Develop Your Disciple-Making Plan—On Paper

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The “planning worksheet” is an opportunity to put on paper what you really believe and how you plan to implement it. Remember, if you don’t have a plan, you don’t intend to do it. While your discipleship plan can include many items, we want to give you a basic framework of three questions you can use to fill in the “meat” of your plan. The three questions are who, how, and what?

1. Who is a disciple”?

Your definition of a disciple must be specific enough for you to answer the next question: how do you make a disciple? For example, let’s say you define a disciple as someone who has five characteristics, something like:

  • Develops a conversational relationship with God through the Word and prayer

  • Reveals Christ every day by bearing fruit

  • Responds to God through daily obedience

  • Has joy and is contented in spirit

  • Loves others as Christ loved others

How to grow a person with these characteristics will likely require specific spiritual exercises and activities in a community of kindred spirits who all want the same qualities developed in them. You can develop all these activities, but first make sure you know what your end goal is by clearly defining what a disciple looks like based on your understanding of Scripture.

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2. How will you make disciples?

Once you’ve defined the “who,” you can answer the “how.” Answering this question requires you to think about how to group people, determine activities, provide leadership training, and make decisions about schedules, goals, and other organizational aspects. The difficult work is identifying each characteristic, then naming an action or activity done in community that will create the desired trait. Take, for example, the characteristic that a disciple reveals Christ daily by bearing fruit. You must create opportunities for your group members for them to experience bearing fruit. It doesn’t just happen; you need a plan. There is a much higher probability that your people will learn service by actually serving rather than by merely contemplating service. This was the reason Jesus traveled with his disciples rather than hold a continual retreat like the Essences, first-century Jews who lived near the Dead Sea (far away from society) to maintain their holy huddle. Instead, teach your disciples how to do the activities that are necessary to become the type of people who follow everything that Jesus commanded.

3. What will these disciples do?

Describe how the world around you will be impacted if your quest to make many more disciples succeeds. How will you know the plan worked? Write your plan in pencil with an eraser nearby because you’ll need to keep working on it and changing it—sometimes daily—until it’s the helpful tool that you need. Whatever you have planned and are trusting God for in general, stick with it to the end!

This was taken from The Discipleship Gospel by Bill Hull and Ben Sobels. Used by permission of HIM Publications. Use code TBP at checkout for a discount when you place your order here.

The Discipleship GospelBill Hull