How to Start Journey in Your Ministry

Decisions that Need to Be Made First

1. Personally Disciple
Make a committed decision to become a discipler personally.  Be an example in discipleship.  Meet every week with your disciple.  You and your wife should disciple as many as possible.It is easier to double two people than a group of 5, 10 or more.
The results are much higher with one-on-one.
One-on-one allows everyone to focus their time on those who are receptive and ready to grow.More people will want to disciple when they know it is one-on-one.
You can lay your head down on the pillow at night peacefully, knowing everyone who wants to move forward in their Christian life can do so.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.I designed Journey in the context of planting churches. One goal is to get the church self-supporting, of course. Every time a disciple completes Lesson 5, the offerings go up. So count the cost of not multiplying one-on-one disciple-makers as well.

3. Officially place one-on-one discipleship in your church schedule.
Many USA churches have a morning church service and then one-on-one discipleship. Some have discipleship available on Wednesday nights, throughout the church, so that childcare is available.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 Choose 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 Disicple

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

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. Recommended: Continue training and gaining commitments.
Meet with your disciplers to continue training them in the lessons, and help them with any problems in a monthly meeting for as long as needed.

Publically Recognize at Lesson 5 and 10

13. Recognize
Some, at first, publicly recognize the discipler and disciple when they finish each lesson.We provide certificates for Lessons 5 and 10, and you should give them a public special recognition when they complete those lessons.*The Certificate files are in the Downloads section.
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14. Keep Records
Ask the disciplers to record all discipleship meetings on the form that is publicly placed at the church.Monitor the progress of each discipler by observing how quickly or slowly they are progressing.*The Record keeping files are in the Downloads section.
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15. Continue Expanding
Talk about discipleship with Journey every Sunday.  Include it in every aspect of your ministry: camps, retreats, fellowships, outreach, invitations, preaching, teaching, and training - bring all the parts together.All activities should (and can) strengthen discipleship.Picture this in your mind:  all your adults can lead someone to Christ and are trusted to disciple new converts to do the same.

Download Section

Click on an image to download the file.

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