There is an old saying, if you fail to plan, you are planning to fail. A few years ago in a meeting at a church, I had an interesting experience. We were evaluating an activity that had seemingly gone really well. Much had been accomplished in a short period of time, but then someone asked a question, “what was the goal of this activity?”

Everyone looked around at one another and cited the things that were just accomplished. The follow up question brought a longer pause however. When had we decided this is what we needed to accomplish? At that moment, one of the men in the group had an epiphany.

“We didn’t,” he said, “and we do church this way all the time.” What followed was a great discussion about how we do ministry. So often, rather than create a vision or plan of what we expect from our ministry, we do the things that we know to do or the things that have always been done and then celebrate whatever we accomplish.

I am not saying that nothing good comes of this ever. But the downside to doing ministry this way is this is not something we can replicate or pass on and it can hamper the efforts we make for the Kingdom when we can’t do so.

We should have a plan for making disciples that helps us to continue making disciples for the long term. We have a component in the toolkit that can be accessed online called the discipleship template. It is designed to help you think through a way to define the process your church will use to make disciples. I want to encourage you to take a look at the template and use it as a guideline for creating a plan to make disciples that will make disciples.

Be blessed and go and make disciples.