Stride: Creating a Discipleship Pathway for Your Church

By Ken Willard and Mike Schreiner

Churches of all types around the country are struggling. The more programs they try the more evident it becomes that there is no quick fix or secret formula to help them out of their rut. John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist Movement, once said, “The way to keep a Methodist alive is to keep him moving.”

It is time to recapture this simple yet profound truth and get back to the basics of making fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ. The authors developed and launched a highly successful pathway to discipleship in their church (Morning Star UMC, in St.Louis). Here, they show others how to create a successful discipleship pathway for their own particular contexts, based on the principles developed at Morning Star.

Willard and Scheiner share the process of developing a discipleship pathway that meets individual people where they are. They provide examples of each element and practical instruction on how to plan, implement and sustain the discipleship pathway. The authors are teaching this material in conferences around the UM connection, from New Mexico to Missouri. They also share examples of how the pathway works in other churches.

For small group study participants working through Stride, the Stride Participant Book (ISBN 9781501876257), a workbook designed to facilitate individual work on creating a discipleship pathway, is available to purchase separately.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Abingdon Press
• Release date: Oct 17, 2017
• ISBN: 9781501849237

Ken Willard

Ken Willard is a Christian leadership coach, certified church consultant, author, speaker and developer of curriculum used by pastors and laity leaders. He is an Associate Certified Coach with the International Coach Federation and a member of the faculty with Coaching4Clergy. Ken lives in the St. Louis area with his wife Mary and works with pastors, laity leaders, local churches and other church organizations all over the country. As owner of Leadership4Transformation, Ken’s mission is to help equip God’s people to expand God’s Kingdom.

Book preview

PREFACE

Morning Star Church and the Importance of Pathways

Like many young boys growing up in the early 1970s, I (Mike) couldn’t wait to join our local Cub Scout pack. I was excited to go on overnight camping trips and build and race my own pinewood derby car. But the thing I most cared about was getting the cool patches for my Scout-sanctioned, navy-blue, button-front shirt. As I progressed from Bobcat to Tiger and then on to Wolf and Bear, my mom would carefully stitch on each new patch to my uniform. My personal scouting journey ended at the next stage on the advancement trail: Webelo. But many of my friends continued taking steps: Arrow of Light, Scout Tenderfoot, 2nd Class, 1st Class, Star, Life, and a few even made it to the elite status of Eagle Scout.

Recently, I was struck how a convenience store chain applied the principle of the advancement trail to their employee recruitment strategy. I was driving with my family to visit my in-laws in Kentucky. My gas light came on, so I pulled off the interstate and into a convenience store, filled the car up with gas, and headed inside to use the restroom. While I was washing my hands, something caught my attention. (No, it wasn’t some explicit ink pen picture or knife-carved message.) It was an advertisement seeking new employees. But instead of simply putting up a generic help wanted sign, the slick, four-color advertisement featured road signs, which listed the steps an employee could take up what they termed their career path: customer service representative, shift supervisor, associate manager, food service manager, floating general manager, and finally, general manager. Simple, yet genius. The message was clear: this company wasn’t looking for someone to fill a slot behind the counter. It was looking for people seeking the opportunity to grow their career and influence within its organization.

I believe people who come to church are seeking the same guidance. A clear path. One which communicates how to connect within community, grow their knowledge of God, and make an impact with their one and only life. John Wesley, founder of the Methodist movement, recognized this truth. It’s why he spent so much time getting people into Societies, some of which gathered upward of a hundred people. From Societies, these Methodists were encouraged to join a Class, consisting of about twelve people, to help them grow deeper in their faith. The next step was a Band—usually four to five people—who connected on a regular basis for personal accountability. This was Wesley’s genius. He helped people take that next step on their spiritual journey, encouraging them to cooperate with the Holy Spirit to experience prevenient grace, justifying grace, and sanctifying grace. As Asbury Seminary professor Dr. Bob Tuttle often paraphrases Wesley: The only way to keep Methodists alive is to keep them moving.

In 1998, I was appointed to start a new United Methodist church in Saint Charles County, Missouri, located in the western suburbs of Saint Louis. A then up-and-coming United Methodist pastor by the name of Adam Hamilton gave me a copy of Rick Warren’s The Purpose Driven Church. It became a handbook that provided me with a great foundation for beginning a new work of God. Rick Warren’s acumen for organization in the modern era rivals Wesley’s in the 1700s. Warren’s Life Development Process moved people around a baseball diamond, one step at a time, equipping them to know Christ, grow in Christ, serve Christ, and share Christ.1 Simultaneously, Purpose Driven people moved through the 5 Circles of Commitment, from community to crowd to congregation to committed to core.2

For many years, our new church, Morning Star, utilized our own version of this baseball path. Then we had another epiphany, which came by way of Andy Stanley’s 7 Practices of Effective Ministry. We accepted his challenge to Think Steps, Not Programs. It resonated with our own journey as a new church. We had a vision of where God wanted us to be—a growing, thriving, Christ-centered community, drawing people from multiple zip codes, with the goal of starting other churches and truly impacting (not simply impressing) our region for Jesus. Our goal wasn’t to grow the biggest church in the area. We emphasized discipleship over membership. We wanted to do more than just get people into church and into heaven, we also wanted to get heaven into our people and our community, just as Jesus instructed when he taught us to pray, Thy Kingdom come . . .

That vision guided the decisions we made in the early years. We stayed in temporary facilities, meeting in a banquet center for six years. We purchased nearly thirty acres of land, but we weren’t yet ready to take that next step of immediately building on the land. Instead, we moved closer to our property, and spent the next year meeting at a nearby elementary school while our first phase was being constructed. After moving in to phase one, it took us six years to once again run out of space. We built a permanent children’s space and added an on-site video venue, out of which we now launch off-site campuses.

As we grew, we also reproduced. We started a multicultural ministry—The Word at Shaw—about 30 minutes away, just outside downtown St. Louis. Three years later, we commissioned about two hunded of our folks to launch another church—The Way—about ten miles west of Morning Star.

Each of these steps was intentional and deliberate. Each moved us closer to the vision God had entrusted to us. And each also reinforced the truth that things rarely happen overnight. Just as Rome wasn’t built in a day, neither are churches. Nor are disciples. That’s when we decided to drill down and develop what we call a clear path of discipleship. This path visually depicts how a person gets connected at Morning Star, and how he or she can take next steps toward being a fully devoted follower of Jesus. What we came up with gave practical clarity to our mission statement: To form fully devoted followers of Jesus by meeting people where they are and helping them take next steps on their spiritual journey.

There are a few things to notice. The first is the bullseye: fully devoted follower of Jesus. It’s the same bullseye we have in our mission statement. The second thing is the simplicity. Everyone knows right where to begin; and there aren’t thirteen steps, with arrows moving all over the place. Third, we’ve attached promises to each of the three attributes of a fully devoted follower—become, belong, bless. While the clear path helps people understand their next step, the promises remind them what they can expect from their church in return. Finally, we recognize the three attributes (belong, become, bless) don’t always happen in a linear, sequential process. Many persons engage in ministries associated with each of these at their own pace, based on their personal wiring, passions, or place in their spiritual journey. That said, as persons become, belong, and bless, their belief in Jesus increases. This goes hand-in-glove with our definition of discipleship: moving from unbelief to belief in every area of life.

The one thing you won’t see on our clear path of discipleship is actually the key step between being connected to Morning Star Church and growing into a fully devoted follower of Jesus. We call it the secret sauce. It’s a thirty- to sixty-minute conversation each person in every connect class has with a specially trained connect coach. The purpose of this conversation is to intentionally place the new person into a serving ministry where she or he will meet other persons who share similar gifts and passions, so each can make an impact in his or her local church. This connection to ministry is key to helping persons grow in their becoming, belonging, and blessing. Simultaneously, our church is able to meet two important needs: the personal engagement that fosters retention, and a continual pipeline of new volunteers or servants. (There will be more on this language later.)

Creating a clear path of discipleship takes thoughtful prayer and work. But that’s only the first half. Once you have created it, you have to communicate it, promote it, and continually reinforce it in your culture. At Morning Star, we have the path posted on signs in several of our main hallways. We feature it before worship on our pre-service slide show. We walk people through it at our meet-the-pastor gatherings, explaining the rationale behind it. Lastly, we use it to promote our ministries. We attach the appropriate color-logo to each program, event, and ministry we offer. As an example, our midweek adult discipleship Grow Classes are promoted with the blue become logo beside them. Our communications team promotes three next-step opportunities every week: one each for become (blue), belong (yellow), and bless (green). These are included in our worship bulletins and in our weekly eNews.

Once we began to utilize this ministry tool and saw how it was helping people take the next steps on their spiritual journey, we realized the value in specific areas of discipleship. This led us to create a pathway for leadership.

The foundational truth behind our clear path of leadership became evident after hours of discussion around leader development. The more we discussed key components of developing Christian leaders for the twenty-first century, we saw a dramatic resemblance to our clear path of discipleship. This was actually a huge win for us, as it served to reinforce our development process at the leadership level, which in our understanding of leadership is simply an extension of discipleship.

Once we had our clear path of leadership, we took our next step and created pathways for serving and generosity.

I cannot tell you how powerful these tools have been for our ministry. First of all, we are able to convey acceptance and validation to people who are new to the faith and haven’t sold all their possessions, given the money to the poor, left their jobs and families, and gone into full-time mission work. It helps persons in the