Moving discipleship beyond Sunday morning

In Moving Discipleship Beyond Sunday Morning, one of four breakout sessions at the Who’s Your Next? Discipleship Conference held in Tempe in February, George Barnes, lead pastor of HiWay Baptist Church in Mesa, shared practical tools, training ideas and take-home resources that are easily implemented.

The room was packed with pastors, small group leaders, deacons and others eager to learn how to shift discipleship from just a Sunday morning activity to other days of the week and other small groups of the church.

Barnes started with some current statistics reflecting the state of discipleship in churches:

• Fewer than 5% of churches in the U.S. have a reproducing disciple-making culture.
• Small group participation has decreased from 53% to 43% year over year.
• There are now more full-time senior pastors over the age of 65 than under 40.
• Phoenix is the 8th most biblically illiterate city in the nation.

Following this, he started with defining what a disciple is. He challenged listeners to create and to know the destination of where to take discipleship to the next step and beyond.

“If you don’t know the destination, how can you take the people on the journey?” he asked.

Barnes pointed to Matthew 28:17-20 (Commissioned), Ephesians 4:10-13 (Called), 2 Timothy 2:2 (Commanded) and Hebrews 10:22-25 (Challenged) as the biblical basis for discipleship.

He also described the practical basis for discipleship by quoting from the The Unstuck Report from the first quarter of 2025. “When people clearly understand their own spiritual journey, they become more effective at inviting others along that path,” the report stated.

Throughout the session, participants broke into groups several times and discussed their greatest struggle in their church with the discipleship process, characteristics of a disciple, where their church currently fits in the area of discipleship, and their weaknesses and how their churches could improve.

Participants discuss a question during the “Moving Discipleship Beyond Sunday Morning” breakout sessiong during the Who’s Your Next? Discipleship Conference held in Tempe in February.

When developing your customized discipleship strategy, Barnes uses an analogy.

“The crockpot and the fruit tree both take time before you can enjoy your meal,” he said. “Be willing to stay around and enjoy the fruit of your labor. Keep your eye on the horizon and your back to the plow.”

Barnes offered pointers for developing a church’s discipleship strategy:

• Developing a church culture of disciple-making will take time.
• A constant and consistent pattern will help your people more easily join the disciple-making movement.
• Pray…Then pray some more.
  • Pray for the hearts of your people to be passionate about the things of God.
  • Pray for understanding and wisdom and for people to come alongside you.
• What programs, processes, and activities already exist in the life of your church?
  • Which ones readily lend themselves to an infusion of a disciple-making process?
  • Which ones can be reshaped and give support to your disciple-making efforts?
  • Which ones take away from your strategy to disciple people and need to be ended?
• Pastor, you must lead the way.
  • Who are you personally mentoring, or what group are you leading?
  • Discipline yourself to be the spokesman for the strategy — by word and deed.
  • Be consistent and be persistent.
• Ministry internships allow people to learn and grow.
  • You don’t really know who is willing to step up until you ask.

Those who attended the breakout session walked away well equipped with detailed session notes, ready-to-use handouts for church staff — including a discipleship evaluation focus, and the book Organic Disciples: Seven Ways to Grow Spiritually and Naturally Share Jesus by Kevin G. Harney and Sherry Harney.

Simone Lake, a member of Church on Randall Place in Pine, is a Bible teacher, women’s ministry leader, speaker and founder of Deep Roots in Christ Ministries. 

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