Insourcing: Bringing Discipleship Back to the Local Church (Leadership Network Innovation Series)

Too many of today’s pastors and leaders mistakenly think that thriving programs, lively worship services, and relevant preaching are adequate for developing people into the spiritual dynamos God desires. In many churches, the primary objective of the church―discipleship of people into mature followers of Jesus―has been “outsourced” to programs and large-scale efforts to train and teach. But is that happening? Are people growing in spiritual depth and missional determination?

Twenty-five years ago, the leaders of Randy Pope’s rapidly growing church took serious stock of their own spiritual development and realized all of them had benefitted from a personal discipleship relationship that had helped them grow in their faith and discover where God was calling them to service. As a church, they decided to make personal discipleship their do-or-die aim: applying one person’s real life to another’s to accomplish something far bigger than that single life. Perimeter calls their approach “life-on-life missional discipleship” and Insourcing tells their story.

Randy Pope writes for church leaders who recognize the value of discipleship and need practical ideas for reorienting church ministries around personal discipleship. Readers will be encouraged that a wide scale personal discipleship program is attainable for any church.

Randy Pope is the founding and current Pastor of Perimeter Church in Atlanta, Georgia.  Perimeter has helped plant twenty-eight churches in the greater Atlanta area and is a founding partner of Unite, a group of over 120 churches from different denominations working together to bring Kingdom transformation to the city of Atlanta. Randy has recently established Life-on-Life Ministries, an organization committed to establishing life-on-life missional discipleship in churches worldwide. Randy is the author of four books, and a graduate of the University of Alabama and Reformed Theological Seminary. 

Kitti Murray and her husband, Bill, are part of an urban church plant network in Downtown Atlanta’s Old Fourth Ward neighborhood, where they also live. Kitti is a mother of four grown sons, three daughters-in-law, and two beautiful grandkids. When not writing, planning events for Apartment Life, or watching her grandbabies, Kitti can be found biking to her favorite coffee shop.