LIBERTY UNIVERSITY JOHN W. RAWLINGS SCHOOL OF DIVINITY
Disciple Making Plan
Submitted to Professor David early
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the completion of
DSMN 500
By
Jason Gregory
10/10/21
For this assignment I will be looking at a disciple making plan in the context of a youth
ministry, but also in a church context. We will be looking at the passages that will be used. The
principles that we live by. The philosophy behinds the plan. The practices to execute the plan and
finally what makes the plan a success, or proof. Through these aspects we will cumulate the
lessons from the semester and put them into our disciple making plan.
Passages
Semester 1: Characteristics of God
Date: September 19
Title: Goodness
Scripture: James 1:17
Direction: We are a starting out our small group on the characteristics of God. We are going to
look into the goodness of God and what that means in our daily walk. We know that he is good
and that we can trust him, but what does that look like in the bad times. Because we all know life
is not all sunshine and rainbows.
Date: September 26
Title: Grace
Scripture: Ephesians 2
Direction: We know what Grace is and how it has changed our lives. How deep have we looked
into God’s aspect of grace and how we can try to live that out. Forgiving people one time is hard
enough. I cannot imagine having to do it over and over again for the same people for the same
things. This will focus on our grace towards others using God as an example
Date: October 3
Title: Love
Scripture: 1 John 3, I Cor. 13
Direction: God’s love… how great was it for us? We know the sacrifice he made sending his
only son down and we know the Love Christ shows to others. What does that love look like to
us? What is the love that we can show to others in our daily lives? How are we going to
appreciate and then show Gods love this next week.
Date: October 10
Title: Everlasting
Scripture: John 1
Direction: God was in the beginning was the beginning and will be forever. That is a lot to take
in and is almost impossible to understand. This doesn’t matter to us though right? So God has
been around forever big deal. Wrong, This is a greater example of the relationship we now have
with him that will allow us to spend that eternity with him.
Date: October 17
Title: Omnipotent
Scripture: Hebrews 1:1-5
Direction: God is all-powerful he is in control of all things and he can do all things. Does that
mean we can do anything through him? That is the question…can we write Philippians 4:13 on
our shoes and dunk a basketball? No, but God as the ability to split a sea to raise the dead to turn
water to blood and wine, whatever it is, God is able. Knowing that walk in faith that God is able
to deliver you from sin.
Date: October 24
Title: Omnipresent
Scripture: Psalm 139:7-10
Direction: God is everywhere and we can see in this passage that the psalmist is talking with God
that he cannot flee His presence. That is the problem do we want to flee the presence of God or
do we want to run with it and live life with the fact that we have the Lord who is with us at all
time and we are never truly alone.
Date: November 7
Title: Omniscient
Scripture: 1 John 3
Direction: We talked about how he is all powerful and how he is everywhere, but he is also all
knowing. All knowing is a whole new thing to talk about. This is where we get the argument of
predestination and foreknowledge which is wild. What we should remember is that God knows
what you are going through and what you are doing, so you should be doing what is right
because of that knowledge.
Date: November 14
Title:Righteousness
Scripture: 2 Corinthians 5
Direction: The righteousness of God is something that is often talked about but is not defined
clearly. I want the leaders to define the righteousness of God and then go deeper into what that
means for the students. How they are called to be righteous but not to hold it over the heads of
those who do not act the same as they do.
Date: November 21
Title: Sovereign
Scripture: Ephesians 1
Direction: Being Sovereign is something that no human or believer can achieve so how do we
learn from this characteristic of God. Well for starters we look more at what that means for what
he allows us to go through not the predestination side. God allows us to struggle like in James 1
it is for the testing of our faith.
Date: November 28
Title: Wrath
Scripture: Romans 1:18
Direction: The wrath of God is not something to be messed with and can easily be paired with
the seriousness of our Sin. We will talk about Jesus in the temple and we will talk about why
God hates sin. Hate is usually a little bit of a harsh word but not in this instance, because we are
talking about sin which he detests.
Date: December 5
Title: Trinity
Scripture: Romans 8:9:11
Direction: We talk about the connection of the trinity all the time, but very few people look at
that as an attribute of God. Well each part of the trinity has its own purpose and each can do their
own thing. For this lesson we will dove into what all those different aspects are and how they
relate to each other and how the trinity is a characteristic of God.
Date: December 12
Title: Sacrifice
Scripture: Philippians 2:5-8
Direction: God’s Sacrifice. It is the sacrifice that happened twice. All of us know the story, but
we always need to be reminded of that story as often as we can be. First God made the sacrifice
of sending part of himself down in Jesus and allowing him to live life here on the earth, then we
know the story of how Jesus sacrificed himself for us so he could take on the punishment for our
sins.
Semester 2: Pursuit
Date: February 13
Title: Pursuit of money
Scripture: 1 Timothy 6:10
Direction: This semester we are going to talk about what we pursue and why we pursue those
things. The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil as the passage says and we will talk
about the balance of trying to do well in life and living for money. If we are obsessed with the
love of money and gaining it we cannot fill our lives with the things of scripture and focus on our
relationship with Christ.
Date: February 20
Title: Pursuit of Popularity
Scripture: Luke 9:25
Direction: What do we gain when we earn the love of others. Well it does feel great and it
certainly makes thing easier in life. But what does that do if we are sacrificing our soul for those
things. We will talk about the balance of not isolating yourself from people but not using their
approval as thing to be fulfilled.
Date: February 27
Title: Pursuit of Relationships
Scripture: 1 Corinthians 13
Direction: This something that a lot of high schoolers are wanting and looking for in their lives
and we need to find what a healthy relationship is and why we are pursuing it. It is not a bad
thing in and of themselves, but there are so many things that could go wrong in young
relationships. We need to make sure that we are talking about all the issues and priorities that
should be in your relationship
Date: March 6
Title: Pursuit of happiness
Scripture: Phillipians 4:4
Direction: In this verse we are called to rejoice in the Lord. But what is it that we usually turn to
so that we can find happiness? Usually it is the other things like money or relationships or even
other things. But what is the one thing that can truly make us happy. That. Is a relationship with
Jesus.
Date: March 13
Title: Pursuit of identity
Scripture:2 Corinthians 5:17
Direction: Who are we? That is an age old question that has a lot of people in the world
struggling to find something that defines them and who they are. Luckily we know who we are
we are in Christ and we are a new creation because of it. But what does that look like in a world
where people expect you to have an identity that isn’t of Christ?
Date: March 20
Title: Pursuit of success
Scripture: James 4:10
Direction: success looks so different to so many different people purely on the fact that we are all
striving for different things in our lives. What does success look like to a believer? Can we still
be successful and humble at the same time? Are we allowed to have success? We will talk about
all those things this week.
Date: March 27
Title: Pursuit of worldly pleasures
Scripture: Colossians 3:1-10
Direction: The world has a lot to offer us that seems pretty nice in the temporary there is drugs,
alcohol, sex and entertainment that are all so far from God. Why do we go after these things?
How can we realistically stop ourselves from falling in these aspects and focus on purity in our
relationship with God
Date: April 3
Title: Pursuit of Faith
Scripture: Galatians 1:11-12
Direction:We are all believers here that is why we signed up for small groups so what is the
purpose behind our faith why are we constantly pursuing Christ and God in this world that tells
us all the time that we do not need to worry about those things. The balance of things that are
spiritual and worldly needs to be clear and something that we focus on.
Date: April 10
Title: Pursuit of love
Scripture: 1 John 4:8
Direction: We already talked about the fact that we all pursue relationships and what those
relationships can bring good or bad. But what is the type of love we are talking about now. This
is the kind of love that is the love we show other the type of love we are called to as believers.
Date: April 24
Title: Pursuit of Peace
Scripture: John 16:33
Direction: We live in and have been through a lot of unrest lately whether it be in politics or in
the virus that we have gone through peace is not an easy thing to find in these days. So how do
we find it. We find it in looking outside ourselves and looking at not things of the world but the
things of heaven.
Date: May 1
Title: Pursuit of holiness
Scripture: 2 Corinthians 7:1
Direction: Holiness is not something that will ever be achieved but it is something that we should
be pursuing all the time and focusing ourselves to. How do we do that? How do we strive to be
holy? It is pretty simple, but extremely difficult to actually do. We need to be in the Word
consistently and cleanse ourselves from all the sin that we are doing in our lives.
Date: May 15
Title: Pursuit of Christ
Scripture: Matthew 28:18-20
Direction: The pursuit of Christ can be all boiled down t each and every aspect of this series, but
ultimately that is what needs to happen we need to know why we pursue things and what we
should be pursuing in order to truly knows what it means to pursue Christ. Take all of the things
you have learned over the whole semester and take them into the summer where everything is a
lot more real in the students lives.
Church Demographics
The Church Demographics
are not very good the
breakdown of the different
races and genders are very
different. This Church is 96%
Caucasian or white
American while the Latino,
Asian, and Indian population
is at 1%. The African
American community in the
church is also very weak at
only 2%. This was addressed
in the church weaknesses as
I believe that the churches
lack of diversity is one that is a major problem. My belief that it is the combination of all the
different weaknesses are what has lead to the lack of diversity. Whether it is the worship or the
extremely in depth teaching that most find hard to connect, whatever it is is something that
needs to be looked into.
The Gender and age demographic are very
interesting. The youth ministry has one of the
lowest attendance rates, while those who have lef
the youth ministry in years past are the highest
group. This very well could be because we are in a
college town and a lot of students come to the
church from Liberty. The most encouraging part of
this graph is the fact the the children’s ministry is
the next largest group of people in the church. This
is great for the development of the youth ministry
as well. Another slightly discouraging statistic for
the growth and development of the church is the
fact the two of the largest categories are the 50+
categories. Both of these categories being large has
been a part of the slow development and lack of
change in the church. Overall the numbers are very
good and are ones that we would love to grow in
the future.
Principles
Core Values
Exaltation: To elevate Christ and others by praise
Prayer: Direct Communication with God our Father
Exposition: Teaching that comes from Scripture alone
Gospel: The Good News of the Sacrifice of Jesus Christ
Submission: The choice to live a life honoring to God not to self
Kindness: The act of being selfless in our actions
Love: Treat others how Christ treated all he interacted with
Sacrifice: A daily surrender to God
Incarnation: Christ was fully man and Fully God
Multiplication: The family of Believer should never stop growing
Philosophy
The Philosophy of our Church and of discipleship in a youth ministry context is one that is
simple and complex at the same time. For our church we have four key terms.
- Church- If we are not connecting the church to itself and attempt to build silo ministries
then we cannot have effective discipleship. The church needs to be one body focused on
the same values and goals. We pointed out the values earlier and the goals should be the
same for every church. To bring disciples to Christ and to make more disciples to go to
all nations.
- Gospel – The next aspect of our philosophy is the most important and ht most crucial in
our philosophy as a ministry. The gospel of Jesus is sufficient to change lives, and if we
do not realize that and make that an emphasis in our ministry, then we are not doing the
church or the gospel its due justice. The Gospel and the message of the gospel needs to be
what we focus on and what we need to be preaching and teaching on a weekly basis. If
not we have lost our vision.
- Discipleship- Discipleship is the process by which we can share the gospel and be
efficient in doing that. Discipleship has been the whole process that we have been leading
up to and what we have been training to produce and run effectively. Every church needs
to be able to run a good discipleship program and what that looks like is different for
every church, but still needs to be present.
- Leadership- This aspect of the church is addressing the church leadership. This is a key
aspect of what makes a church healthy against something that can make a church
unhealthy. The leadership of the church needs to be one that is focusing on the core
values and the gospel above all else. It is easy in leadership to loose focus on what is
actually important in the church and they need to make sure that doesn’t happen to them.
Then they are able to find a way to lead the others in the church to be leaders and create
disciples.
Practices
Strategy and Structure
Small groups are something that are done in so many different ways in youth ministries
across the country and the ultimate goal is for the students to grow closer to Christ in these small
groups. If that is happening then you are not doing small groups incorrectly. For my ministry,
small groups will be used for accountability and deeper growth than just the Wednesday night
ministry can give them. Small groups will be sign up based and we will encourage students to
sign up, implicating the commitment that we hope small groups will be. We want this time to be
separate from the Wednesday night talk back time because as bad a s this sounds, we have no
control over who will be in those talk back times. We want as many students as possible being in
those talk back times with our leaders and we want the relationships being built, but small groups
is different. The strategy is to get those kids that’s desire to grow and get more from their leaders
to sign up for small groups so they can grow and be held accountable. How are these groups
going to be structures what is the plan for that, you might ask. Well the plan is to keep the groups
small obviously, but I was thinking 5-8 students at the most an ideal number would be 6 students
with 2 leaders. These groups will be broken up first by gender, then age, then school if we get
that many to sign up. We obviously will not have the same gender together for so many reasons
of trust and creating an atmosphere of openness. Age is where it gets complicated. We want a
diverse level of maturity in each group where students can challenge each other, but we don’t
want to put a very immature 7th grader with a senior in high school. It will take a lot of evaluating
and a lot of prayer to determine where these groups should line up. Then we go into the how and
where these groups will happen. The goal is to get out of the church atmosphere and make it
more comfortable for the students to share. Because of this we will not be having small groups at
the church we will have them in one of the leaders home. Ideally your leaders homes are the ones
leading the groups as they have what you value in a leader they should be able to host, but if that
is not the case then you will go hunt for homes that are acceptable. We would like for there to be
an older leader or more mature not someone who is not relatable but someone who is mature. I
would also like a younger even more relatable college or young adult leader that can always help
the students open up to the leader. Now we need to discuss the what happens in a small group
meeting. We want to be conscious of the students time but also have a chance to talk and give
them a chance to open up so we be around 2 hours on Sunday nights. The exact series of events
that will happen on the nights I will leave up to the leaders because they should know their group
next, but I will have a lesson for them to give and allow them to lead the discussion on their own.
The leaders are going to be key in this whole process. I am not just going to pick whoever to be
the small group leaders they will have had to earn my trust and I know they line up with our
views and goals as a ministry. These will be the leaders that I will want to bring to camp and the
mission trips so that they can see where the students are making decisions and growing.
Ultimately I want our leaders to have structured freedom to lead theses students in accountability
and growing deeper in their faith.
Proof
Tracking or measuring the success of your plan is something that doesn’t feel right to
make analytical and use statistics to see if your plan was a success. The easiest way that I plan to
measure the success of the discipleship plan is pretty simple. That is to measure the health,
growth, and production of our church. If the church is not making disciples and not growing
then it is easy to see that the plan is not working. Another key aspect of ministry success that is
commonly overlooked is just the willingness to participate in the church. Whether it is serving
or just attending services or special events, if the church body is active you can tell that the
programs you are running are working. I think looking for proof of your success can at time be
counterproductive, if we are living the way we should and leading our church the way we
should, success should follow short behind.
Bibliography
Earley, Dave, and Rod Dempsey. Disciple Making Is . . . How to Live the Great Commission
with Passion and Confidence. B&H Publishing Group, 2014.
Gaultiere, Bill. “Submission to God.” Soul Shepherding, 5 Sept. 2016,
www.soulshepherding.org/submission-to-god/.
“New Research on the State of Discipleship.” Barna Group, www.barna.com/research/new-
research-on-the-state-of-discipleship.
Putman, Jim, et al. DiscipleShift: Five Steps That Help Your Church to Make Disciples Who
Make Disciples. Zondervan, 2013.
Sum, Jennifer. “What Total Submission to God Looks Like.” Teaching Humble Hearts, 15 Nov.
2020, teachinghumblehearts.com/en/total-submission-god-looks-like/.
“What Is Stages?” DISCIPLE MAKING STAGES, 3 Jan. 2021,
disciplemakingstages.com/portfolio/stages-explained/.
