About a year ago, during a lunch conversation with another pastor, he said this:
“I am done reading the books, and going to the conferences on discipleship.” We both had been on somewhat of a journey into the whole discipleship thing, “What exactly is Biblical discipleship?” “How do we do that today?” We had reached the saturation point. We have heard enough. Our knowledge tank was full.

Fortunately we did not leave it there. We had bought in. The primary mission of the church is to make disciples. It is not enough to put the words into our mission statement. There must be a definable, intentional strategy to foster a disciple making culture in our churches. If you share that conviction, I encourage you to read the “National Study on Disciple Making in USA Churches” done by Discipleship.org in partnership with Exponential. https://exponential.org/resource-ebooks/disciple-making-study/

The study is significant for 3 reasons:
1) It is current, the study was done in 2019
2) It is concise, it includes clear definitions, most notably,
— the program based approach of Level 3 Churches vs
— the individual equipping based approach of Level 4 Churches,
— and the clear definitions of all of the “discipleship” words
3) It concludes with definable recommendations

I believe the timing of this study is also significant. As I write this we are in the middle of responding to the coronavirus. Every church leader has been faced with “doing church” different. Is it possible that the suspension of our normal church routine has prepared us to more objectively reexamine our standard priorities and functions?

The Four Recommendations from the Study:
1) Champion Clear Definitions, Words must have meaning to generate movement. The word “discipleship” for example, has lost all meaning. It means different things to different people.
2) The Senior Pastor must Embrace and Lead the DM effort to establish a DM culture. In Phil 3:17 the apostle Paul invited others to “join in following my example.”
3) Develop New Measures of Success, the standard scorecard of how many “nickles and noses” will not produce a DM culture
4) Champion Effective Strategies, Disciple making will not just happen, even when we use the words, and implement programs. Each church must develop and implement a reproducible process that trains individual disciples who make disciples who make disciples.

Soooo, I submit this study is worth our time and attention, let’s evaluate the recommendations within our church context. The booklets on this web site are intended to be a start to address recommendation #4, Tools that every believer can use such that they become “Equipped to Disciple Others.” .