by Rachel Havlak, Salt Resident, Keystone Church
Since the start of the school year, twenty-six students have placed their faith in Jesus in The Salt Company at Ankeny! It has truly been such a sweet time to see the Lord working in the hearts of so many students and also be the ones to see him bring forth the fruit from the gospel seeds planted in their lives. As a leadership team, we have sat back wondering how best to shepherd and disciple all of these new believers.
We recently asked all of our student leaders to pick one person that they could invest in and give more of their time to help them grow as a disciple of Jesus. We asked our student leaders to invest in people they saw as becoming a potential leader. People who are already bought into the ministry and who are already setting the pace. Once all of the leaders identified their one, we realized the best way to continue to prepare those new pacesetters for leadership was to put them in discipleship roles where they could begin to pour into a new believer.
We thought the best way to describe this process would be “trickle-down discipleship.” Essentially, as the D-Group leader pours into the student leader, the student leader pours into their one, and the one then pours into the new believer. The idea of “trickle-down” comes from the idea that the D-Group leader has significantly more of an ability to teach and disciple because they have been walking with Jesus longer.
Each person has significantly less to give, but they can still lead others and bring them up to the level of maturity that they are at in their walk with Jesus. The trickle of discipleship flows down all the way from the D-Group leader to the new believer. As we have started to see this played out, it has been so encouraging to see students get excited about discipleship and helping their friends know and follow Jesus.
