Disciplemaking Friendships: Who and How?

May 15, 2016

This Disciplemaker's Living Guide is a tool for transforming friendships into disciplemaking friendships.

Who?
It's great for families, students, small groups, networks, leadership meetings, discipleship groups, Sunday school classes, elder’s meetings, staff meetings, disciplemaking learning communities, mission trip teams, and even improving your marriage.

How to Use the Living Guide
Using the Discplemaker's Living Guide is as simple as this...
* Open the living guide.
* Open your Bibles and read the Scriptures and their contexts.
* Wrestle the Scriptures and the questions one by one with a heart to know and love God.
* Pray the Disciplemaker's Prayer together (included in the living guide).
* You're probably doing it right when your study together leads to more questions and deeper conversations about applying what you're learning together.
* You're probably doing it wrong if you, as the leader, are doing most of the talking.

8 Ways to Use this Living Guide
1. Sunday School:
Use the Disciplemaker's Living Guide for the first 10-15 minutes of each class for discussion and prayer together for 25 Sundays. Or take your time walking slowly through the living guide the entire Sunday school class. If you read the context of each of the passages listed and give plenty of time for discussion, interaction, and prayer, it will easily fill your Sunday school hour. We've seen both of these approaches work great in a Sunday school setting. Get each member of your Sunday school class his/her own living guide and you'll still have the most inexpensive Sunday school ever.

2. Small Groups:

This living guide is a great for small groups to live out a disciplemaking way of life together. By wrestling Scripture together, you and your friends have an opportunity to own disciplemaking like Jesus at the conviction level rather than just at the idea level. (And, oh, there is a major difference between those two!) This wrestling Scripture together in community (a.k.a., havering) is a critically important step in transforming friendships into disciplemaking friendships.

3. With Volunteers and Students:

Use the Disciplemaker's Living Guide to help your adult volunteer leaders and student volunteer leaders grasp and own the value of disciplemaking friendships as the conduit for gospel ministry.

4. Retreats:

This living guide is a great summer camp or fall or winter retreat experience. Cadre offers a four-session training experience called Disciplemaking Is Relationships that works well in a retreat setting. Each person would get the Disciplemaker's Living Guide.

5. Family Discussions:

It can be as a simple and spontaneous as a 5-10 minute discussion via the questions in the living guide after dinner one night a week. If you have a long drive together, use the car time to wrestle a study or two together. Consider doing a family night using this living guide to explore what it looks like to live a disciplemaking way of life together. Then invite other families to share this living guide experience.

6. Starting Meetings:

Instead of just starting meetings in prayer, take 15 minutes to have people get into pairs and work through one of the 25 disciplemaking studies/adventures. This will drip essential disciplemaking values into your elder, staff, and team meetings throughout the year.

7. Mission Trips:
Make the Disciplemaker's Living Guide the team devotional for your next missions trip. Since you're all on a missions trip, why not use it together each day?

8. Can YOU think of a way to use this in your life and ministry?

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