Discipleship Strategy

By Jonathan | May 18, 2016

Discipleship means a lot of things to a lot of people. Generally it refers to the spiritual development of a single individual. As the Discipleship minister, I take on this task with great reverence. The question then becomes, how do we go about helping people to grow in their spiritual walk? Eventually, one must start talking about programs. A program is basically anything that the church does with any sort of intentionality and regularity. Children’s church, Sunday morning worship, Sunday School, Neighborhood groups, and even fellowship meals are all examples of programs. They are designed services provided by the church for the congregation. So when it comes to programs and the Discipleship ministry, admittedly, we run into some inherit problems. Programs become sacred and their purpose, lost. It is difficult to measure the success of spiritual formation in a body of believers because it is difficult to assess the posture of one’s heart.

So in the Discipleship ministry we are in the business of helping people grow spiritually (this means in obedience toward God), and we want to create an environment where learning obedience can take place relationally with other believers. This tends to mean Small Groups, or Life Groups. And now the rubber meets the road.

The strategy of the Discipleship Team has been to create a culture of spiritual formation through relationships in Small Groups. However, we have stumbled upon something that has altered the way we look at Small Groups. Typically, a church has one Group Ministry. And the trend over the last 20+ years has been to slay Sunday School on the altar of “in home, Bible Study, fellowship groups.” Maybe this is happening because of negative perceptions of Sunday School, or it’s easier for people to attend groups during the week, or maybe it is less intimidating to meet in someone’s living room than in a church class room. However the churches have been justifying it for the last two to three decades, we (the Discipleship Team) simply don’t agree with the “one-size-fits-all” style of small group ministry and certainly want to prioritize the biblical instruction and setting that a traditional Sunday School system provides. Therefore, our strategy involves 4 types of small groups. These four groups all have a unique purpose that distinguishes it from the next and serve a roll in the overall relational oriented strategy of the Discipleship Team and the Church.

At the end of April, we announced another one of these style of groups called PointGroups, which are essentially for assimilation purposes. In September of 2015, we rolled out NeighborhoodGroups. You may be wondering how all this is useful for the church, why we are doing it this way, or how it all fits together. So, over the next couple of weeks, I will be writing blogs that will explain the purpose and development of each style of Group currently in existence (and groups still to come) at NLCC. The church’s mission statement is to “Love God, Love Others, and Make Disicples.” These groups will help us do just that.

Jonathan Willmore
Discipleship Minister