Intentionality

By Curtis Erskine and Bobby Harrington

In 2022 the theme for Discipleship.org is Intentionality.

Intentionality is the single most strategic area of disciple making. It is the difference between just wanting to help people and actually making disciples.

We like the way the Oxford Dictionary defines intentionality – the fact of being deliberate or purposive.

As a philosophy, it is the quality of mental states (e.g., thoughts, beliefs, desires, hopes) that consists in their being directed toward some object or state of affairs.

Stated succinctly, disciple making is directed toward helping people to come to faith in Jesus and to form their lives around Jesus Christ.

Curtis Erskine is on the Discipleship.org leadership team.  Read how he describes his own introduction to disciple making…

My introduction to Jesus Style Disciple Making was when I took an elective class on discipleship in seminary. In that class, one of the first books that I read was the book, Discipleshift: Five Shifts to Help Your Church Make Disciples Who Make Disciples. As I read Discipleshift, I sat in my living room and alternated between crying from broken heartedness over the condition of our churches, and laughing for joy over having finally found what I believed to be the answer for the condition of our churches.

I then read quite a few different discipleship books including the rest of Jim Putman’s books. After doing so, I thought to myself about Jim, “This guy has a plan.” Everyone else spelled out what it meant to be a disciple of Jesus, but Jim laid out what I believed was the best step-by-step, intentional plan for how to be and make disciples of Jesus. However, my next thought was, “Well, anyone could write about this stuff, I wonder if they really do it.”

To be honest, by this point in my life I was extremely skeptical of anything that churches and pastors said (even though I was a pastor). I had been disappointed far too many times. So, my wife and I jumped on a plane and attended a Discipleshift conference at Jim’s church in Idaho to see if what he was proposing was possible.

On the first day of the Discipleshift conference they feed you breakfast. During breakfast, the two leaders who would be with us in our small group sat down at our table and ate breakfast with us. I thought to myself, “We paid a decent amount of money to be here, I guess the least they can do is come and sit with us.”

I told you I was skeptical.

I had seen too many things in churches in my life that had turned out to be fake, so my assumption was that their interest in us was fake as well. However, what I assumed was fake interest was actually intentionality. They sat with us not because we paid them too, but because they were intentionally getting to know us so that they could help us be and make disciples of Jesus.

This intentionality was probably one of the first things that drew me to Jim and his plan of disciple making. In fact, one of the biggest things that had turned me off from churches in our American culture was the lack of intentionality. In my opinion, if you are going to do something, have a plan and do it. If it doesn’t work, come up with a better plan and try again. If you are going to be and make disciples of Jesus, have a plan and make sure that it works.

By the end of the conference, I was more than convinced that what Jim was proposing about being and making disciples of Jesus was not only possible, but that his church was actually doing it, intentionally, every day. But most importantly, I was convinced that what Jim was proposing about being and making disciples was how Jesus made disciples; intentionally.

One of the things that ultimately convinced me about Jim’s approach was when we attended a Thursday night service at his church and someone was in the parking lot intentionally shaking people’s hands as they came into the building… that someone was Jim. When we left the service, someone was at the door of the building intentionally shaking hands… Jim. I have visited much smaller churches where the pastor couldn’t be bothered to get to know people, much less visitors.

If my wife would have had her way, we would have packed up and moved to Idaho to become members of Jim’s church. It wasn’t just because Jim was intentional, but because he had taught his church to be intentional. I imagine that if we had packed up and moved to Idaho and joined Jim’s church, it might not have been Jim that we would have gotten to know, but that there were plenty of other people in the church who would have intentionally gotten to know us and helped us to be and make disciples of Jesus.

Ultimately, that is what I believe that many people who really want to be and make disciples of Jesus are looking for, even if they don’t know what to call it; someone to intentionally form a relationship with them and intentionally teach them how to be and make disciples of Jesus. That’s what I was looking for, and I thank Jim for helping me find it.

My story about how I learned intentionality from Jim Putman is just one of the many stories we hope to share in 2022 at the Discipleship.org National Disciple Making Forum.

Let’s close with one summary reminder for you to take away: disciple making is intentionally helping people to come to faith in Jesus and to form their lives around Jesus.

It’s the greatest thing to be intentional about on planet earth.

PS – Jim Putman will be one of our main stage speakers at the 2022 National Disciple Making Forum, Oct 5-6^th in Nashville.  Jim’s team from the Relational Discipleship Network will also be leading four of our breakout track sessions (sign up here).