Walk With Me by Bill Mowry

Have we overcomplicated, over-systematized, and over-formalized making disciples?

That’s the question Bill Mowry asks in his new book Walk With Me: Simple Principles for Everyday Disciplemaking. Mowry wants to help us declutter and deprofessionalize the Great Commission.

You can listen to this episode below.

Key Ideas

We've overcomplicated disciple-making. We tend to emphasize programs or curricula rather than an intentional relational process.
The solution to our feelings of inadequacy is Jesus’ promise of his presence and authority.
We can picture disciple-making as inviting people to walk with us as far as we’ve walked. We can also partner with others in the church who’ve gone farther.
Jesus gave us an example of sharing struggles with others in disciple-making.
Disciple-making is more than just teaching information. It’s about inviting people into our lives.
A priority practice in disciple-making is helping people grow in their love and worship of God, and nurturing that relationship.
Disciplemaking can be as simple as reading the Bible with another believer.
Organic doesn’t mean haphazard. Organic discipling is highly intentional.
It’s important for us to have a picture in our minds of what a disciple should know, do, and be.
Be careful about discipling people into your preferences and applications.
One of the keys to disciple-making is demonstrating love to others.
When people change slowly, remember that God works on a different timeline than we do.
When making disciples, aim to help others become disciple-makers by keeping your process simple and explaining why you do what you do.
Build accountability, application, and affirmation into your disciplemaking relationships.
Pastors can begin to create a culture of disciple-making by modeling it. A good goal is to spend 10% of ministry time in disciple-making.
Before planning, disciple-making should be demonstrated.
God still works through our disciple-making efforts even when we make mistakes.
Nobody is too old to be a disciple-maker with others.

Quotes

“I think we’ve made the idea of making disciples complicated. Now, one popular book on disciple-making has at the end of the book 32 things you need to disciple somebody in. And I think I can’t even disciple myself in 32 things.”

“God often works in some slow ways, and also we want to be about building depth in people’s lives and not just completing a program.”

“You’ve got something to offer. Start right where you are.”

“Discipling is not about passing on information and people accumulating the right knowledge or doctrine. That’s part of it … But it’s really about imparting our life in Christ, and part of that life in Christ is having him meet us at our point of need and our trials and our temptations, inviting him in and so that I’m setting an example for somebody else.”

“When we think about something being organic, it really implies not so much that it’s haphazard, but it’s highly intentional and highly disciplined and there’s an end goal in mind.”

“Man, I didn’t realize that after I became a Christian that there’d be so much paperwork to do.”

“The key to making it transferable is that we have to keep it simple enough, and we have to encourage people to be thinking about how they can intentionally pass it on to somebody else.”

“If you’re going to build a disciple-making culture, the leadership of the church, particularly the senior pastor has to be engaged in modeling it.”

“No matter the age I’m at, I’m going to keep at it.”