As disciples discover more about who God is,
they will in turn learn more about what it means for them to bear His image.
Once relationships are formed, opportunities for organic discipleship will be brought to the forefront. We must be willing to capitalize on these opportunities and guide these disciples into a more detailed pursuit of God and who they are in Him. As disciples discover more about who God is, they will in turn learn more about what it means for them to bear His image.
Gary Brandenburg captured this idea in a recent sermon titled, Live Out: The Mission of God, when he stated, "We have discovered that the mission of God is to mobilize the people of God created in the image of God to spread the knowledge of the glory of God."
With this transitional ministry model, the ultimate goal is that students would come to view themselves as missionaries to their own culture. Following the direction of Acts 1:8, students will look to make new disciples within their immediate surroundings on their campus, in their neighboring community, and eventually beyond.
Dynamics of Transitional Discipleship
Enter the discipleship process while engaging in relationships on the basis of the disciple's passion, his gifts, his experience, and the common ground shared by both the disciple and mentor.
Form a group of no more than one mentor and two disciples in a weekly meeting.
Follow Neil Cole's LTG, (Life Transformation Group) format from CMAresources.
- Implement the process of accountability/trust/confession of sin and choices
- Consume scripture by reading several chapters a day
- Pray for one another and the new disciples to be developed
As this relationship deepens, scripture memorization and meditation will be added, along with journaling, fasting, missional 365 (learning to live in a state of service before, during and after a mission trip experience), and specialized sessions emphasizing word study and spiritual gifts.
Transitional turning points should be made at the natural breaks in student's academic schedule, i.e. Middle School to High School to College to Career. During the break between high school and college, summer internships can be set up to expand the disciple's influence and desire for increased ministry. A more intensive study of the Bible will commence, along with international and domestic mission trips that will help develop local stations of service. This will help connect a student's passions and gifts to a specific line of service utilizing the unique gifts of each disciple, such as teaching, speaking, building, nurturing etc.
Jim Cymbala, pastor of Brooklyn Tabernacle Church and author of Fresh Power, makes it clear what is needed for effective discipleship. "We need something with the mark of heaven upon it. Too much of our religious life is made up of programs and human ideas, talent and strategies. While these have value, they pitifully fail to meet the need of the hour. What is missing is something from heaven itself, something from God the Holy Spirit that fills and floods our life" (42).
Let us not be afraid to live spiritually simple. We need to seize and utilize Thom Wolf's steps from Universal Disciple into our meetings and prayer time and ask the following:
Can (message, material, or whatever it means?) be:
- Received personally? Does it have a profound implication? It must be internalized and must transform the soul of the follower.
- Repeated easily? Does it have a simple application? It must be able to be passed on after only a brief encounter.
- Reproduced strategically? Can it be a universally communicated? It must be passed on globally by being translated into a variety of cultural contexts and languages.
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