A Clear Discipleship Process

Although Jesus' commission to His church was to make disciples, many Christians have no idea what is the process employed by their church to transformed new believers in Christ to matured disciples of Christ that radiates Christlikeness. Often the reason is because the process is not there or far from being adequate. Most of the time Christians are supposed to somehow become discipled into Christlikeness amid a plethora of church programs and activities.

Thom Rainer and Eric Geiger wrote an excellent book entitled the Simple Church, based on their study of 400 churches in America. They observed that vibrant and growing churches had a clear process for discipleship that was streamlined and simple whereas struggling churches had no clear process and were complex and cluttered with programs. Hence they defined a simple church as one that is designed around a straightforward and strategic process that moves people through the stages of spiritual growth. The leadership and the church are clear about the process (clarity) and are committed to executing it. The process flows logically (movement) and is implemented in each area of the church (alignment). The church abandons everything that is not in the process (focus). The flow is simple: Clarity > Movement > Alightment > Focus.

This is in line with the experience shared by Pastor Larry Osborne in his book, The Sticky Church that described how NorthCoast grooms its members into matured disciples of Christ through sermon-based discussions and community service in the context of Small Groups. Not only is its process characterterized by clarity, movement, alignment and focus, they have developed the necessary structure to support the process. For more information on the importance of structure, please read Is Complexity Killing the Church?

Note: vHUBs advocates Community Discipleship as the path to move people through different stages of growth towards spiritual maturity by engaging them in the simple iterative process of Community Learning and Outreach.