In Jesus’ ministry, he always met people where they were on their journey towards the Lord. Look at the disciples; before He asked his disciples to follow Him, each disciple was at a different place in their lives and their faith… wherever they were, that is exactly where Jesus started discipling them. He began the discipleship process before they were even aware of it; in the harvest. 

We all have our own story of how we came to follow Jesus, and we will have taken different paths to reach where we are today. All our journeys are unique to who God designed us to be; but there are certain critical elements that are always the same in the process; that is the discipleship cycle. We can see clearly that Jesus had a method in his mission to make disciples:

  • STEP 1 – “I do – you watch.”
  • STEP 2 – “You do – I watch.”
  • STEP 3 – “You do – someone else watches.”

Jesus used this simple method to make disciples who made disciples. He understood that everything He did was reproduced in the lives of His disciples from the day he met them. Jesus’ mission was to catalyze disciple making movements through his disciples. He modeled the inner work of being a disciple and the outer work of making disciples. This cycle is the key to multiplying the Kingdom of God. It means we are making disciples that will make disciples, who will make more disciples. 

Real-life Journey

My friend Glenn shared the following about his journey:

I have several friends that I consider to be accountability partners. They help me grow in my faith and hold myself to the standards that God would want of me. We spend a lot of our focus on discipleship and how to become better disciple coaches. As I became more aware of, and committed to, developing relationships with people who don’t yet have a spiritual connection with Christ, we were thrilled to see people growing in faith and being added to our discipleship group. It was exciting to see this progress, yet although this process was reproducible, our efforts were only additive. We shifted our approach to the framework of a “cycle” and are now seeing our efforts multiply. For example, one of our initial group members is branching out to start a Hispanic discipleship team, reaching a group of people that would be almost impossible for me to reach. It is exciting to see where the multiplication effect takes us next!

Reflection Questions: 

  1. Who have you shared your disciple-making cycle with in the last 90 days?
  2. If you haven’t shared your disciple-making cycle recently, what is getting in the way?
  3. What changes do you need to make to your disciple-making cycle?
  4. How transferable is your discipleship cycle?
  5. Who have you discipled that is using your cycle with other disciple coaches?
  6. What elements need to be refined further or added to make your cycle more transferable?

If you still haven’t taken our FREE Disciple Coach Quiz, CLICK HERE.

Check out the 5 Disciple Coach Habits training coming up October 11 – CLICK HERE!

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