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.
Peer-to-peer discipleship is a reproducible process that anyone can engage in. Generally, this discipleship environment makes use of a simple template that helps people engage in God’s Word, reflect on their lives, confess sin, take steps to grow in holiness, and reach outside of themselves. This environment is engaged by small groups of people– usually 2 to 4 individuals– and are leaderless and non-facilitated.
Two proven examples of peer-to-peer discipleship include Life Transformation Groups (LTGs) and SOAP. Each method is a conversation geared toward working on character formation: the questions participants ask of one another become the processes that help facilitate discipleship. The key in peer-to-peer discipleship is not to try to do too much at once: engage with God, ask questions of one another, and respond to God’s leading. Once a peer-to-peer discipleship group reaches four people, members should begin looking toward multiplication into more than one group.