What if I could show you the exact steps to get 3 new disciples from your church or community? What would that be worth?
What if I could also tell you how to get your church board to go along with you on a discipleship strategy? (Imagine that!) Would that be worth $100?
OK, one more... what if I could teach you how to use your worship service so that it promoted real, deep discipleship, not just a scattered set of priorities?
These are the kinds of things I talk about with pastors regularly in Discipleship Coaching. Let's talk about:
How to know if discipleship coaching is right for you
I recently took a survey of small church pastors. Here's what they told me about their top frustrations on new believer discipleship.
#1: “I don't really have a discipleship plan."
I get this. After 12 years of pastoring a church, I realized that I was spending a lot of mental energy INVENTING! I was creating something new every time, instead of working off a framework that could help me give expected, good guidance to someone just starting off.
He needs good guidance for discipleship... i.e. discipleship coaching.
#2: “I don't have good discipleship tools right now."
But he’s correct — some tools are basically, “Welcome to the Family of God! Here, have this large textbook.” I don't know about you, but my new Christians get overwhelmed easily if you can’t give them something they can chew — something BITE-SIZED for them.
#3: “I feel like most discipleship plans take too much customization.”
One pastor had some great content — over 400 pages!! — but it was obvious that he and others had done a ton of work on it, to make it more workable for his particular theological framework.
#4: “I’m so busy doing the work, I don’t have time to build a good system.“
Hey, I've been there. People work is messy and busy. Real, quality ministry in your local context can be very high-demand. Many pastors can get so busy working IN our church that we have no time to work ON our church. It's like being so busy that you can't stop to change the spark plugs and the air filter in your car.
These are the kinds of things that are important, even if they're not urgent and shouting at us.
#5: “I know lack of a clear discipleship plan is costing us!”
Man, I really feel this. Let's put the pieces together for a summary:
Pastors who need discipleship coaching
Here are some common characteristics of pastors who need discipleship coaching
Are you a pastor who wants to do better with your discipleship strategy?
Are you tired of wasting a ton of time just reading random blog posts?
Do you need a fresh set of eyes on your discipleship pathway?
Do you need practical action steps instead of just theories?
Sure, you could go to “Google Seminary,” and spend all afternoon reading blog posts that Google thought were important… or you could take a more intentional path to effective discipleship ministry in your local church.
Let me encourage you to consider discipleship coaching.
My Story
I’m Darrell Stetler II and I’m pastor of a smaller church in South Oklahoma City.
After pastoring for over 12 years, I realized I had no clear pathway for multiplying disciples, and I decided to design a simple pathway that ANYONE could follow. I designed a discipleship strategy that smaller churches could actually DO... clear steps to effectively disciple new believers.
I decided to teach other pastors what I had learned.
Does Discipleship Coaching Matter for Pastors of Smaller Churches?
If you’re like me, you look around and feel just sick at heart about the state of the American church. You instinctively know we’re in a crisis of discipleship. In a recent survey by the Barna Group:
Only 1% of US pastors say their church is doing “very well” at discipling new and young believers.” 99 out of 100 pastors recognize we’ve got a problem.
But get this: Only 8% of US pastors say THEIR church is doing “very well at discipling new and young believers.”
Most pastors feel that they're not getting it done.
We have “undiscipled” our way into the mess we’re in… and the only way we're getting back out of it is if some smaller church pastors like you and like me decide “we’re going to disciple our way back out.”
You can’t sit around waiting for megachurches to solve the discipleship crisis – and you can’t sit around blaming them for it, either.
Let me give you a shocking statistic: If every megachurch in the United States added 1,000 new disciples, it would be 1.8 million new Christians.
But if every smaller church in America added just 10 new disciples, it would be 3.8 million new Christians.
Statistically, the small church is the backbone of America! But a lot of smaller church pastors will admit, they have no clear discipleship plan. If that’s where you’ve been, I’m guessing you’d like that to change.
The truth is, reading a blog post like this one is not going to be sufficient to make the change. You're going to need
Personal attention
Practical action steps
Focused thinking
Intentional planning
Systematic implementation
Let me tell you what this coaching course covers:
What's Covered in Discipleship Coaching?
The program I designed, Getting Started With Discipleship, covers the following modules:
Module 1: Developing a Disciple-Making Mindset
We focus on clarifying your mission and having a disciple making mindset, the mental shifts you need to make to make that happen.
Module 2: What Is A Disciple? Getting Clear on What You’re Trying to Produce
If you’re not sure what you’re aiming at, you’ll hit it every time. We’ll rethink what a disciple is so we can be sure to build one.
Module 3: How to Create a Crystal Clear Discipleship Pathway
Your discipleship entrance and pathway need to be crystal clear, unmissable in your church. We’ll talk about how to do that.
Module 4: How to Communicate about Discipleship to Your Congregation
How do you announce it? How do you invite people into discipleship? What’s your pitch to a person who has just become a Christian? We’ll talk about all those.
Module 5: How to Get Your first 3 Disciples
Practical, tactical strategies for finding people who will say “yes, I want to really follow Jesus... can you help?”
Module 6: Using Your Worship Service to Promote Discipleship
We’ll spend some time brainstorming and thinking through how you can promote discipleship in every part of your worship service.
Module 7: Plan to Multiply Disciples From the Beginning
Multiplication is not an option, it's a biblical essential. Paul says to Timothy in 2:2, "And the things you have heard
me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others." In that verse, we can see 4 generations of disciples. Are you planning to multiply like this?
Module 8: How to Recruit a Discipleship Champion from Your Congregation
We discuss key action steps for finding someone who might be able to be a champion for the topic of discipleship within your church, so you don't have to bear the full weight of promotion, influence, and conversation on discipleship.
Module 9: How to Convince Your Church Board to Move Forward on Discipleship
Imagine that. :) How can you frame discipleship as an essential, and convince a group of people to move forward?
Module 10: How to Find a Discipleship Partner (Think Who, Not How)
We'll talk about a great book called "Who, Not How," and how it influences our recruitment of outside partners. We discuss how to find someone else to lift the load in this mission-critical area of discipleship.
Discipleship Coaching is focused on action, not theories.
This 10 sessions is ruthlessly focused on practical action steps. Honestly, I hate theory that doesn't lean into practical actions. So I labored to make this course absolute pure 100% "do-ability" from day one. Every session ends with 2-3 action steps you can take that very day or week to move the needle on discipleship in your church.
By the end of the 10 weeks you will see the needle moving on discipleship in your church. You will know how to establish a clear plan and execute on that plan.
So click the button down below, sign up, and I will get an email to you immediately with everything you need to get started:
The 10 session coaching videos
Your workbook you can download & print out
A printing license so you can have your staff or church board go through it
A link to a 22-question Discipleship Assessment
The link to schedule your 30 minute Zoom call
Let's get you started on effective discipleship right now!