Creating a Discipleship Pathway
A “discipleship pathway” is the intentional route, steps, and paths in your church to develop missionary disciples for Kingdom impact. It is the engine for the effectiveness of your mission.
The goal for a discipleship pathway is never to get someone through it; the goal is to get individuals to own it. As long as the church owns the pathway, the only possible response for an individual is consumption. When something is ours, a shift happens inside of us, and we tend to approach it in a fundamentally different way.
Discipleship is a system of systems involving First Steps, Next Steps, and Ongoing Steps.
First Steps
First steps are designed to identify and welcome individuals into the life of your church. Each “first step” function should have a focused leader
Online First Impressions – Website, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Tik Tok
Onsite First Impressions – greeters, gift, gather info
Follow-up – email(s), text(s), - Thank you for attending / Next message in series / invite to Newcomers class / Invite to Next Steps
Newcomers Class – vision, values, intro to next steps; pastor to speak
Next steps
Next Steps are focused on stretching, enhancing, and refreshing an individual’s spiritual life. Next steps can be understood as any concentrated, short-term, and temporary experience or learning opportunity designed for fresh insight and growth.
Discover – Alpha / Baptism Class
Deepen – Seminars on essentials – Practises / Story / Character / Life
Deploy – short-term, action-oriented service opportunity
First and Next steps are short-term and intended to bring individuals back into the center of the pathway—the ongoing steps.
Ongoing Steps
Learn how to self-feed and become self-disciplined.
It’s ultimately in the ongoing steps that individuals in your church will learn how to own their faith and this discipleship pathway.
Eight discipleship attributes consistently show up in the life of maturing disciples:
Bible engagement
Obeying God and denying self
Serving God and others
Sharing Christ
Exercising faith
Seeking God
Building relationships
Being unashamed (transparency)
What is the 70 percent that people can do that will move them toward maturity as a disciple?
Core Practises
Reading/studying the Bible - "The more an individual did the input goal of reading their Bible, the higher they scored in all of the output goals. So the more you can help your church to read the Bible, the better they are going to be able to obey God and deny self, serve God and others, share Christ, exercise their faith, seek God, build relationships, and be unashamed about their faith."
Worship service - The maturity level of a disciple is greatly influenced by the frequency that they attend worship services.
Small groups or classes - "The more often an individual attended a small community, the higher they scored in all of the output goals! So attending a small group positively influences your ability to obey God and deny self, serve God and others, share Christ, exercise faith, seek God, and be unashamed about your faith."
Serving God and others - Discipling others while being discipled is actually one of the best ways to get disciple.
Movement
Discipleship is movement toward Christ.
A mature disciple is an individual whose faithfulness leads them to fruitfulness.
A mature disciple is one who reproduces disciples.
Vitalized churches have a simple process that produces movement from First to Next to Ongoing.
Daniel Im is the Senior Associate Pastor at Beulah Alliance Church, Edmonton, and author of “No Silver Bullets”.