What tools do you offer churches to effectively foster deeper spiritual growth?
This was the second question for our panel discussion (last week's introduction). Since this was a conference for discipleship leaders, I recognized the connection between this question and the Deep Discipleship movement. I had read the book by J.T. English, and knew Lifeway was about to begin promoting their Deep Discipleship curriculum.
Deep discipleship is about intentionally equipping church members to know their Bible, understand theology, and develop formative habits to grow in Christlikenss. Our goal as a company has always been to provide software to help churches in these areas.
Here are a few ways we are doing this:
- Group management. Groupfinder and other registration tools help people connect. Coaching tools help discipleship leaders capture data, and use consistency (faithfulness) to spot spiritual health trends for groups and individuals. Metrics provide leaders an overall perspective of the groups ministry.
- Growthfinder discipleship assessment. We recognize that different churches measure discipleship in different ways. They adopt personalized language to communicate their vision, mission, and values. Growthfinder is a customizable survey that churches share with members to assess their discipleship strengths and growth areas. Register here to take it yourself.
- Workflow automation. Once someone registers for a group, completes a form, or takes the assessment, churches can use our workflow tool to send out a series of follow-up emails, texts, or notify a staff member to make a personal connection. This system can be used to push out a stream of valuable content in bite-sized doses at any frequency desired. If you register to take the assessment, you'll receive a series of follow up content on the topic of measuring discipleship.
- Track discipleship movement. By being able to effectively capture both objective and subjective first party data, Churchteams has what it needs to provide an incredible feedback loop for pastors on things like: commitment, community engagement, serving, stewardship, leadership, and all the Growthfinder discipleship attributes. These are some of the topics addressed in our Growthfinder follow up series of texts.
We believe deeper spiritual growth is always done in the context of community. One aspect of this type of community is teaching. Curriculum like the one referred to above does an incredible job of teaching.
Another aspect of community is life-on-life engagement. The best curricula out there facilitate personal life involvement as well. You just can't live out the Christian life outside the context of a local group of believers.
If you've never really investigated how Churchteams can help you grow discipleship, take the assessment and reach out to our team to learn more. We would LOVE to help you foster deeper spiritual growth in your church.
