This blog entry is part of a series of three that focuses on the three environments for making disciples: peer-to-peer discipleship, guided discipleship, and focused discipleship. Each of these represents a relational, intentional way to make disciples within our churches.
The second discipleship approach, guided discipleship, turns up the degree of intentionality. This is a facilitated missional community environment, usually a group of 3 to 12 people (sometimes breaking out into smaller groups for processing). It reflects how Jesus worked with his disciples: living and serving together as they learned from each other and challenged each other. This facilitated environment focuses attention on people’s development by working off some type of map or template of what a disciple should look like– the specific outcomes the discipleship process is aiming to produce.
Due to that goal, this environment tends to be more structured than peer-to-peer discipleship. Two examples of guided discipleship approaches are the Journey Together Now discipleship guides and T4T. Each of these resources lays out a clear grid that defines what a disciple ought to be and do within the context of a missional community, along with content, scripture and questions to help people move in that direction. Guided discipleship groups, like peer-to-peer discipleship groups, are designed to multiply and to help people take responsibility for their own growth.