Focusing on Discipleship
The Great Commission orders Christ’s followers to go and make disciples. Though, David Stocker Jr. qualified a paradigm shift regarding discipleship after he grabbed over six years ago as a preacher of Brave Church in Miami, Florida.
Stocker says the church didn’t start rising until leaders began focusing on making mature disciples.
“We multiplied and comprehended that the growth we had wasn’t creating life change in people,” says Stocker, who grew up in Miami, Floria. “Sunday morning knowledge wasn’t enough to cause the progress in lives like we know Jesus planned.”
The church had 175 participants in 2014 when Stocker became preacher, but it has expanded to more than 2,000 believers on two campuses. In the summer of 2018, Brave Church took a new method. To make established disciples, the church developed its curriculum called Brave Life, divided into two courses, each ten weeks long.
“The two levels encounter on Sundays together, and then we breakdown into groups based on, women, men, and young people,” Stocker enlightens. Brave Church also has Dinner Parties: more private groups that encounter throughout the city thru the week. In general, Brave Church has 150 Dinner gatherings groups and 50 Brave Life groups, each directing on discipleship.
Carleigh Gentry, who lately completed the discipleship training, says Brave Life taught her a lot about what Christianity should look like daily.
“I grew up going to church and joined the church when I moved away from home, but I was still living a poisonous lifestyle,” says Gentry, 32. “When I first came to Brave Church, I would sit in the back row on my own and leave without talking to anyone other than saying hello.”
But the discipleship training allowed her to branch out of her comfort zone and met other believers with whom she could progress positive relationships.
“It presented me a profound understanding of what I mean when I say, ‘I’m Christian,'” says Gentry. “I recall saying when I was younger that I wanted to track God’s pathway, but I never really distinguished what I meant. Brave Church is where I discover what that path looked like.”
Ivan Saenz, another recent graduate, agrees.
“I am no longer sit on the side of the road as an observer of His heavenly work, but I roll up my sheaths and am a part of the full understanding,” says Saenz, 50. “I share my life scuffles with others as well as the wonders the Lord has done for me so that they will be heartened in their own lives to allow God to take full advantage of their potential and in turn love others.”
Stocker says it’s vital for churches to attention on discipleship by getting to the heart of the Great Commission in Matthew 28:16-20. A third Brave Church location will be launched in 2020 in downtown Miami. Brave Church began with help from the Church Multiplication Network and AGTrust.
