Page 60 - Discipleship Ministries Student E-Book

Study Section 7: The Process of Discipleship – continued

“When all is said and done, the life of faith is nothing if not an unending struggle
of the spirit with every available weapon against the flesh.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

7.1 Connect

Every noticed that newborn babies require a lot of care? They need to be fed and changed.
My wife plans to go spend a couple of weeks with our daughter-in-law who is soon going to
have a baby. She wants to assist her in the care of the baby and in her personal care.
Mothers do that for their daughters, because the newborn requires a lot of care.

We must feed them milk. They can’t eat meat and potatoes when they are a newborn. Their digestive
systems could not handle that type of food, and they have no teeth to chew adult food. So, mothers
feed their babies milk, then move to mashed up simple foods, then finally to more complex foods. It’s a
process that takes time as the baby matures into adolescence.

New believers are the same way. They must first start out drinking the milk of God’s Word, then as they
mature, more difficult and “meaty” portions of the Bible can be consumed. The process of discipleship
is to take a new believer through the basics of Christian doctrines found in God’s Word and then
through time, build more challenging and deeper principles into their diet.

7.2 Objectives

1. The student should be able to list and explain some important facets of becoming an effective
discipler of students.

2. The student should be able to describe the 8 characteristics of Jesus’ teaching that made Him
unique among teachers.

7.3 Teaching God’s Word to a new believer.

The second step in discipleship is the process of teaching. Teaching is not just telling. It is
demonstrating, modeling, and guiding and it is an interactive process. Let’s learn more about
how to become an effective teaching discipler.

Here are some important facets of preparing to be an effective discipler and teacher.

1. Your life must match what you teach.

We have a teacher at our church that smokes cigarettes. He smells when you get near
him and his skin is leathery from the effects of nicotine over the years. He is literally
killing himself with this awful habit.

59