You Need an Online Discipleship Experience...and Here's Why
Good afternoon, Reader,
I hope you had a wonderful Memorial Day Weekend! The Pardekoopers had a pretty good weekend despite dealing with sickness. The highlight for us was driving up the coast a little bit to Williamsburg, VA and seeing the Williamsburg settlement. It was pretty incredible, and the surprising highlight for the boys was learning how to hit the wheel across the field with the stick. Score one for 1700's toys. Who knew!
I took a couple of days off just because I felt I needed it and assumed you did to after a busy weekend for most of us. But, it is Wednesday, and I assume you are back into the swing of things and getting ready for services and events tonight. So, in light of that, I will keep this brief.
Which is going to be tough, because this is an area I have spent a lot of time studying and developing over the last few years and I am very passionate about. That is developing an online discipleship experience.
Now before you delete the email and write me off, allow me the chance to explain.
Over the last few years we have learned without question that most people in our congregations are not effectively discipled, with the greatest indicator being they don't know their scriptures.
The other thing we know for sure is that people are up to their eyeballs in busyness and just don't have time for another gathering, another meeting, another event.
So, what is the answer? I believe the answer is in content ministry, which I have talked about with you already. But, if we go another step forward, I believe part of our content ministry needs to be in creating an online discipleship process and allow me to share the reasons why.
1. An online discipleship process taps into a trend that is already present: people consume incredible amounts of content every day. Instead of forcing people to come to a classroom or a scheduled program to receive information to be discipled, provide the same information online for them to consume when it is convenient for them. Honestly, they will probably watch more videos and gain more information and knowledge in a week of an online experience than you can share in a two hour discipleship class or session.
2. Places the discipleship experience in the hands of the individual rather than in our hands as ministry leaders. People like the freedom to choose and the option to control their own pace and destiny. When we have a discipleship process running on a rigid schedule, then we force people's discipleship experience to fit into a mold they may not fit into. There is a pace they have to keep up with, there is a schedule and deadlines they have to work around, and if they get out of sync or fall behind, it is likely they quit from discouragement. But if they are allowed to go at their own pace, control how often they watch a video, and even decide how much time they want to ponder something, explore something deeper, or research questions, then they will be more engaged. You will see a greater percentage of completion, higher quality of disciples will be developed which leads to a stronger volunteer base and sharper leaders.
3. It takes up far less of your time. When you develop an online discipleship experience, the videos you create live on with little to no effort once they are finished. Once you create the online experience, you don't have to do anything more with it unless you choose to update it or change something. This means that the time you would take for preparing for the course week after week, or teaching it, or preparing handouts for it, you could use to engage with people, study scripture more, develop your sermons further. An online discipleship experience provides you with margin in your time to do more of the ministry connecting with people and bringing the scriptures to life.
Okay, so I tried to keep this short, but I am not sure I accomplished that. Sorry, Reader. :)
As you can tell, I am passionate about this because it is the future of the church and how we adjust to discipling people effectively given where are as a society. If this is something you are interested in learning more about, please respond to the email and let me know and I can show you the easy steps you need to take to make it happen.
Have an amazing rest of your day and may God move in your services, groups, and gatherings tonight.
Living the Dream Life,
By the way, this just dropped today and you may be interested in hearing how my competitive nature really hurt me in my ministry over the years. MH138 When Winning Causes You to Lose in Ministry