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4 Steps of a Discipleship Pathway
What does it actually take to move someone from a new believer to a fully formed disciple-maker? Discover how filling this gap can transform your ministry from the gathering of crowds to the multiplication of leaders who live on mission everyday.
What are the essential steps that are needed to move someone from being a new believer to becoming your dream disciple? I want to give you four essential steps to your pathway and then show you the one that nearly every church is missing.
Ken Blanchard identified four stages of learning that are true for every skill. And it’s going to be the same as we help people grow in the skill of disciple-making. You can see these four steps in how Jesus prepared His disciples, and you want to do the same for your people.
Step 1: Call Listeners
The first step of your pathway must be to call listeners. People start off at your church as listeners. The relationship between them and you is I do, you watch. This happens most commonly in your worship service. There’s no responsibility shared with your congregation at this point, and your goal is to call them into mission partnership with you. It is for them to answer the call to follow Jesus and to join the mission of your church. Once this happens, they move to the second step of the pathway.
Step 2: Connect Loyalists
The second step is all about connecting loyalists. In this step, people move from just listening to you to becoming loyal to Christ’s church. They want to be part of the crew. This may happen through a conversation with your staff after the service or attending an assimilation class at your church, but it’s the moment when people say, “We are in.”
At this point, we must connect them with people and opportunities that help them become part of the family. This usually happens through small groups and volunteer teams. It’s in this step that the relationship changes from I do, you watch to I do, you help. The staff is still owning the ministry and setting the pace, but your people are now known and assisting your staff.
Step 3: Coach Learners
The third step of the pathway is where everything changes. The goal is to coach learners. In the first two, the ministries are primarily engagement ministries. They’re focused on inviting people into the church family. The third and fourth steps are primarily empowerment ministries. Ownership changes from I do, you help to you do, I help.
The goal in this step is for people to begin practicing disciple-making skills, such as reading their Bibles, sharing their faith, confessing and repenting, and more. This step looks significantly different than the first two, because these environments are focused on practice and training you to become a disciple-maker. For this step to truly train someone in disciple-making, it must be a place where disciple-making skills are modeled, applied, and evaluated. It moves beyond just teaching information to holding people accountable to practicing it in their everyday lives. Once the person has learned the skills needed to become a disciple-maker and they’ve practiced them, it is time to move to the fourth step.
Step 4: Commission Leaders
The final step of the pathway is to commission leaders. It’s in this step that the relationship changes to you do, I cheer. It’s at this point that you send people out to go and lead others. This may mean that it happens in your programming, like at a small group or on a volunteer team, or maybe it’s happening in their circles of influence as they disciple people where they live, work, and play.
Discipleship Pathway Struggles
The question now becomes, where do most churches struggle?
Most churches do great at steps one and two. They can connect people to the church family. Unfortunately, churches struggle with steps three and four. If you look at most church strategies, their pathway will move people through steps one, two, and four. They’re going to say something like gather, grow, and go. Worship, connect, and serve. What is often missing is the third step of coaching learners. See, everyone recognizes that practice is the most influential part of learning any new skill. Yet, the church doesn’t have a place where they’re held accountable to practice disciple-making. The result is that the church has a shortage of leaders because it doesn’t have an environment that equips its people to lead well.
That’s why we created discipleship groups. It’s a highly accountable group that meets for a season of time to coach learners up and then sends them out to make disciples where they live, work, and play. As you build your pathway, you have to identify what your ministry will be that helps coach and commission people out.
Adapted from “Four Steps of a Discipleship Pathway” in the Kingdom Multiplication course. Take the course for free here.
