Fruit that Remains
One priority for the church must always be the development of leaders who advance the mission of Jesus. How do we create a culture of disciple-making that multiplies leaders and the church?
The first step of disciple-making is evangelism– making disciples by going and introducing people to Jesus! We are always moving toward people, desiring to make disciples from the harvest.
For many believers, this requires a paradigm shift from ministry events to conversational moments with people in their natural relationships where they live, work, learn, and play. For some churches, this may require a shift from corporate discipleship to a culture of disciple-making that is transferable from spiritual generation to generation.
Two years ago we met Shawn, a Pastor of Outreach & Evangelism, who immediately responded to our training in the areas of multiplying disciples and conversational evangelism. He has remained in a peer coaching circle and told us that his church has reorganized its life groups for “a season of mobilization of the saints… God is leading us into a more organic expression of discipleship. One of our strategies for equipping our body was to have Dave Robinson and Gabor Gresz from churchmovements.com to train 200 of our leaders with evangelism tools from Becoming a CoJourner… These tools have the capacity to facilitate gospel conversations within our oikos (“oikos” refers to those we do life with – where we live, work, learn and play – neighbors). Our team is hungry for what God has for them, but more importantly our community. I witnessed a fresh fire and anointing poured out over this 2-day conference. God has unified our team through this training. The Holy Spirit is leading us into a missional lifestyle of discipleship and He is using these 200 to set the others in CLC on fire.”
There were 5-Generations at this training! They are experiencing God producing fruit that remains.
We hosted 24 Ethiopian Church Pastors and Planters from March 4-5, and over 100 at the Exponential conference at various Sent 6:7 events (our disciple-making process for church multiplication) from March 7-10. Both of these trainings were in Orlando. On March 18 & 19 we were with Christian Life Center (CLC) in Fort Lauderdale to train 200 in Becoming a CoJourner (a framework for conversational evangelism).
In the follow-up call (Check-In) after, we had a GLORIOUS time of fellowship about the trainees taking steps of faith to have gospel conversations, to start discipleship groups, and to mobilize for the prayer care share lifestyle where they live, learn, work, and play.
At the check-in, three weeks after the trainings:
76 people participated from 19 cities
212 gospel presentations happened in the last three weeks
10 people put their faith in Christ
5 people are multiplying disciples
37 people are newly engaged disciples
Pauline*, a nurse who was trained as a CoJourner two years ago, came to the check-in and is still practicing initiative evangelism. She shared two stories from the past three weeks!”I am so excited to be part of training with the whole church to go out and be a light. My oikos (“oikos” refers to those we do life with) is my patients and my family. Last week a patient was in critical condition and very afraid of dying. I went in his room and told my story and shared the gospel. He prayed and received Christ; he was crying! He died the next day.
Sandy* is young woman who attempted suicide. When I met her, I remembered the 3 CoJourner principles– 1). everyone is on a spiritual journey 2). the Spirit of God is already working behind the scenes 3). God wants to use me– I shared the gospel and asked her to read a chapter of the Bible. She was so ready to receive Christ!”
*names changed for privacy
