The principle is simple: healthy things grow. Just as a child or plant thrives in a healthy environment, an organization needs the right care and environment to grow. Unhealthy elements tend to wither away.
In the context of a disciple-making church, the cornerstone lies in cultivating healthy people. A church is a collective of people, and its growth is intricately tied to the well-being of its members.
Spiritual growth starts when a person accepts Christ and is reborn in faith. However, this newfound spiritual life doesn’t guarantee automatic growth. Just like a plant needs the right conditions to thrive, spiritual growth requires a nurturing environment. This nurturing environment is called discipleship – a process and place where individuals are nurtured, supported, and challenged.
A disciple-making church is precisely designed to foster growth. Its primary goal is to guide inexperienced seekers to become fully trained disciples. Similar to raising a child to adulthood, the journey involves steering individuals from spiritual infancy to becoming spiritually mature disciples. This approach is all about setting the stage for growth.
Jesus’ life and ministry reveal how His original twelve disciples grew in their faith. These once-ordinary men transformed into empowered leaders through dedicated growth. Their personal development was incredible. Ultimately, their growth propelled the entire movement forward. After Pentecost, the Church in Jerusalem experienced an exponential surge in numbers. This growth was a direct result of ongoing discipleship efforts. Acts 6:1 highlights this growth: “Now in these days when the disciples were increasing in number.”
We might assume that everyone desires church growth – more souls embracing faith, more lives transformed. And yet, there’s a catch. The enthusiasm for growth often fades when it requires inconvenience or discomfort. We’re okay with growth as long as it doesn’t disrupt the status quo. People are supportive of growth until it asks for personal sacrifices.
The paradox is that while everyone craves growth, they also yearn for stability. People hope for church expansion but want to park in their usual spots and keep their preferred seats. They want growth but prefer the intimacy of their existing small groups without expanding. People want growth in theory but might not fully comprehend everything it requires.
The foundation of church growth is a meticulous organization with a strategy to foster growth. This means helping individuals grow and being prepared to make collective sacrifices. The church community needs to balance expanding in numbers and maintaining intimacy through small groups. Achieving this balance involves embracing small groups that provide personalized care, allowing each member to thrive. When both growth and intimacy are nurtured simultaneously, even a large church can retain the warmth of a close-knit community.
At Impact Discipleship Ministries, we are committed to helping churches and Christians grow. We provide resources and consulting to help you lead your church to grow and help people grow. Please get in touch with us at impactdisciples.com if we can serve you in any way.
Because of the importance of intentionality in disciple making, we at Discipleship.org are going to emphasize this skill set and mindset over the next four months. Please join with us and seek to share understanding, insight, and practical tools so that you can become skilled at intentionality in relational disciple making and you can help those on your team or in your leadership group to do the same. There are four ways in which we are emphasizing intentionality to help you in the next four months.
- Discipleship.org City Tour Forums – our four City Tour Forums are designed to help you and your team both understand and develop an intentionality posture. The tour is comprised of one day, high impact forums where there will be teaching and round table discussions. Every attendee also gets a copy of Brandon Guindon’s new book, Intentional: Living Out the Eight Principles of Disciple Making.
Click the image below for more information.
Take the FREE Individual Disciple Maker Assessment – we designed this assessment with a team of national and international disciple making leaders to help each individual be able to evaluate their disciple making mindset and skill. Just by taking this assessment, you will gain an appreciation for the value of intentionality, along with a sense of how you can increase your own level of intentionality. Click the image below to take the assessment.
- Read the short FREE book, Becoming a Disciple Maker: The Pursuit of Level Five Disciple Making – Bobby wrote this short eBook with statistician Greg Wiens to help you understand the mathematical and practical impact of one person’s disciple making efforts and skills.
Click the image below to download this free eBook.
- Read Brandon Guindon’s book, Intentional: Living Out the Eight Principles of Disciple Making – Brandon wrote this Discipleship.org book and Zondervan is publishing, because the understanding and practice of disciple making is so crucial. Every attendee at each of our City Tour events (Nashville, Houston, Dallas and Raleigh), as mentioned above, will receive a FREE copy of Brandon Guindon’s book.
Click the image below to order Brandon Guindon’s book from Amazon.com.
Please join with us in this quest to better understand and practice intentionality. It will help us all to become more and more like Jesus, the world greatest disciple maker.