Okay, we talked in the first post about how the #1 thing in making disciples who make disciples in whatever ministry you’re in is their deep and growing relationship with God.
But what about the other stuff?
5 Ways to Grow Disciples/Leaders & Multiply Your Ministry
#1. It always has to connect with their love of God. Like Jesus said, ‘remain in me’ and you will bear much fruit. So, everything has to connect with Jesus. It’s never just about skills or accomplishments.
Personal and communal spiritual practices are a huge help in this process. Encourage things like scripture reading and memorization, practices of silence, centering prayer, journaling, Lectio Divina, the examen and others.
#2. Encourage them in reliability. Help them to be accountable to being on time and getting things done as needed. Reliability is a huge thing in any pursuit and something many people say is disappearing.
#3. Biblical Knowledge is something anyone can grow in. Give them opportunity to dig into God’s word and see what the Holy Spirit shows them.
You don’t have to spoon feed them or give them fill-in-the-blanks. Let them dig into the Bible because if they are a Christian they have the Holy Spriit inside to teach them things. And there is no better teacher, right?
#4. Give them experience in the form of invitation and challenge. Don’t just invite them to do something but give them challenges that will grow them as disciples and leaders. The things you invite them to do should be challenges that you see they can take on and ones that they will be intrigued to do.
#5. Show them how it works for you but also give them a chance as they learn to try new ways. As an experienced disciple maker or minister you have learned a lot of things and they can benefit from doing it your way. But they can also bring effective new ideas if you give them a chance. Give them a chance to try new ideas that might occur to them. Of course, you won’t want them to do anything that doesn’t fit with the Bible.
There you have it,
the 5 perfect ways to make disciples who make disciples. Just kidding.
Those are 5 good ways which you can use and they have been used by many disciplemakers. But there are no absolute methods. To be a disciple is to be a lover and a learner of Jesus. That’s the core and the methods are flexible as we use our experience, creativity and follow the Spirit’s leading.
