What would you do with a team of 75 Family Discipleship Experts?

Imagine

By Ron Hunter, Jr.

Three wrongs don’t make a right, but three lefts do. Driving habits can vary as much as one’s temperament behind the wheel. Most men believe movement equals progress and will go three miles out of the way as long as the tires are turning, even if the car does not get any closer to the destination. And what about that road trip? If only you could synchronize every family member’s bladder or agree not to hit three fast food restaurants to satisfy the cravings of every rider. While you may lose most battles with your spouse arguing over the time saved if you exit only off the right side of the interstate because reentry is faster, one item everyone agrees on is measuring progress toward your vacation destination. No one wants to leave for the beach and palm trees only to drive aimlessly toward snow-capped mountains.

Oddly enough, many ministry leaders can be as scattered on ideas of discipleship. When it comes to discipleship, Judges 21:25 seems to be the strategy of some churches: everyone doing what is right in their own eyes without regard to better, proven principles. What if you could hire a team of experienced and proven discipleship experts to help develop every step of your congregation’s progress toward being disciple-making disciples? What do you think a team of 75 discipleship specialists would cost to help you every week of every year? I will answer that question later.

This team of 75 could examine the appropriate learning styles and abilities of your students then develop a way to teach each lesson and also show transformational disciples of all ages—from nursery to the most experienced adults—how to walk daily with Christ. This team does not see discipleship through a single lens but a multi-pronged approach. Just as you don’t want to approach road trips haphazardly, your congregation would appreciate a long-term view rather than weaving from idea to idea. Is it time to focus on the bigger picture and see the need for an intentional on-ramp and, eventually, an interstate that moves people down a disciple-making path?

Randall House is your team of specialists that maps out what can best be seen in a circular flow chart of helping a person find Christ, enter into discipleship, use his or her gifts in the church, and have regular faith conversations in the home and workplace. Each of the four vital benchmarks creates actions that lead to the next phase.

It should not surprise anyone that every step in the circle is biblical, because the Great Commission has always included a reach and teach approach, even though most churches focus on one or the other. When both are emphasized, your congregation will find a sustainable discipleship pattern. When you see a growing church, you will find an emphasis on making disciples who make disciples.

Ministry leaders mistakenly believe the focus must be on what happens at church. By doing that with excellence the rest will take care of itself. Unfortunately, that approach teaches families to compartmentalize church and life. The mentality that all discipleship comes from a lesson and a sermon is more like historical Roman Catholicism, where adherents go through the motions at church but walk away from it in everyday life. The Protestant church’s criticism of compartmentalized faith—weekly confession without daily discipleship—has crept into our methodology. The way to break this hypocritical trend is to teach all ages how to work on disciple development each day.

Remember, discipleship is not an event; it’s a way of life. Events provide vitally important onramps to inspire and challenge people to live out their faith in daily discipleship. Events are momentary, but lifestyles are sustainable habits. Discipleship by its name includes discipline; consistently living as a disciple daily, not once a week. Events describe an occurrence with a defined starting and ending point such as a weekly church service, annual conferences, youth camps, or even a class that might offer a slightly longer event.

Each event should guide the disciple toward more profound, routine habits like daily quiet times with Scripture and prayer. Church equips the disciple with theological boundaries, in-depth teaching, and a place to serve within the community of believers. The daily disciplines of quiet time and prayer bring accountability, connections to family and Christ. The way-of-life approach reveals deeper, more sustainable relationships that hold families together through the most trying times of life.

You might give your members a copy of Our Daily Bread, but that is a little light, doctrinally neutral, and only for adults. Randall House offers a devotional magazine for each age (including 11 distinct life stages from early childhood readers to elementary, teen, and three stages for adults). For the price of one latté, you can put 13 weeks of devotional discipleship content in the hands of every family member. A more significant benefit, the material creates conversations between parents and kids, grandparents and grandkids, and the older folks with the younger in church. In a day when senior adults have few ways to connect with the teens and kids, D6 Curriculum provides a connection at church and during the week.

Your church provides depth through sermons, songs, and connection with other disciples. Don’t ask your team to develop their own lessons, questions, or curriculum when they should be focused on relationships. Let Randall House provide a proven, award-winning curriculum with a team of 75 specialists behind it: writers, editors, designers, printers, and church ministry consultants. Put our team to work for you.

Can you afford to hire our staff of discipleship specialists? Yes, you can! Just call and let us show you how five to eight dollars a person can change your weekly discipleship into daily discipleship with a devotional for every person. We can assure you the price of NOT doing church and home discipleship is far more costly.

About the Writer: Ron Hunter Jr., Ph.D., is CEO of Randall House Publications, author of DNA of D6 and Toy Box Leadership, and co-author of Youth Ministry in the 21st Century. Learn more about generational Sunday School curriculum: www.d6family.com.