Maximum Discipleship in the Church : A Church Leader's Guide for Building a Strategic Approach to Making Disciples

Do you want your church to be a disciple-making church, but aren’t sure how to get there? Are you struggling to come up with a church-wide strategy for making disciples?
In Maximum Discipleship in the Church, veteran pastor and leadership coach, Dr. Randy Wollf, helps church leaders understand and grow 11 essential elements that will move their churches toward greater disciple-making effectiveness. In the pages of this book, you will discover:

• How the culture of a church can set the stage for discipleship to thrive.
• Why focusing on one discipleship approach is not enough to make disciples in a maximum way.
• How you can strengthen each of the 11 essential disciple-making elements and take your church to the next level in making disciples.

The book comes with access to the online Church Discipleship Assessment, a tool that helps you measure your church's effectiveness in the 11 disciple-making areas. Every chapter has reflection/discussion questions that will help you and your leadership team identify and apply key insights from the assessment and the book.

Imagine that discipleship in your church is like a grape vine. Of course, we want our churches to bear fruit like seeing people accept Christ and grow in him. Yet, the growth of the vine and its ability to produce fruit is dependent on at least four things: water, sunlight, good soil, and a supportive structure.

As we think about making disciples in the church, it’s imperative that we recognize the Holy Spirit’s role. He is the One who draws people to Christ and helps them grown in him. He provides water and sunlight to make discipleship flourish in our churches. Unless God grows the plant, our efforts are pointless.

Even though God ultimately causes discipleship to thrive in our church, He has chosen to partner with us in this great, vine-growing venture. One of the ways that we can participate is to make sure that the soil has the right nutrients to support the growth of the vine. The first five disciple-making elements relate to your church’s culture – the heart of your church. The five church cultural factors are like nutrients in the soil. They provide what discipleship needs to thrive in your church.

Of course, growing a vine requires more than just the right soil. You also need to have appropriate structures like a trellis that support the vine’s growth. That’s where the remaining six discipleship elements come in.

The church is God’s primary way of making disciples, but only if we grow certain qualities and strengthen structures that will support optimal disciple-making. If you are longing to see your church make more and deeper disciples of Jesus, Maximum Discipleship in the Church is for you!

Randy Wollf, PhD, has been a pastor, church planter, and missionary for 20 years. He currently serves as an associate professor of leadership and practical theology at the Mennonite Brethren Biblical Seminary. Randy is also the Director of MinistryLift, a non-formal training ministry dedicated to equipping people to love God more deeply and serve Him more effectively. Randy and his wife, Lore, live in Langley, British Columbia, with their four children.