I recently picked up a copy of Real-Life Discipleship by Jim Putman and was glad to see all of the practical help for making discipleship work in everyday churches. While he lays out the specifics of how his own church practices disciplemaking, he doesn’t stipulate that everyone else needs to do it the exact same way. “My goal is not to shove our specific methodology or wording down anyone’s throat,” he writes. “However, there are principles that can be gleaned from the Word that work in any context or culture.”
Putman places a big emphasis on the reproducible nature of disciplemaking, and stretches the concept all the way from evangelism to leadership development. He makes the case that churches that focus on disciplemaking will be able to develop the vast majority of all of their leadership needs from within the congregation: “Every time a church hires from the outside, it reinforces to its people that they cannot become what is needed for their own church to succeed.”
If you want some really practical ideas grounded in biblical principles, check out Real-Life Discipleship.