RLD Week 4: Three Keys to Making Disciples

19 “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will send you out to fish for people.”  Matthew 4

The three keys to making disciples are Intentional Leadership, Relationship Driven, and Reproducible Processes.

Think about the first item: Intentional Leadership.  You have to put yourself out there to make other disciples.  A fisherman does not stay at home and hope for the fish to come to them, they go to the lakes and streams to catch the fish.  Sometimes, we have to go somewhere to find those "fish."  We have to make the effort to go to them.  It may be new people or it may be those already around you.  Sitting back and hoping that someone will fall into your lap to disciple won't work, you have to be intentional about finding people to disciple.  

Being relationship driven is to have the "line" to catch the fish.  You've gotten the intentional leadership down, and you're standing in the stream, but now you need to build a relationship.  You need to be accountable to one another, and you need to be honest with those that you are discipling.  That relationship will draw each of you closer together over time, and closer to God as well.  One of the verses read at my wedding years ago was Matthew 18:20, "Where two or more are gathered, I am with them."  The meaning there was that now my husband and I were two, permanently, and God would always have a place in our marriage.  I'm happy to say that he does.    

Finally, the reproducible process is your ability to pull those fish in.  This was the concept that took the longest for me to understand, so I'll do my best at describing it here.  Each fish is at a different spiritual growth stage, and has different needs to become a disciple.  There's no one-size-fits-all approach to discipling, but you need to be aware of the best way to "feed" someone at each stage of growth.  The same conversation with someone who is spiritually dead wouldn't necessarily apply to someone later in their faith.  The point here is to go back and learn more about the spiritual growth stages, and understand the questions people wrestle with in certain stages, as well as understand the motivations.  While each person will require a unique approach, you can still use a similar foundation for people in each stage of their journey.