Checklist for Building a Disciple Making Culture in Your Church
Are you ready to shift the culture and mission of your church to start proactively making disciples? Do you want to engage more people into a relationship with Jesus? Are you seeking a more vital and passionate congregation?
Here is a 10 step checklist to help you create your plan to make the paradigm shift in your church.
Make the decision to become a discipleship church.
Step number one is to make the conscious decision to develop the base culture and mission of your church to a discipleship culture versus a membership culture. This is not an arbitrary decision, even though it is steeped in the Great Commission that Jesus gave his disciples.
It’s a decision that will cause you to overturn the last 75 years of church administration history that relied on headcounts to measure growth and vitality. In a discipleship culture, the metrics for measuring growth and vitality are engagement with the Gospel and community impact. Successfully living into Jesus’ teachings to make an impact in the local or global community are the activities people will want to invest their time, energy, and financial resources.
Your own local church leaders might not understand the paradigm shift at first. This is why you must be prayerful in your decision-making and firm in your commitment as we head into step 2.Cast the vision with your leadership.
The next step in shifting the culture of your church into becoming a proactive disciple making congregation is to cast a vision for why it is important, how you will approach the process, and your expectations. Start these conversations with your staff and lay leaders to not only gain their “buy in” but to also address their feedback and ideas for implementing a proactive process in the church.
If making disciples proactively as Jesus instructed us is to be your priority, then it is imperative that the team you lead is casting the same vision. If persons you work closest with aren’t willing to adapt, then how will you expect people in your congregation that are only investing a couple of hours a week in the church to adapt. Pray for your staff and leaders growth, but also pray for your courage to make changes as needed to your team to ensure a united effort.Find your Discipleship Champion.
One of the early projects for your team to undertake as they absorb the disciple making priority is to identify the leader(s) for this process. As you have seen throughout your ministry, initiatives that don’t have ownership by a leader and their team won’t make a lasting impact. By ownership I mean that these leaders have adopted proactive disciple making as their priority in serving God and the church. They are responsible for supporting, equipping, and encouraging their teammates that are also called to make disciples.
Let me take a moment to clarify leadership roles and responsibilities. As the pastor, your role is to be the champion of the discipleship priority. Your energy and example will be the fuel that will spread throughout the congregation. You will need a Champion, someone from your staff or leadership that is passionate about this process and skilled in leading others. They will assume the “managing partner” role to own, guide, and grow this initiative of culture change.
The Disciple Making Leaders are the people that are called into this role that will be the engine driving the process day in and day out. Another pragmatic way to look at these roles is to understand your job is to support, equip, and encourage the Disciple Making Leaders so that they can do the same with their teams of guides, disciple makers, and disciples.Cast the vision with your congregation.
Once you have cast the vision with your team and gained agreement on the importance of this priority, then it is time to start sharing with the larger community. I am not going to spend pages telling you how to communicate to your people, you are already very good at that aspect of your job. I would like to make a couple of recommendations that will help your people see themselves in the disciple making process.
It is important that your congregation understands the “why” for making discipleship the top priority in your church. But that “why” has to relate to the people specifically. What I mean is that it is more important for individuals to understand the benefits they will gain in becoming a disciple more than how it will impact the vitality and growth of the church. If your people can see how a relationship following Jesus Christ can help them not only grow spiritually but overcome the burdens they are carrying in their lives, the church will be more vital because of it.Find your first guides.
In disciple making, the journey is usually a series of small steps that engages the disciple with the people and resources to help them find a relationship with Jesus. Whether the road to baptism and discipleship happens immediately, or in days-weeks-months, the key is that the church is guiding the person every step along the way. How does the church provide that level of hands-on, customized help to disciples with limited staff and time?
The church can absolutely provide a high level of custom support by following Philip’s example (Acts 8:27-31) and building a team of people that are committed to following the Holy Spirit to guide others on their journey to become disciples. Disciple making guides or coaches are the Philips in your church; people committed to helping others grow and serve, following their unique discipleship path.This one-to-one support is how a successful culture becomes embedded not only in your church, but in the hearts of your congregation.
Who are these guides and where do you find them in your church? The good news is that those people are already in your church! Guides don’t have to be Bible experts or seminary-trained counselors, just someone willing to coach, encourage, and support people seeking a better way to live or to live into their God-given purpose. You might find your initial guides already teaching young people or adults, they could be leaders or servants on your greeting and hospitality team, or they might be sitting in the back row to make a fast get-away after the last Amen!Launch a disciple makers group.
In my opinion, the next step is a crucial and critical move forward in this change process. That step is to hand select your initial group of six disciples that will begin their discipleship journey. If possible, these disciples should be people that are fairly new (within 2 years) to your church that are ready to take next steps. If you don’t have enough new folks, then identify others in your congregation that are ready to take a next step and invite them into the group.
In addition to your first group of six disciples, the Champion/Team Leader should recruit a person that will be the first guide. This person will be someone who sees the importance of proactive disciple making and is ready to take their first step into a servant leadership position. The guide will participate in the initial group work and then will undertake their role to guide these disciples afterward.Setup your Disciple Making System.
You will need a software solution to reinforce your mission to proactively make disciples. The system should have the capability of implementing connection strategies and offering tools for your guides to provide timely and relevant support to their disciples is extremely critical. If you are one of those forward thinking churches that employs applications to support your ministry, this solution may already reside in your church. If you are limited in your use of software to support your ministries, and you believe disciple making is your number one priority, now is the time to explore what tools are available to help you be proactive and successful!
The good news is that the software solution that you might need doesn’t have to be expensive or overly complicated. But to be effective and successful, you will probably need to invest in some assistance to implement a system that meets your process and needs. ChurchCMO can offer assistance to help you use your existing software or to find a low-cost alternative to help you manage your proactive, disciple making process.Train your first group of guides.
The guides you have already identified for proactive disciple making need to be trained. This training is critical because these are the most important persons in your culture as they are building relationships with and guiding your new disciples. These guides do not need specialized skill sets as teachers or scholars, but successful guides will be relationship oriented to build trust with their “disciples in process” so they can offer guidance and support.
The initial guide training should include understanding the vision for this process, the how to of the process you will deploy, and where to find the resources to share with their disciples. Equally as important, guides need to know how to access and use the data from your Disciple Making System to present relevant and timely resources and opportunities to their disciples.
Looking forward, you should incorporate a regular forum, like a monthly huddle, for your guides to come together and share ideas, insights, and ask questions. ChurchCMO offers resources for initial guide training and ongoing support for your guides.Distribute a Self-Assessment Connecting Form.
The most effective strategy to connect with new disciples is by personal invitation by your existing disciples and guides. One way to help facilitate that invitation and to offer prospective disciples the ability to opt-into the process is by using a self-assessment quiz.
The goal of the self-assessment quiz is two-fold. First, the assessment begins a conversation with the prospective disciple by asking them to look inside themselves and answer some questions to enlighten, encourage, and/or motivate them to find answers by engaging with the church. The real key to the assessment is the respondent will receive a custom report based on their responses. The report presents an authentic assessment and encourages them to seek resources for their personal and spiritual growth.
The second goal of the assessment is to start a conversation with prospective disciples. When the prospect completes the assessment, they input their email address to receive their custom report. Unless the person has just emerged from a 20 year sabbatical in a cave, they understand that by sharing their email address, they expect to receive some value for free. That is why the report has to be authentic (based on their actual responses), helpful , and not salesy.
ChurchCMO has created self-assessment quizzes that you can utilize at no-cost. These quizzes can be customized slightly to fit your church culture, but most are field tested to achieve results.Continue casting the vision.
Be consistent and constant in delivering your message. One sermon or even sermon series is not going to ingrain this priority into your congregation. Find ways to regularly incorporate disciple making into your weekend services and during the weekly communications and events. (NOTE: I am not talking about just announcing the new classes for the season - no more square pegs into round holes!).
And finally, make sure your people can see how you and your staff are making proactive disciple making a priority in your ministry. Leading by example is not a pithy cliche but a mandate if you are to instill the Great Commission into your congregation. Just as important is to help your people see themselves being proactive disciples - give them tools, support, and encouragement to live into their role in the process.