Discipleship Committee Chair David Setran

David Setran

In its second year of existence, the Discipleship Committee continues to work under the guidance of Pastor Josh Stringer. The committee this year consisted of Josh Stringer (pastor of discipleship), David Setran (chair), Jeff Oslund, Harry Robinson and Michael Walker (pastoral resident). Our responsibility is to assist Pastor Stringer as he plans, implements and evaluates the adult discipleship ministries of College Church.

This year has certainly had its challenges, with many adult Sunday school classes and small groups on hold due to COVID, but the committee continues to plan for the future of adult discipleship ministries. One of our most significant tasks was to develop, distribute and evaluate our church-wide discipleship survey. We spent a good deal of time working to construct a set of questions that would give us a good sense of strengths and weaknesses both in our discipleship structures and in congregants’ individual lives of discipleship. We then worked together with an independent research consultant to summarize and consolidate our findings. The survey revealed many areas of strength as well as areas of perceived opportunity where we might seek to foster improvement.

Following from our survey analysis, we developed different focus groups in order to hear members’ perspectives on the issues raised by the survey. We met together with representatives from many boards and committees, with representatives from different age groups and with new members. We asked three questions: 1) Does this data match your experience at College Church? 2) What factors might contribute to the reality that this data describes? and 3) What changes would you recommend to the church based on this data? This process was extremely rewarding! It was wonderful to hear from so many of you about the ways you are growing as disciples of Jesus Christ. It was also wonderful to hear your ideas about the ways that College Church can do an even better job of fostering discipleship among its adult members. We pulled many new ideas from these meetings related to mentoring, discipleship and the creation of a more hospitable and connected church body.

Our next step as a committee is to take all this data and work with the Elders to develop a comprehensive plan for adult discipleship at College Church. We are currently working to develop a master list of the characteristics of a disciple of Jesus Christ. From this “picture” of the abundant life, we will then work to develop a paradigm for discipleship and practices that can help us develop in these areas. We hope that all this will also lead toward the development of a curriculum for discipleship at College Church that can guide individual classes and small groups as they plan for the future. As a group, we have been reading J.T. English’s Deep Discipleship to help us think holistically about creating a culture of discipleship at College Church.

Continue to pray for us as we seek to help the adults of College Church grow in conformity to the image of Christ for his glory!