Discipleship

Over time, many opinions have arisen over discipleship. I suggest that the goal of any discipleship effort or ministry should be stated as this, “Helping others find and follow Jesus Christ. If our efforts and or events are not accomplishing that goal, then we really ought to reexamine our efforts!

I further suggest that we have done a reasonably good job of helping others find Christ but have failed miserably at helping others learn to follow Christ! Our focus has been to get people to Christ but not giving them the skill sets to follow Him. We can discuss why that is but one reason may well be that we feel we need to show some “success” in our efforts and when we focus on evangelism, it is easier to quantify the results of our efforts.

Some how through time we have convinced ourselves that we must be able to display some element of success in our spiritual efforts. My bible teaches me that our obligations are only to plant the seeds and that God will bring the increase. Let’s consider being involved with a “Discipleship Reformation”[1] as “Man in the Mirror”[2] has called it.

In addition, there is a great deal of confusion over what a real discipleship ministry should look like. I would suggest that any competent discipleship ministry should have the following components to it:

The pastor and leaders of a given church must settle on defined set of spiritual maturity levels or categories that they will use in their discipleship ministry efforts.

Any creditable discipleship ministry must have some diagnostic tools in order to be able to determine at which of the agreed to levels of spiritual growth a person is in.

Once it is determined which level of spiritual maturity an individual is in, a churches discipleship effort must have at its disposal a set plan of transferable concepts or tools to utilize to grow that person to the next level.

As important as the previous components are, any viable discipleship ministry must have some definable qualities a person must have attained when in the discipleship process prior to being advanced to the next level or category.

[1] “ A Look In The Mirror #112 – A Call For A Discipleship Reformation of The Church” by Pat Morley

[2] “Man in the Mirror”, 180 Wilshire Blvd. Casselberry, FL 32707 USA (407)-472-2100 www.maninthemirror.org