Welcome to Disciple Like Jesus

Did you know that the church is losing over 2 million children each year from Christian homes, never to return?  Acccording to separate studies done at Barna Research and the Southern Baptist Convention, the church is losing between 75% and 88% of children from the church by their 2nd year of college.  Using the most conservative figure, this amounts to over 2 million children per year!

We believe that the root cause is a faulty discipleship process that has been used by most Christian parents for decades.  In summary, the process is identical to the training system used in secular society, except for the presence of faith-related activities such as church attendance, prayer, etc. The total time spent on biblical training is less than five hours a week.  With less than five hours of biblical training a week and more than eighty hours of nonbiblical training/influence a week, the nonbiblical influence easily wins out shortly after our children leave home.  As a result, our children and future generations are lost to the world. 

 

This faulty process is based on information transfer rather than the development of deep, lifetime relationships with God and man.  Consequently, there is no lasting fruit for individuals or for God’s kingdom.

 

Jesus said that we will know a tree by its fruit: “Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or else make the tree bad and its fruit bad; for a tree is known by its fruit” (Matthew 12:33 nkjv).  Upon examining the fruit of our discipleship process (see the statistics above), we can clearly see that the process itself is faulty.  Using the analogy that Jesus used, the tree (faulty discipleship process) is bearing bad fruit and leading millions to apostasy.

 

There are at least four major components to what Jesus did when He was showing us how to make disciples.

1)    Jesus Told His Disciples to Follow Him (rather than others of questionable beliefs)

2)    Jesus Was With His Disciples All Day Long (rather than only in His spare time)

3)    Jesus Taught and Demonstrated Biblical Principles Constantly (rather than a few hours a week)

4)    Jesus Sent His Adult Disciples Out in Twos Because of Wolves (rather than sending them out alone)

Disciple Like Jesus ministry is casting vision to the Christian community about the way that parents can follow Jesus in making disciples in the same way the He made disciples.  Jesus showed us how to make disciples and then commanded us to make disciples as well. Parents would do well then to follow the example of Jesus when they train their children.