond what is heard from the pulpit. Even if a stellar discipleship pathway were set in place, many existing small group members would say they are already mature Christians and don't need to go through it.

One in five would be correct by my estimation. And that 20% aren't that mature in Christ. If they were, they'd instantly see the opportunity to mentor others.

Implementing a new discipleship process must be done very carefully. Donning my strategic hat, I'd say that the latter portions should be implemented first with the so-called "mature" believers in the small group ministry... spiritual gift assessments and relational evangelism training would be two higher milestones I'd want to move through first, after accountability partnerships have been established among the members.

I am certain of one truth about small group ministry: everyone must be personally involved in the Great Commission. When this is happening, the small group structure is welcomed by everyone involved because it supports the lived-out values of the disciple makers. Let me repeat a small group truth here to insure it's caught through repetition: Small groups will not move lazy consumer Christians into action. Structures don't motivate anyone who isn't already motivated.

[End Note: I cannot take credit for many of the principles and concepts in this blog entry. That credit belongs to my dad, who was one of the first pastors I know of who create a systematic equipping system for small group members which I have moved through numerous times with new believers.]

Organic vs. Programmic Disciplemaking

Last year, my organization published an excellent book entitled Organic Disciplemaking by Dennis McCallum and Jessica Lowery. This book is possibly the most important book I've read in five years because it provides an exhaustive look at the way the disciplemaking member-leaders at Xenos Christian Fellowship move a new believer into a disciple of Christ and a discipler of other new believers. The church has an impressive statistic: Over 80% of the church body is discipling someone or being discipled by someone. That, my friend, is an amazing find in North America.

I must say though, despite the excellent writing style, personal stories, and "no rock left unturned" attitude by the authors, the book has not sold as well as I hoped. After all, in a previous blog entry, I ranted about the complete absence of discipleship in many US churches today.

I must revisit this issue of making disciples over and over again, charging at the issue from numerous directions. Each church must discover their own unique way of moving every committed believer from spiritual infancy to adolescence to maturing believer to spiritual parent. It's not something one can hope happens on its own or it would have happened by now, right?

As I look at the history of Xenos, their seemingly "organic" culture of discipleship wasn't a naturally occurring chain of events. It began as a very determined, people-centered, relationally-driven program to equip a collection of house church members to do more than they'd ever done for Christ. The house churches wanted affiliation with other house churches, and they wanted the benefit of the excellent Bible teaching that a few of the house church pastors possessed.

[I won't go into the history of the church and how very differently it operates on nearly every single level of ministry and membership. If you want to learn this information, I highly recommend visiting the Xenos' expansive web site.]

I recently had a conversation with a pastor who is opposed to a programmic discipleship path to maturity, saying it's too lock-step. He commented that any curriculum driven process would be too mechanical for his church.

Of course, when I asked what he was doing to insure each member of the church was becoming a fully devoted follower of Jesus Christ, he didn't have much of anything to share that was substantive. The new member class and existing programs every church member was encouraged to attend did not teach Bible basics, tenants of the faith, how to develop spiritual disciplines, etc.

I see a huge challenge to implement a discipleship program in churches that have none today. People are busy and many who have been small group members for a while or are currently leading a small group think they are disciples when they are simply faithful attendees. "Rolling out" a new discipleship program that every person in the church should move through immediately is going work as well as Moses telling a million Israelites to walk into the parted Red Sea simultaneously, which we all know didn't happen, right? [Moses stepped in first, followed by his family, followed by the leaders and their families, followed by others, and on it went until they were all in it and through it.]

Developing and implementing an organic discipleship process in a local church has even more challenges. A relationally-driven pathway where individuals see the need to become a spiritual parent and take a young believer through the stages of maturity required to achieve a level of maturity that produces more fruit is far more difficult to develop than widespread program involvement.

Yet, Xenos has done it, so I know it can be done! Churches can develop a culture in which the members of the church, who live and serve in Biblical communities (holistic small groups) and live out the mandate to make disciples.

What I would like from you, dear reader, is a comment about how your church and you are making disciples. Share as much as you can so others can learn what works in America. Is it a program or book-driven process? Is it relational and milestone or goal oriented? Is what you are doing working so well you're smiling right now? If so, the rest of us need to know what's working in your church.

[BTW, I am seeing others blog about this blog, but I sure would appreciate some sort of feedback from you as a reader if you got all the way down to this part of the post! Let me know if you're reading it through an email or comment!]