Then What?

How is your “Discipleship Pipeline”? Do you have one? Is it clear? Does it have any holes? In our desire to help all of our congregations become prevailing churches, we want to help them simplify what they’re doing and hone in on what is of most importance.

We need to be good at going, making and equipping disciples. Period. Why? Because that is the mission of the church. Admittedly, everyone knows that. We’re just not doing it very well. Hence the church vitality crisis that we are responding to in our Fellowship right now.

Can we put your “Discipleship Pipeline” under the microscope for a few minutes? Let me share how we are trying to help our Revitalization Churches establish theirs. We do it by asking the question, “Then what?” Follow me on this. Let’s pretend that a non -Christian comes to church on a Sunday morning. Fast-forward to the part of the pipeline where you’ve reached the end of your sermon and look carefully at just this chunk of the pipe, not the entire thing.

Critical question: are you consistently giving people an opportunity to make a decision to become a Follower of Jesus? Here’s what we’re discovering across our nation: we are not. Not even close. It is no longer a definitive part of our Pentecostal culture. It used to be, but it ain’t no more. We need to. We 100% absolutely need to. Shaila Visser said it best when she spoke at our District Conference this year by saying that “we need to re-establish a culture of evangelism” in our church life again.

Why aren’t we? Maybe we’re nervous to close the deal. Maybe we don’t know what to say. Maybe we hate rejection. Who knows? Regardless, I want to strongly advocate that we muster up courage and conviction again and commit to bringing it back.

We shouldn’t ‘cast the net’ when the feeling is right or when the