Discipleship: Establishing a Relationship

I am an introverted, extrovert.  I love time to myself and the peace and energy that comes from my alone time.  Yet, I am also energized by being around other people.  I love to socialize and I have many friends.  Yet, I don't know anyone who can maintain lots of "good" friends.  Sure, I have 600 facebook friends and acquaintances, but when it comes to real friends, I certainly do not have more than 20 that I spend time with weekly, and that may be pushing it.  As I have studied this, I have come to the conclusion that for a church to grow, EVERYONE must be a part of the discipleship process, therefore, everyone is responsible to build relationships.

Statistically, they say the average church will not grow above 150 if the pastor is the primary disciple maker.  He just can't maintain that may relationships.  If we want to grow and we want to be and do the things that God has called us to do, than ALL of us are called to be disciple makers.  The biggest thing a disciple maker needs, relationships.

See, relationships is how it all comes together.  In college, I took a class called "Personal Evangelism."  In that class, we were taught the many different evangelistic techniques that were available.  From "Cold Calling" (randomly knocking on people's doors) to "Argumentative Evangelism", we were taught that the best way to evangelize was what we called then, "Friendship Evangelism".  Today, that is still the best way to evangelize.  To build a relationship with someone and when given the opportunity, share your faith.

The first step to discipleship is the willingness to build relationships with people around you.  You have to be given the right to speak into the lives of people.  You have to earn that right and sometimes it takes time to build a real relationship so that your words, and actions mean something.