Start Your Discipleship Ministry Right

What Matters Most First

We are talking about how to multiply disciple makers, and it's important to start your one-on-one discipleship ministry correctly.

How do you start right?

A. Personally disciple. 

As I’ve mentioned several times, pastors and leaders must personally disciple one-on-one. It’s one thing to know about something; it’s another to experience it.

When you speak from the pulpit about your own experiences in discipleship, it will make a difference.

And your interaction with the Journey lessons, personally, is so important to starting right. 

Remember, as an example to all of us, Jesus had a one-on-one disciple; John was called “the disciple whom Jesus loved.”

B. Make Time for Discipleship

You cannot add discipleship to what you are already doing and expect it to succeed or reach the numbers we have seen. Do not idolize your current schedule.

Your discipleship ministry cannot be just another program of the church. It must become the heart and personality of the church.

You must be willing to prayerfully subtract even good church activities and ministries to start right.

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Keep in mind that many of the activities and ministries that are subtracted can return in the future, even stronger, as you have additional workers and trained disciplers.

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The point is that one-on-one discipleship should be in your church schedule.

Time is not the real problem; out-of-place priorities is the problem.

A pastor must stop saying, “I do not have time to disciple people,” and start saying, “I have not yet structured my life and ministry around what matters most.”

A pastor must stop saying, “We do not have time to disciple people,” and start saying, “I have not yet structured my ministry around what matters most.”

Also consider this; there are 168 hours in a week.

If you work 50 hours a week, sleep 8 hours a day, you have 62 hours per week remaining.

Reclaim that time and assign it directly to fellowship with the Lord, Bible study, personal shepherding, and one-on-one discipleship. Then leadership training will naturally follow.

C. Daily Discipleship is the Aim

Notice the word “daily” in these Bible verses:

Acts 5:42 reads, And daily in the temple, and in every house, they ceased not to teach and preach Jesus Christ.

And in Acts 16, verse 5, the Bible reads, And so were the churches established in the faith, and increased in number daily.

Pray, work, and start your one-on-one discipleship ministry so that discipleship is happening every day of the week.

That can happen, but if you carefully follow every step.

So we are talking about how to multiply disciple-makers in your ministry, and to do so…

your definitions must be clear

you must have a biblical shepherd as the pastor

be a first-century ministry

and start right or multiplication of disciples will not take place

We’ll show you how to start your first disciple-makers in a coming step.

Also, contact me if you want to know how ministries have made changes to their ministry schedule to make discipleship a priority.

Let’s look at the next interconnecting requirement.