Disciple Making 101

by Dr. David Kueker

www. disciplewalk .com

Available as a 4 week online course at www. Beadisciple .com in January $20

Breakthrough Learning: a change in perspective changes everything.

After a breakthrough, everything seems obvious.

Irritation + your adaptation = pearl

Access to more information: www. Disciplewalk .comClick on “Resources.”

Next week – Click on “More Resources”

The ideas here are not original.

A few years ago I had a conversation with a fellow pastor whose church had rapidly grown after his

appointment there. I asked him what he had done that

played a part in that growth, and his answer surprised me. "There were two things," he

said. "The first thing I stress to them is that

Shepherds don’t make sheep; sheep make sheep."

It’s a simple idea, but profound: Mature Christians make new Christians. In shepherding, this could be called the limiting factor. How many lamb

producing sheep are in the flock? How many have reached that level of maturity where lambs become sheep that produce lambs? When we look at

the problem this way, it’s obvious that few in our flock ever grow up beyond the infancy stage of spirituality. (The actual percentage that remains

at the infancy stage is close to 83% of church attenders.) Lambs cannot make sheep; only sheep can make sheep. This is the limiting factor that impedes church growth and why many churches are rapidly dwindling.

Our class today will discuss two spiritual questions:

How do lambs become sheep? How do sheep make lambs?

A Discipleship System delineates the path for a disciple from the world, into the church and onward to maturity,

and moves people rapidly toward spiritual maturity.

It is a process of grace.

Prevenient Sanctifying Justifying

Rapidly growing churches raise their level of adaptive competence by working diligently in cooperation with God in all three kinds of grace.

Prevenient --- Justifying --- Sanctifying---

Grace is a living process.

Pregnant Born Grow up! (Before) (After)

Relationships help us to grow. People involved in our life help us to learn to nurture and be nurtured in context of community.

Life is intended to include parents, siblings, aunts and uncles, extended family, friends and the nurture of our entire tribe or village. Growing up is too hard to do all by yourself.

The first part of Sanctifying grace helps us to focus on becoming a disciple and then a better disciple. It is about personal growth and growing up spiritually. Again, people who partner with us to help us grow make a significant difference in the quality of our life, spiritually and otherwise.

Prevenient Sanctifying Justifying

Please describe your personal experience of Justifying Grace. -How did you come to a personal commitment to Christ? -Was your experience sudden/gradual, dramatic/subtle, conscious/unaware? -Who was present and a part of that experience?

Please describe your personal experience of Prevenient Grace. -Who was present and a part of the experience as you were drawn to Christ?-What was said or done that made a difference?

Please describe your personal experience of Sanctifying Grace. -Who is or was present and a part of your experience of growing as a Christian? -Who walks with you as a partner as you follow Christ today? -Who answers your questions, listens to your problems

and talks with you about the Bible?

Module 2 – Growth Levels

Ascending Grace

1. Book of Discipline suggests four stages of maturity:

¶134: “Christians experience growth and transition in their spiritual life just as in their physical and emotional lives. While this

growth is always a work of grace, it does not occur uniformly. Spiritual growth in Christ is a dynamic process marked by

awakening, birth, growth, and maturation. This process requires careful and intentional nurture for the disciple to reach perfection in

the Christian life. There are stages of spiritual growth and transition: Christian beginnings; Christian birth; Christian growth;

and Christian maturity. These require careful and intentional nurture for the disciple to come to maturity in the Christian life and to

engage fully in the ministry of all Christians.”

This class suggests five stages of Christian spiritual growth.

The Newborn stage of spiritual maturity is characterized by a need for love, nurture, relationships, fellowship, family, and by dependency.

Newborns grow best in the presence of a parent who provides nurture and support.

Newborns are capable of great joy.

But they are dependent and unable to care for themselves.

Many in the church never grow beyond this stage of needing love and nurture.

“Pastor, I'm just not being fed.”

Institutional churches often become containers or warehouses for Christians who have not grown beyond this stage. As many as 83% of worship attenders are at the newborn level of spiritual maturity, and there is little in the institutional church, whether traditional or contemporary, that calls them beyond that level of participation. Institutional churches, large and small, can often function as little more than storage facilities for half-baked, immature Christians. If a demand is made upon them, they rapidly exit, looking for a church that will better meet their needs and the needs of their families.

At the First International Consultation on Discipleship, held last month on England's scenic South Coast, John R. W. Stott called attention to the ‘strange and disturbing paradox’ of the contemporary Christian situation: We have experienced enormous statistical growth, he said, without corresponding growth in discipleship. ‘God is not pleased,’ warned Stott, ‘with superficial discipleship.’ Theologian Tokunboh Adeyemo called attention to this same paradox on his continent, where the phenomenal numerical growth of Christianity is matched only by the mind-boggling butchery of Christians engaging in the horrors of ethnic cleansing. ‘The church in Africa,’ said Adeyemo, ‘is one mile long, but only one inch deep.’

The church in America, certainly, is far less than one inch deep.

When newborns feel

safe, they begin to

explore their world.

Curiosity grows within them.

Who do you know at this stage?What is your church doing with

people at this stage?What church problems arise with

people this stage?How can you help these people

move onward?

Child stage characteristics include being playful,

curious, asking questions, wanting to be "big" and to explore but stay in touch. Basic lessons in the child

stage include learning manners, obedience, rules

and good behavior.

As curiosity develops in newborns, their desire to learn brings them into the

child stage of exploring and learning.

By including learning in their nurturing, parents help

newborns begin this process of lifelong learning.

John 8:31-32: Jesus then said to the Jews who had believed in him, "If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free."

The primary learning tool for child level disciples will be to read and learn scripture, and particularly the teachings of Jesus is the Gospels.

Regular involvement with scripture is the diagnostic identifier for a person who has moved from newborn stage to become a disciple.

Worship attenders only, therefore, are by definition not disciples. Please know they are not bad people ... they are just not yet disciples.

As the Bible begins to influence the behavior of the spiritual child,

their goals change to obediently following Jesus rather than seeking

their own benefit.

Who do you know at this stage?What is your church doing with

people at this stage?What church problems arise with

people this stage?How can you help these people

move onward?

The indicator of readiness to move from Child to Teen level is often unpleasant and typically restlessness, dissatisfaction, and the feeling that something more is needed.

They have mastered this level and are now looking for something more challenging; provide them with that challenge.

But first, let's take a break!

Module 2 – Growth Levels

Descending Grace

The indicator of readiness to move from Child to Teen level is often unpleasant and typically restlessness, dissatisfaction, and the feeling that something more is needed.

They have mastered this level and are now looking for something more challenging; provide them with that challenge.

At first, this will be very awkward.

The teenage years are about developing competence and finding partners.

The teen stage is characterized by individuation,

differentiation, rebellion, “doing my own thing with my

own crowd,” and finding a purpose in life distinct from

parental values.

Teens need challenging discipleship, peer community and subtle adult supervision. They need to develop maturity,

consistency and emotional stability. Teens need to learn their gifts and strengths. Teens need to learn their purpose in life and spiritual calling; it’s like discovering a spiritual career.

Teens need to go on safe adventures that challenge them and utilize their spiritual gifts.

DescendingGrace

John 3:16Mark 8:34

1 Corinthians 12:7Philippians 2:5-13

Spiritual teenagers are servants of the

Lord Jesus.

The outcome of spiritual adolescence is a person prepared for a spiritual career as an obedient servant of God in mission to the church and the world.

Do you know your spiritual gift?

Do you know your mission in life as a servant of God?

Are you working at it?

Who do you know at this stage?What is your church doing with

people at this stage?What church problems arise with

people this stage?How can you help these people

move onward?

There is no slide for this level ... the DINK level, where one is

primarily focused on a satisfying career & your own relationship.

Biological maturity means reproduction; spiritual maturity

means making disciples.Think! Don't be a DINK!

Parents are laborers in the harvest - Luke 10:1-2.

The Spiritual Generation Gap: in our culture, many are biologically adults while emotionally adolescent or younger. Few Christians grow up to become spiritual

parents; they prefer an endless adventure without responsibility. Few churches teach spiritual parenting as

a responsibility; this is the major obstacle to biblical disciple making.

The transition to spiritual parenthood involves moving from an exciting but shallow ministry with many

people to calm, deeply nurturing relationships with just a few people who have names.

These people who have names are our disciples.

The presence of spiritual parents makes a small group into a spiritual family.

When children become parents, their parents become Grandparents. The role of spiritual Grandparents is to help the parents with their children. (2 Timothy 2:2)

Parents are able to bear children and also raise them to maturity where they also become good parents.

Who do you know at this stage?What is your church doing with

people at this stage?What church problems arise with

people this stage?How can you help these people

move onward?

Module 3: Network Base Design

The prayer tool is a means of

networking with the

lost.

In the early 1960s sociologists Rodney Stark and John Lofland studied the first conversions to the Unification Church or "Moonie" cult in the United States as a means of identifying why people convert, with the following scientific conclusions: Proselytizing bore fruit only when it followed or coincided with the formation of strong social attachments, typically family ties or close personal friendships. Successful conversion was not so much about selling beliefs as it was about building ties, thereby lowering the social costs and raising the social benefits associated with changing one’s religious orientation.

The converse was also true. Recruitment failure was all but assured if a person maintained strong attachments to a network of non-members.

By contrast, those who joined were often newcomers to San Francisco and thus separated from their family and friends.

In short, social attachments lie at the heart of conversion, and conversion tends to proceed along social networks. This discovery has been replicated in scores of subsequent studies all over the world.

Harvard sociologist Robert D. Putnam’s research published in Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, indicates that social networks in our culture are in rapid decline; a bankruptcy of "social capital" is developing which threatens the future of churches, communities and democracy itself. Putnam’s metaphor is the decline of organized bowling in leagues in favor of bowling alone or in groups with little permanence or expectations. Social capital is more than community voluntarism where strangers temporarily join together for a task. Bowling teams over time develop covenant bonds of trust and mutual obligation that would allow one to borrow $100 or a car for the weekend. We are still socially involved with each other, but in progressively more shallow ways which do not help people learn how to make and keep commitments.

If the research of missiologist Donald MacGavran and sociologist Rodney Stark is correct, the gospel spreads from person to person ONLY through social networks of caring relationships.

We are living in a century that is destroying those social networks, and the church with it. In order to make disciples it is absolutely essential that we understand our own human networks, how to rebuild them and increase the positive influence we have with we have with the people around us. the people around us.

Which is more beneficial to health – to prevent death in one year: quitting smoking or joining a weekly small group?

Family and Friendship Networks

Common Interest,

Hobby or Concern

Geographical Neighborhood

Innovators & Early Adopters

Who do you see on a regular weekly basis, whether or not you know their name?

* = “lost”? = unknown! = problem

Praydaily.

Chatweekly.

Chatweekly.

ConversationsChange Lives

InviteMonthly

EvaluateAnnually

Continue to build a spiritual relationship with the prayer tool

Until they are ready for a JUMP Group (Child/Teen)

May your spiritual family grow – generation after generation – 2 Timothy 2:2