All members should be prepared and equipped to stand on their own (Heb. 5:11-14). Throughout Jesus' ministry, He was focused on training up His disciples so that they would be able to carry on His mission one day. Jesus said “students are not greater than their teacher, but the student who is fully trained will become like the teacher” (Luke 6:40). Once Jesus’ disciples were fully trained and ultimately filled with the Holy Spirit, they too went out and trained new disciples.
Each member is expected to be transparent with at least a few other believers in the church about the things we desperately try and hide. We want to ensure that every member is being discipled which means that each person in the church is consistently experiencing people poke and prod into their lives and that we welcome and receive this poking and prodding.
Discipleship is hard and messy. It involves intentionally getting to know someone, having hard conversations at points when sin is evident, working through conflict, investing our time with people, etc.
Our temptation in the church can be to replace discipleship with other activities or programs; however, it is our goal as a church to be consistently committed to discipling others and then seeing these disciples making other disciples.
The beautiful thing is that in a smaller gathering that is not just focused on one pastor or leader, discipleship is naturally taking place as the members ‘teach and counsel’ one another. It is also our hope that discipleship would naturally take place outside of the gathering and that each member would be committed to discipling at least one or two other believers and walking each other through healing, repentance, and believing in the promises of God.
It is also our goal to see church leaders equipped and prepared to lead and serve the church humbly and faithfully (Acts 6:1-7, Rom. 1:9, Eph. 1 Tim. 3:1-6, 2 Tim. 2:23-24, Heb. 13:17, Titus 1:5-9, 1 Peter 5:1-4).
