Disciple-Making Fuels Church Planting

Written by:

David

Saldivar

Published on:

October 27, 2012

Effective discipleship builds the church, not the other way around. We need to understand the church as the effect of discipleship and not the cause. If you set out to build the church, there is no guarantee you will make disciples. It is far more likely that you will create consumers who depend on the spiritual services that religious professionals provide. Now one of the buzzwords around today is the word "missional." People want to create missional churches or missional programs or missional small groups. The problem is that we don't have a "missional" problem or a leadership problem in the Western church. We have a discipleship problem. If you know how to disciple people well, you will always get mission. Always.—Mike Breen, Building a Discipling Culture

Stay connected

Sign up for our newsletter and get the latest resources, training updates, and testimonies.

By clicking Sign Up you're confirming that you agree with our Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy and provide consent to receive updates from our organization.

Thank you! Your submission has been received!

Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.

// Clicking anywhere outside the card closes the popup. overlay.addEventListener('click', function (event) { if (!card.contains(event.target)) { closePopup(); } }); // Show after seven seconds. if (!isDismissed()) { timer = window.setTimeout(openPopup, 7000); } // Allow Escape to close it too. document.addEventListener('keydown', function (event) { if ( event.key === 'Escape' && overlay.classList.contains('kp-popup-visible') ) { closePopup(); } }); } if (document.readyState === 'loading') { document.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', initPopup); } else { initPopup(); } })(); function openPopup() { if (wasDismissed()) return; overlay.classList.add('kp-popup-visible'); overlay.classList.remove('is-open'); overlay.setAttribute('aria-hidden', 'false'); document.body.style.overflow = 'hidden'; } function closePopup(event) { if (event) { event.preventDefault(); event.stopPropagation(); } overlay.classList.remove('kp-popup-visible', 'is-open'); overlay.setAttribute('aria-hidden', 'true'); overlay.style.setProperty('display', 'none', 'important'); document.body.style.overflow = ''; if (popupTimer) { window.clearTimeout(popupTimer); } try { localStorage.setItem( storageKey, String(Date.now() + sevenDays) ); } catch (error) {} } // Always start hidden. overlay.classList.remove('kp-popup-visible', 'is-open'); overlay.setAttribute('aria-hidden', 'true'); overlay.style.removeProperty('display'); document.body.style.overflow = ''; // Close button: works when clicking its text or nested elements. if (closeButton) { closeButton.addEventListener('click', closePopup, true); } else { console.warn( 'Campaign popup: .campaign-popup-close button not found.' ); } // Close when clicking the dark overlay outside the card. overlay.addEventListener('click', function (event) { if (event.target === overlay) { closePopup(event); } }); // Close with Escape. document.addEventListener('keydown', function (event) { if ( event.key === 'Escape' && overlay.classList.contains('kp-popup-visible') ) { closePopup(event); } }); // Show after seven seconds unless dismissed in the last seven days. if (!wasDismissed()) { popupTimer = window.setTimeout(openPopup, 7000); } } if (document.readyState === 'loading') { document.addEventListener( 'DOMContentLoaded', initCampaignPopup, { once: true } ); } else { initCampaignPopup(); } })();