5 Tips for Effective 1-on-1 Discipleship

This piece will explain best practices for one-on-one discipleship, but before we get there, we must first lay out the importance of discipleship. Jesus’s leadership plan At the age of thirty, Jesus of Nazareth embarked on a mission that would change, not the world, but the entire cosmos. But Jesus did not do it alone. He began by discipling twelve men. In his classic book, The Master Plan of Evangelism, Robert Coleman explains how Jesus gives us the greatest leadership development plan in history. Jesus began by spending a majority of his time building up twelve ordinary men, men who would take the reins when his time on earth came to an end.1 These same men, ancient witnesses claim, turned the world upside down (Acts 17:6). Using the message entrusted to them, and empowered by the Holy Spirit, their ministry reached the globe. In their hands, Christianity officially arrived on the world stage. The discipleship mandate Jesus’s parting words for us in Matthew center on the call to discipleship. In the Great Commission, Jesus commands us to “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations” (Matt 28:19–20).2 The imperative in the Greek is “make disciples” (μαθητεύω). For the rest of...