My Experience With Discipleship
During my college years, I was part of a college ministry called FOCUS.
The people in that ministry helped me reconnect with God. It’s when I became an adult in my faith and changed the direction of my life.
They are a discipleship oriented ministry. Every 4 years your student body turns over, you have to be intentional about raising up leaders for ministry.
They are successful at it, I’m a product of their process.
But as I reflect on my time doing campus ministry (10-15 years ago), I was not the most impactful disciple on campus.
Impact v. Faithfulness
I recognized that I don’t change people’s hearts, God does that. There’s not some metric that defines a successful ministry.
There’s also a difference between impact and faithfulness.
I believe I was faithful.
I attended meetings, I submitted myself to the process and leadership Focus provided, I was reliable in doing what I would say I would do. Which shouldn’t be discounted.
But I believe I could have been more effective with my time and the relationships I cultivated.
4 specific things come to mind that I wish I would have done differently.
- Rely on prayer
- Make it about others
- Say More, Louder, Sooner
- Initiating more spiritual conversations
Rely on Prayer
I don’t remember praying often in my ministry. As someone wanting to make a spiritual impact, that doesn’t make a lot of sense.
God is the one who changes hearts, he’s the one who leads people to himself. I can’t do that.
But I can advocate on people’s behalf, and that happens through prayer.
I believe if I had gone to God first, I would have seen more spiritual impact.
Make it about others
We had a yearly retreat called Winter Retreat where we’d spend a weekend together out in east Texas.
Every year some of our cores (our name for small groups) would move around in packs.
That felt weird to me. I didn’t want to be part of a pack. I viewed those weekends as a fun time where I got to meet and interact with people. That’s a me focused mindset.
But were their people in my core that needed me to spend more time with them? Would that have made their weekend better?
Being more aware of who was around me and what they needed from me might have made those weekends more transformative to people in my core.
Say More, Louder, Sooner
Our ministry has an axiom something along the lines of (might have been a little longer):
- Say more, louder, later
The principle is to be wise in your communcation. Don’t say things out of frustration or anger that could damage relationships and your ministry.
But that was never my problem. My problem was the complete opposite.
I struggled to ask the tough question or challenge someone.
I needed to put myself in the mindset that I need to communicate more. I have a voice and can use it to help people grow spiritually.
Initiate More Spiritual Conversations
I felt and still feel tense and awkward about bringing spirituality up with people.
So I went around campus not engaging people spiritually.
They could have been committed Christians or someone wanting to explore, but I struggled being courageous enough to ask.
During Welcome Week we met a lot of the new college students and had spiritual conversations, and I think that was the one time I stepped outside my comfort zone.
And even that was safe-ish since it was college freshmen. Not teachers or classmates that I could have classes with again.
This is still something I struggle with today. I can ask questions, make conversation, tell jokes and be entertaining, but can I ask questions that really cause people to stop and think?
I can improve in this area by being intentional to discover more about people and what drives them.
Post College Discipleship
Ever since I left college (10 years) I haven’t been involved in discipleship. I’ve led some small groups, had some short lived bible studies, but there hasn’t been an active desire or consistent effort in teaching people about obeying Jesus.
I want that to change. I want to be an effective discipler. I want to be able to led people to Christ and see their lives change.