On Wednesday, July 18th, we will be discussing Discipleship.  Recently, I have been appointed to the “Church Strengthening Team” of the Chattachoochee Baptist Association.  The goal of the team is to plan for the CBA to assist churches in fulfilling the “Great Commission” mandate from Jesus Christ of making disciples, maturing disciples, and multiplying disciples. One of the reasons for this team is when you look at the statistics for both churches and church members – it appears that while many people claim to be Christians – most are not living as disciples of Christ.  This problem is not unique to the CBA – Christian denominations and churches are all struggling with this issue.

One of our focus questions when evaluating churches is  – Does the church have a clear, simple pathway for discipleship?  That will be our question for the evening.  What is a clear, simple pathway for discipleship?  Assume you have a new believer from a non-christian background – who knows little to nothing about the Lord, the Bible or the church – HOW do we teach him/her to be a disciple – a follower of Jesus Christ – a genuine authentic Christian ?  What are the mimimum essential things that a new believer needs to know about following Jesus?