Building a Discipling Culture

by Mike Breen

IF YOU MAKE DISCIPLES, you always get the Church. But if you make a church, you rarely get disciples.

Effective discipleship builds the church,

If you know how to disciple people well, you will always get mission.

It all starts with making disciples.

discipleship is a relational endeavor depending on broken people living in the grace of God!).

Invitation is about being invited into a relationship where you have access to a person’s life and all the vibrancy, safety, love and encouragement that reside there.

effective leadership is based upon an invitation to relationship and a challenge to change.

challenge is always given best in the context of personal relationships.

While small groups are excellent at creating community and a warm, comfortable environment, they are not built to also offer challenge. Small group leaders are supposed to be facilitators of discussion and conversation, creating a culture where people who are new (and perhaps not Christians yet) can immediately come in and feel safe.

No one accidentally creates disciples. Discipleship is an intentional pursuit.

lifelong learners of Jesus

1)Classroom/Lecture passing on of information 2)Apprenticeship 3)Immersion

In life, when we want to learn how to do something, we find someone with real flesh and blood and have that person teach us how to do what they do.

the practice of apprenticeship is about investment

Whatever he had and whatever he was, he made that accessible to others.

Bonhoeffer did not separate his Christian life from his family life.

How am I sharing my spiritual life with my family?

immersion works only when people are actually fluent in something

1)Read your Bible 2)Pray 3)Tithe 4)Go to church services each week 5)Find a small group (or whatever your church does) 6)Tell your friends about Jesus

New believers need someone to come alongside them and help them on their journey.

We don’t want to just know about God; we want to know God.

discipleship is something that is you to the core and is completely incarnated in you.

The truth of Scripture is meant to be worked out in us,

Success is obedience to what the Father asks.

We don’t decide what the Father does.

They chose obedience over what was the most logical route.

clear road map toward competent, effective discipleship and to help you develop a strategy

10 years) = very high chance of success.

put in the time to learn and understand your craft, as well as walk into the right situation.

1)A discipleship vehicle (we call it a Huddle) 2)People need access to your life (discipleship can’t be done at a distance) 3)A discipling language

LifeShapes)

A Huddle is the group of four to ten people you feel God has called you to specifically invest in,

The best discipling relationships always have an intentional, “organized” component to them, as well as a less formal, “organic” component.

Every disciple disciples. You can’t be a disciple if you aren’t willing to invest in and disciple others.

An organic part of discipling people happens outside a Huddle.

It doesn’t have to mean more work; it means we are more efficient and smart in how we use our time.

Only when we achieve a base level of competence in using Information and Imitation can Innovation flourish.

because they lack the foundational Information for forming the original practices, the churches are unable to successfully innovate what they are doing.

We suggest that if you want to be a disciple, and if you want the people you disciple to be able to disciple others who then disciple others, you will need to follow the path of Information to Imitation to Innovation.

good leaders always define their own reality.

No one else can build a discipling culture for you—it must begin in your own life and then overflow into the lives of those you lead.

we simply do not have a shared language in which we can create a discipling culture.

Huddles aren’t a program; they are life-on-life discipleship.

does his or her life actually embody and incarnate the shape and Scripture teaching, and can this person multiply that into someone else’s life?

kairos, meaning an event, an opportunity

Kairos events are rarely neutral.

The Learning Circle suggests a framework by which we can process what God is saying to us in the kairos event and learn how to respond in a way that enables us to grow in our discipleship.

process of repentance and belief.

Kairos moments are God-given opportunities to enter into a process of learning kingdom living.

It is through this process we learn how to lay down our lives and pick up the cross.