How To Start Journey In Your Ministry

Start Discipling in Your Ministry with Journey

 

1. Personally Disciple

Make a committed decision to personally become a discipler. Be an example in discipleship.

 

Meet every week with your disciple. You and your wife should disciple as many as possible.

 

If the leaders do not personally disciple, the discipleship ministry will not continue.

 

By modeling effective discipleship, you can provide practical examples of navigating various situations and challenges that may arise during the one-on-one discipleship process.

 

Sharing your own experiences and insights can also encourage and inspire disciplers.
 

2. Count the Cost

 

Count the cost in time, resources, plans, strategy, and schedule.  What programs must you subtract for discipleship to expand?  What time must you give it?  How will you change your official church schedule for Discipleship?

 

One-on-one discipleship can duplicate your best people. Get a vision for multiplying the sheep, as our Lord commanded.

 

Even if some good ministries must be put on hold temporarily, more ministries can return with qualified, discipled, faithful members.

 

Every time a disciple completes Lesson 5, the offerings go up. So count the cost of not multiplying one-on-one disciple-makers, too.
 

3. Begin to pray and think about how one-on-one discipleship will be in your church schedule.

 

Many USA churches have a morning service, followed by one-on-one discipleship. Some have discipleship available on Wednesday nights, throughout the church, so that childcare is available.

 

Be careful not to add this to the “menu” of ministry activities without prayerfully subtracting even some good but less productive activities. People only have so much time.

 

Some of the ministries you subtract can be revitalized with trained disciples, making them more impactful.

 

A good goal is for one-on-one discipleship to take place every day of the week, anywhere and everywhere, like in the book of Acts. And daily in the temple, and in every house, they ceased not to teach and preach Jesus Christ. Acts 5:42
 

Train Your First Disciplers
 

4. Personally "hand-pick" your First Disciplers

 

Personally, ask those you know who could be your first generation of Disciplers.

 

Explain your vision and ask them to join you in this ministry, committing to 2 training sessions.

 

The Training Files for this step are in the Downloads section.

 

Usually, these are the best people in your ministry.

 

A few churches have opened the invitation publicly to be a discipler; however, many will respond that they need to be discipled. If you choose to do that, let them know that your goal is for all of them to be a discipler in the end, but until then, some will need to be disciples as you are learning the material.


5. Train the First Generation of Disciplers

 

Training your first disciplers in using Lesson One and some procedures. You can download the training files below to assist you.

 

The disciplers do not need to know every lesson to get started. Explain that they are all learning and growing together with a disciple.

 

If their disciple asks them a question that they do not know the answer to, they can tell them they will prepare an answer, or an answer will come in a future lesson.

 

They will practice meeting one-on-one with each other to get the “feel” for the lessons and the procedures. Three training meetings are usually enough. Training files can be downloaded below.
 

At the Same Time - Prepare the Church to Disciple
 

6.  Preach/Teach on one-on-one Discipleship

 

At the same time as training your first generation of disciplers, preach or teach on discipleship for several weeks to communicate your burden.


7. Take Commitments

 

At the end of the preaching, teaching, and training of your first generation of Disciplers, give out commitment cards in every church service and ask who is interested in being discipled one-on-one.

 

You can download a card we use in the downloads section.


8. Pair the Disciplers and disciples together.

 

The leadership determines who meets with whom. Men with men. Ladies with ladies.

 

Close friendships and close family members may not be a good idea. The leadership decides.

 

Each discipler can have more than one disciple, but one at a time. Adding even one person will kill the multiplication.
 

Start the Disciples and Diciplers

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9. Start them Discipling.

 

Set a time and place for discipleship to begin. Some have all pairs start discipling at the same time and place to get some momentum.

 

It is normal that some pairs have to be reassigned.

 

Ask the disciplers to use the record-keeping system, which is explained below. You can also create your own system, but it is important to know if disciples are meeting together, what section of each lesson they are in, so you can know if they are going too fast or too slow.


10. Expand meeting times.

 

After a few weeks of meeting, or however long it takes for everything to go smoothly, allow the disciplers and disciples to meet at other times and places. Some do that from the beginning.


11. Continue and Repeat.

 

Perform the above schedule quarterly or every six months until it is no longer necessary to repeat.  Ask for disciples in every message, church invitation, and appeal.


12. Continue training and gaining commitments.

 

Meet monthly with your disciplers to continue training them in the lessons and help them with any issues as needed.

For Multiplication, carefully follow this advice, based on experience.

 

* Do not use Journey for any group meetings, Sunday school lessons, or sermons.

 

* Follow the instructions on how to use Journey, found on the third page of the lessons. Taking shortcuts will kill multiplication.