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Approaches to the Making Disciples
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Paul Jang
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2008-03-24 03:06:37, hit : 2,696 |
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Approaches to the Making Disciples
Several approaches to the disciple making program may be planned according to the situation of the church. The church can plan one or more discipleship groups according to the scale of the church. Tom Sine has classified the disciples into four kinds of group: (1) personal discipling so called the intimate person-to-person approach, Jesus' call to follow is always a personal call, (2) household discipling presenting the gospel to a whole family. (3) small group discipling like a Bible study, lay witness, or less conventional group, and (4) church discipling which is one of the formal church education programs (Tom Sine 1985, 72-75).
Basically making disciples for church growth may start with small groups because it plans not only to win the people outside the church but to make them spiritually grow. If it consists of too large a size group, it is difficult for them to qualitatively grow, if it consists of too small a size, it is difficult for the church to quantitatively grow.
Bill Hull has pointed out that the greatest weakness of the large group is that it only serves to tell people what they should believe and why, without the personal touch, the fine-tuning, otherwise, that one on one provides a great deal of fine-tuning, but it takes too long and is an insufficient use of a person's time (Hull 1988, 173). He insists that small group is the most effective method because: (1) it is Jesus' example, (2) it provides the proper ministry flow, and (3) it provides a controlled environment (Hull 1988, 174-175).
Henstenes said, "We need Christian small groups because they help us to become what we are meant to be-those set free by the love of Christ, who seek to share his love with others" (Hestenes 1976, 10). She also insisted that small groups could meet some of the most important needs: spiritual growth, friendship, strength, love, and service to others (Hestenes 1976, 10).
In order for there to be both quantitative and qualitative growth, therefore, the disciple making class must be planned to be convenient and effective for the discipler to carry out. Jesus did not focus on the number of the disciples but their quality. Of course, it is a fact that He aimed for a large number of the people to be saved at a time, while He sometimes aimed at personal contact for caring ministry.
But in disicipling ministry, He chose a small number. Discipleship training, therefore, is the strategy of an effective unit for church growth (Ok 1987, 3). Jesus also preached the words of God to crowds of people in evangelism, and counseled with one or two in caring ministry, but chose a small group consisting of 12 disciples in His disciple making ministry. This became the basis for His ministry to the world.
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Introduction
Ch Growth 