Discipleship Triangles

Last Sunday at church we focused on discipleship triangles.  We have been running these as our main discipleship structure for 6 months.  Some people shared their experiences and we looked at some reflections on their operation.  Here is a summary of what we covered:

Discipleship is all about listening to what God is saying to us and then responding to what He is saying - Transformative Listening.

Discipleship Triangles are micro groups of 2-4 people that meet in person and/or online to share together what God has been saying and how they are responding in the three dimensions of life: 

UP - what God has been saying to us through a passage from the bible we agreed to read at the previous meeting
IN -  sharing some aspects of our lives - highlights, prayer points, or kairos moments
OUT - share about and pray for some aspect of our engagement with the world - people of peace, plans etc.

Reflections:
  • They can be a challenge to make a regular part of our lives
    • Aim for weekly (even if every second meeting is by skype/phone) and you will probably make 2 out of 3 weeks on average.
  • It is easy to continually focus on just one/two of the dimensions and skip the ‘hard’ one
    • Intentionally start with a different dimension each meeting
  • They work best if we have done preparation (means everybody needs to know in advance what you will be covering)
    • You can develop a plan in a couple of minutes on www.elifeshapes.org and then email it to the other participants.
  • Don’t forget to follow up on planned actions
  • Celebrate small improvements
    • We tend to overestimate what can change in the short term and underestimate what can change over the longer term.
  • They are easy to reproduce (if you start a new one you could make it fortnightly alternating with the first one you are in)
If you are not in one but would like to be, send a message:
Name:
Email Address:





David Wanstall, 30/09/2009