Dave Roadcup invited six seniors at Ozark Bible College to join him in a year-long discipling endeavor. That was in 1978. I was one of the six. At that stage in my education, I had learned about how to preach and teach, but my year with Dave taught me how to love.
His classroom was everyday life. Dave took us with him when he spoke at churches and when he taught in the classroom. Dave also made sure we learned how a godly man lives. Dave, his wife, and their children made sure the door to their home was always open.
We spent many evenings in their living room, talking and eating like family. In the process, we learned what a godly home looks like—without ever seeing a lesson plan.
Best of all, Dave took us with him—just him. He would say to one of us, "Let's grab a Coke and catch up!" I'm sure I sampled every dessert served at the nearby restaurant that year. I distinctly recall one evening with a large peach shortcake in front of me, discussing, ironically, the spiritual value of fasting.
We talked about the latest ideas on church and ministry often, but no topic was off limits, from studies to sex. Countless times I answered Dave's most-asked question, "So, Rick, how are you really doing?"
Dave saw his time with us as the beginning of a process. "Men," he said, "I hope our seventies and eighties are our most spiritually productive decades." He was not only thinking only about our spiritual growth through college, but also planning for the impact we would have over the next 50 years.
The grandfather call
It's been more than 20 years since Dave took on that first group, and he has never stopped discipling. Recently I asked him how many men he had discipled over the years. He estimated 160.
Yet one of Dave's greatest joys is hearing the news that another discipling group has been birthed by someone he discipled. One of the men in that first group with me started a tradition: every time he birthed a new group, he called Dave to say, "Hi, Grandfather!" A few years later, he called again and said, "Hi, Great-grandfather!"
About ten years ago, when I became senior minister of the Town and Country Christian Church in Topeka, Kansas, I invited six men in that church of 200 to join me in a three-year discipling relationship. This time, I got to make the "Grandfather Call" to Dave.
Over time, we built the kind of group Dave had modeled for us during my college years. We prayed for each other, as a group, in pairs, and in various settings. One night we drove to the highest spot in our city, looked out over the lights, and spent an hour praying for the people we lived and worked with every day.
I learned from Dave the importance of "keeping it fresh—never doing it the same way twice." One evening, without warning, I took the men to a tent revival at an inner-city black church. When we arrived, we stood out as the scared-stiff white guys; by the time we left, we were dancin' with the rest of the crowd!
Each of our weekly meetings included Bible study, prayer, and sharing our lives. Dave used to say, "As we get started, let's go around the horn." Though I brought a map of each night's lesson and activities, "going around the horn" often redirected us to seize the moment through the Spirit's leading. We spent one evening praying for Tom, whose child was rebelling, another evening slowing down to address the heart questions of John, whose faith was in a vice that week.
As important as those weekly meetings were to growing our friendships, I also kept in mind the group's long-term goals. I had prayed that each of those men would become elders in our congregation within ten years. And so each meeting I asked myself, "Does this move us closer to developing mature disciples, qualified to teach others?"
A three-phase, three-year process I developed through leading several discipleship groups helps me maintain focus upon the goal.
My three-year plan
In our first year together, I focus on building community in the group.
In the early weeks, I say to each man at our meetings, "Tell us your life history." Then, I take the first turn, modeling permission to admit both success and failure along the way. Sometimes, we take additional time recounting our spiritual history. If we're going to build a band of close friends who can trust each other as deeply as a discipleship group must, extended relationship building is essential.
Then I lead the group in a four-week introduction to discipling, including what discipling means and what they should expect to both give and receive from the group.
Year one: In that first year, we focus on basics of the Christian walk: prayer, spiritual gifts, and studying the "one another" texts. We discuss challenging articles from Christian periodicals, and sometimes read a book together. I've found Bill Hybels' Too Busy Not to Pray and Gordon MacDonald's Ordering Your Private World good for the first-year discipleship group.
Year two: The second year is the year of depth. By this time, we've grown to trust each other, allowing the possibility of accountability, in-depth study, and intimate prayer. This is the heart of discipleship, when a kind of deep growth occurs that may not be possible in the average small group.
We get close enough to care, a kind of caring I would not have known about if Dave had not modeled it for me years earlier.
We walk beside each other through crises in our lives and families. We set spiritual goals and make ourselves accountable. We build great friendships in Christ. In fact, I still think of the men in that first group as my good friends.
This process begins to bloom early in that second year when we introduce to the group prayer partners. Even in the presence of friends who have grown to trust and love each other, some personal matters are hard to reveal in a group setting. So we pair off for part of each meeting, focused on more intense accountability.
The meetings with prayer partners are guided by personal spiritual goals. We commit these goals to writing at the beginning of the year and revisit them at least twice monthly, encouraging complete honesty. Kyle and Dwayne, for example, might agree to call each other early each morning, making sure the other is starting the day in prayer. Or Chris might call Randy on Wednesday to ask if Randy confronted the person he needed to at work.
The in-depth studies we take on in that second year and the prayer partner teams combine to make the second year a time of exciting spiritual growth.
Year three: The third year is the year of outreach. We focus on how to multiply the discipleship group experience so others can get in on it. I don't lead many meetings during the third year, but step back to allow these other men opportunities for leadership.
I also expose the men to every type of small group leadership, from planning, to discussion, to handling conflict.
For example, in my current group we have just finished a nine-week emphasis on prayer, during which each member led the group for a night. Then, we applied what we learned by conducting a prayer walk through a local shopping mall. The additional step of planning applicable activities helps us think outside our comfortable little group and prepare us for multiplying new discipleship groups.
When we get to the fourth year, it's time for the men to begin their own branches of the discipleship tree, to begin leading new groups themselves.
Feed the spiritually hungry
In my fourth year with that first group, the six men paired into three teams, I took on a new group, and our discipleship tree grew from one branch to four.
We wrote down the names of 36 men in our church who we considered spiritually hungry candidates for the new groups. At a local hamburger joint, we conducted a "player draft" and divided up the names. Then we planned how we would recruit each potential group member.
As I looked around the table at those soon-to-be group leaders, I felt I should, as their mentor, remind them that discipling requires a strong level of commitment, and we'd be doing well to get a dozen of the men on our list to say yes.
But the guys said, "No, we're going have a strong response." And of the 36 candidates, 35 said yes.
Our 35 new recruits tried their groups for two months. This offered them the opportunity to see what discipling involved before they made a long-term commitment. Again I warned the new leaders, "Don't be disappointed if you have some group members who don't want to stay with this."
Of the 35 who started out, 34 agreed to continue for at least year.
I continued to coach the new group leaders, though not as much as I expected. I encouraged them to set short-term goals, such as, "Have lunch with one of your guys each week," and long-term goals such as, "Have every member lead at least one meeting by June." I sent them articles or books I thought might make good study. And though we continue to be close friends, my role in their lives diminished, just as a father's role diminishes when his releases his children and they begin having children of their own.
Elders in the making
Our whole congregation felt the spiritual impact of having more than 30 men in discipling relationships. Men I'd never heard from before were calling me at the office and asking Bible questions. People who had problems with commitment in the past were signing on to do needed ministry. Men who'd stayed in the background stepped forward to lead.
Perhaps my favorite response was the conversations I had with the wives of the men who were in discipleship groups. Many of the women were overjoyed at the spiritual growth in their husbands. The growth was evident not only in the men's increased involvement at church, but also in their Christlike attitudes at home.
I'm now in my twenty-fourth year of discipling. I'm still amazed at the impact of carving out three to five hours of my week to invest in the long-term growth of a few hungry individuals.
In my current church, I'm discipling a new batch of seven men. I hope all of them will be leaders in our church in the years to come. And I can't wait to call Dave in a couple of years and once again say, "Hello, Great-Grandfather!"
Rick Lowry is pastor of community life at Crossroads Christian Church in Evansville, Indiana.
