Discipleship does not occur in a vacuum. If you want to see radical growth in your Christian life, you have to surround yourself with others who will disciple you to more maturity. Can growth occur without others? Perhaps. But that would be rare. Even the Gideon Bible in the hotel room that you pick up to read by yourself was placed there for you by someone else who cares about your walk with Christ. The plan of God is for us to teach Jesus’ commands to one another. One of the best ways to accomplish this is in a group that meets with transparency and accountability to sharpen one another’s Christian walk.
Robby Gallaty:
By yourself, you are incapable of producing spiritual fruit, but you can plant yourself in a position to experience it. That’s the value of being in a group where you are intentionally pursuing Christ with other believers, what I’m calling a D-Group. Discipleship is more than a weekly group gathering, but never less.
And this isn’t a new concept:
Around 30 A.D., Jesus walked with the 12. They were disciples. Jesus was the disciple-maker.
About 60 A.D., we read in 2 Timothy 2:2 that Paul had discipled Timothy and challenged Timothy to do the same with others.
Robbie Gallaty points out that around 400 A.D., Augustine’s preaching indicated the need for groups and that such groups would be a means of unity, a method of spiritual growth, and would develop healthy Christian friendship.
In the 1600s, Phillip Jacob Spener established what he called “gatherings for piety.” Gallaty states, “Going against the Catholic practice of one-on-one confession to a priest, Spener insisted that truths learned from Scripture are meant to be lived out in a community. Spener despised individualism, claiming that ‘it acted like a medicine which was more dangerous than the disease it was supposed to cure.'”
And in the 1700s, we find John Wesley developing and encouraging discipleship groups as well.
All this simply to say that groups matter. Disciple groups were important in the past. And they are still important today. You need to find a group. If there isn’t one for you to jump into, then you need to pray that God would put some people in your mind to start a group with. And then get them together to start meeting and growing!
Gallaty provides encouragement regarding this:
Start a discipleship group. I know that seems obvious, but at some point you actually need to get started. You can begin investing today. If you are a man, find a group of men to disciple. If you are a woman, gather several women together. It’s challenging to take someone on a journey you have never been on yourself, but it’s not impossible. You don’t need another Bible study to get ready for this. Take the Bible you already know and study it with two or three other people weekly.
And if you need more help getting in a group or starting one, let me know. I would be happy to provide you with the tools that we use at FBC Newton to get a group off the ground!
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