By Julie Woodruff: We talk a lot about what we should be doing in in our Discipleship Groups, but what are the stumbling blocks that we need to avoid in order to make them as fruitful as possible?

Too Much Fellowship– We encourage our Discipleship Groups to open with a discussion about their week (high’s and low’s) but it is easy to let that time get away from you and prevent you from getting to the other important aspects of the meeting. Keep the main thing the main thing!
Information NOT Transformation– The goal is for each woman to hear from God’s Word and apply it to her life. Be careful not to let chasing rabbits distract you. Make sure everyone gets a chance to share. It is NOT about learning information but about being transformed by God’s Word.
NOT Prioritizing God’s Word – God’s Word is “living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12) There are many good books to use as extra resources but not at the cost of neglecting the Bible.
Ignore Scripture Memory– The groups that have the biggest problem with scripture memory are mostly the ones that have never tried it! This is a discipline that yields incredible benefits for you and through you. You are doing your group a disservice if you are not making this a priority.
Soft Accountability– You MUST get beneath the surface to achieve significant growth. “Inspect what you expect.”
No Prayer– I am talking about both the women in your group praying as well as you praying for your group. You can’t effectively talk to your women about God until you have talked to God about your women. Prayer is how we talk to and hear from God. As the leader, you model it for your group and then give them opportunities to pray.
Inconsistent Participation– Whether it is attendance, assignments or effort, this must be addressed. Inconsistency is contagious and will eventually have a negative impact on the whole group. If you find this is an issue with your group, pull out the covenant that they all signed and ask them to self-evaluate how well they are doing with the commitment they made to the group.

This blog is from our partner Replicate. Sign up here to get updates sent to your inbox about ministries like theirs so you can grow as a disciple maker.

You as the leader set the tone for your group. They will replicate what they learn from you. Hopefully this is a good check list to help you evaluate how you are doing.

By Julie Woodruff

Originally posted on Replicate’s blog here. Used by permission.

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Source: Avoid These 7 Pitfalls in Your Discipleship Group

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by Bobby Harrington: You’ve embraced the disciple-making lifestyle, but now what? You need to get equipped on what to do.

In this series about our disciple-making partners we help you find excellent guides so you can become a more effective disciple maker.

Meet Robby Gallaty, leader of Replicate Ministries.

Tell us about the name of your ministry.

Replicate is a ministry designed to equip the local church to make disciples who make disciple makers. The word “Replicate” indicates that discipleship is an on-going process in the life of every believer.

What is your unique disciple-making emphasis?

Replicate is unique in that it focuses on equipping church leaders. While every believer should be making disciples, we have found that leaders must first embrace disciple making, if there is to be any significant impact for the church to embrace the whole process.

Making disciples is such a needed and missing element in most churches, our vision is for every church to have discipleship groups.

Picking up from the blog . . .

Our hope is that there will come a day when discipleship groups are as common in every church as a Sunday school or small groups ministry.

When Replicate began, we focused on training everyone. While we saw some impact, there was a disconnect from people who attended that were not in leadership. They would tell us that they understood the process and went back to encourage their leadership to embrace it, but the leaders simply did not get the vision.

This is when we made a specific shift to impact leaders in the local church. By training and investing in leaders, we feel we are more effective with implementation, but we also feel strongly that we are not to bypass church leaders to equip their people. That is the church leader’s role, and we want to help them accomplish the task.

Join Replicate at the National Disciple Making Forum this year in Nashville, Tennessee—November 7-8! Reserve Your Seat Here.

How do you help everyday disciples who aspire to be disciple makers?

Replicate helps churches make disciples who make disciple makers by equipping church leaders to implement an effective disciple making process. At the heart of this process is what we call the “Discipleship Pathway.” The Pathway is simply overlaying Jesus’ model of discipleship across the church. Jesus ministered to crowds, a congregation, in community, and with a core of four (including himself).

Rather than building a church by using the latest and greatest fad, we believe church leaders can and should implement Jesus’ model for maximum effectiveness in making disciples. We offer a simple tool for this through our Disciplemaking Jumpstart. By helping leaders implement the Pathway, we can help them see their people become disciple makers at every step along the way.

One of our most useful tools that everyday disciples can access is our “Making Disciples with Robby Gallaty Podcast.” This resource is available each week and will help anyone become more effective as a disciple maker. Likewise, our blog at www.replicate.org is a library of effective insights on disciple making and related topics users will find invaluable as they strive to make disciples who make disciple makers.

Who are the key leaders in your network?

Robby Gallaty is the President and founder of Replicate Ministries as well as the Senior Pastor of Long Hollow Baptist Church in Hendersonville, TN. Kandi Gallaty helps lead Replicate and has been making disciples for over a decade. She is passionate about cultivating a biblical worldview from the truths of Scripture. Chris Swain is the Executive Director of Replicate. Chris utilizes his two decades of ministry experience to help church leaders launch disciple-making movements.

How can people connect with you?

How Can People Connect with You? The easiest way people can connect with Replicate is through our website at replicate.org. In addition to our aforementioned podcast and blog, people can connect with us through our Discipleship Blueprint live training. We love to connect with leaders and create conversations that lead to effective disciple making.

For King Jesus,

Bobby Harrington, Point Leader, Discipleship.org

Join us at our National Disciple Making Forum!

November 7th- 8th in Nashville, TN

Sign up Today!

New Blogs

“Family Discipleship Activity: Empty Pursuits”

by D6 Family

READ THE BLOG

“Recognize a Mature Disciple by Looking for These 5 Character Traits”

by Jim Putman

READ THE BLOG

“Discipleship and Money Management”

by Impact Discipleship Ministries

READ THE BLOG

New Podcast Episodes

LISTEN NOW

S6 Episode 50: Reproducible Disciple Making Process: My Part, Their Part, God’s Part (Jim Putman, Bob Reed, Brandon Guindon, and Luke Yetter

S6 Episode 49: Christ-Like Environments: Mature Disciples Are Made in Real Relational Environments (Jim Putman, Bob Reed, Brandon Guindon, and Luke Yetter

S6 Episode 48: Spiritual Maturity: What Is It and How Are You Defining It? (Jim Putman, Bob Reed, Brandon Guindon, and Luke Yetter)

The post An Actionable Plan to Replicate Disciples Where You Live appeared first on Discipleship.org.

Source: An Actionable Plan to Replicate Disciples Where You Live

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The following is a guest post by Barry Smith of YouChoose.Community, a friend, veteran church planter, assessor, coach, author and nonprofit founder.

We’ve all heard it, and it can be paralyzing: “I’m just not getting fed anymore!”

It’s a dagger to the heart. It’s the comment that breaks the pastor’s back. The phrase that makes the most pious planter want to cuss like a sailor. It’s the excuse, if repeated, that can make us want to quit.

It could be a façade they’re hiding behind. But you know you’ve been preaching your best stuff and nothing has changed. Let’s assume they legitimately feel this way. What’s the basis for this ridiculousness?

1. The pastor and/or preaching has changed

They’ll say something like, “Things just aren’t the same. It used to be so exciting and interesting. The pastor was so passionate. It’s like everything he said spoke directly to me. But now I just can’t relate as much. I’m just not getting fed anymore. I want deeper teaching.”

A bad way to respond: “Every pastor knows that a person’s discipleship is their own responsibility. To give credit to or put blame on a weekend service is shortsighted, if not ludicrous. Grow up, parishioner, and take responsibility for your own growth!”

2. The church got too big

“It’s like no one notices me anymore. I don’t know anybody. And when I miss a service, nobody calls me.”

What you might think to yourself: “Are you flippin’ kidding me? Too many people are getting saved and growing in their faith? How horrible. We’ll immediately kick some people out so you can be more comfortable. You’ve probably already disconnected, stopped tithing, or never even got involved in growing in the first place.”

3. The focus has changed

“I’m just not sure I buy into the vision anymore. It’s turned into a big show. And all you do is ask for money and tell us to invite our neighbors. It seems like you only care about unchurched people. What about me? Don’t you care about me anymore?”

Your flesh reacts: “Of course we care about you, fool. Think about it… it was all of this horrible outreach mentality and concern for people outside the walls of our church that actually connected you to our body. In fact, you probably wouldn’t even know Jesus if it weren’t for our church.”

A More Spirit-Led Response

There is a solution to all this insanity: start a 3/3 (three thirds) group. These groups have been called many things over the years:

faith community
house church
missional community
small group
discipleship group

It doesn’t matter what you call them. What’s most important is what happens in the group.

The Three Thirds

The top of the fraction stands for the 3 topics of the group:

Sharing
Knowledge
Application

They are like the 3 legs of a stool: if one is short or missing, the whole stool is off kilter.

The bottom of the fraction represents that 1/3 of the total time is spent on each topic. They are equal in importance. Too many discipleship settings spend time exclusively in Bible study, memorization, and prayer. Obviously, those things are important. But they miss inviting the Spirit to lead them in applying what they’ve learned, and then sharing at the next meeting how they did at obeying what God told them to do.

The 3/3 group gains further success by its being made up of their 11 closest family and friends. They never have to birth, split, branch, or multiply. These 12 gather on a weekly basis and spend time studying Scripture, applying it to their lives, and holding one another accountable in a loving environment. And when you get each of them to have a top three list of people they’re praying will meet Jesus, AND to help other groups form as well – that’s going to produce disciples who make disciples.

When everyone spends an equal amount of time in each of these three legs, they will consistently obey what the Holy Spirit leads them to do.

Nobody can be “just not getting fed anymore”! Growth is all but guaranteed! And this type of discipleship group eliminates most weekend service complaints because everyone is getting fed by God and not a weekend service. This is humbling to the primary communicator… but it is effective.

I’ve known Barry for almost 20 years and love his heart for reaching people and starting new things. He’s the founder of YouChoose.Community – an online ministry where you choose when, where, how, and with whom you do faith. YouChoose has communities in California, Indiana and India. You can learn more at www.YouChoose.Community, www.barryonline.com and Family With Purpose, a company through which he and his wife serve families.

The post How to Feed Those Who Are Just Not Getting Fed Anymore appeared first on Church Planting Tactics.

Source: How to Feed Those Who Are Just Not Getting Fed Anymore

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By Josh Patrick:

This is the third part of a series on starting a discipleship group. To access previous blogs in this series, click here.

We sat down with preacher and author Josh Patrick and asked him some basic questions about how Jesus made disciples. Here’s what he told us.

How do you begin your first meeting with new people?

This is how I begin. I invite the men to meet me at a quiet, distraction-free place where we could talk. As soon as everyone arrives, I give a short talk about our need for relationships that are close, life-giving, and distinctively Christ-centered. I admit that even though I’m a pastor, I really need these relationships and I tell them that I prayed and felt led to pledge myself to each of them as a friend and as a brother in the Lord. Then I opened the floor and asked if they had anything to share.

What I hear after that usually confirms that the Spirit had indeed engineered these connections and has called us to walk together. All of the men express similar desires and heart wounds as I have.

My First Group

My first group was a motley crew: a pastor, an accountant, a corporate chef, a videographer, a web security expert, a financial planner, and a music professor. But we were all united by a common desire: to pursue Jesus together.

After everyone shared, I presented a group covenant that outlined some goals and guardrails for our group. This felt risky because it was more formal, and it may feel awkward for you, as well. But relationships can feel awkward at times. Over the years, I’ve learned to err on the side of intentionality and work through those awkward moments.

Remember, the great commission was catalyzed by the most brilliant man who ever lived. He had a plan. He worked the plan. He commanded his disciples to continue with the plan. And the plan worked! People don’t float into spiritual maturity. Your group won’t become close after one or two meetings. Spiritual growth and relational development is a journey and you arrive at your destination if you are intentional and have a purpose. While God can work spontaneously and unexpectedly, the fruits of the Spirit emerge slowly over time as we show up and do our part every day.

Providing A Way Out

Toward the end of our first meeting, I give anyone who didn’t feel comfortable or couldn’t commit an out. I tell the men in several ways that it was totally fine if they didn’t want to join a group like this. I encourage them to pray about their commitment and share our conversation with their wife—if they were married—and ask them to look over the group covenant.

At our second meeting, we officially launch the group.

To solidify the group commitment, I require the men and their wives to sign the group covenant.

In the next part of this blog series, Josh will share his blueprint for how group meetings go after the launch meeting. He will also talk about how his group interacts apart from regularly scheduled meetings.

This blog was written by Josh Patrick, who is the Teaching and Discipleship Minister at Harpeth Christian Church—“the best job in the world,” he says. Josh is driven by a desire to help people catch the vision that knowing Jesus is the greatest reality in the universe. He is the co-author of the newly released book, The Disciple Maker’s Handbook (Zondervan). The aim of this book is to equip everyday Christians to passionately participate in the greatest cause on earth—making disciples of Jesus! Josh and his wife, Joni, have three daughters—Lilly, Joy, and Sarah—and a rambunctious Boston Terrier named Bruno.

Image credit: Unsplash

Source: How to Begin with a New Discipleship Group

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