12 Principles of Discovery Discipleship

Discovery Discipleship seeks to empower emerging leaders to bring about sustainable transformation in society and to ignite self-sustaining, reproducing movements of Jesus’ disciples making more disciples, and through that, to build healthy reconciled communities and nations. Discovery discipleship is based on Biblical principles of personal and community obedience to Jesus Christ.

The principles of discovery discipleship are as follows:

1. Obedience to a few simple truths that a person discovers from the teachings of Jesus is a more powerful form of transformation than seeking ever increasing knowledge about the Bible or Christianity as a “religion”.

2. Investing in a few obedient followers of Jesus is a more powerful form of transformation than seeking to influence multitudes of non-obedient Christian spectators.

3. “Insiders” make the best leaders: “Outsiders” are to invest in insiders, those inside the culture or business or a network of relationships that God wants to use to bring about transformation.

4. Self-discovery of the life-transforming truths Jesus taught is more powerful than being told what to believe.

5. The Holy Spirit is the best teacher; the role of mentors is to facilitate opportunity for new followers of Jesus to hear the Holy Spirit speak directly to them from the Bible, without being told what to believe.

6. The teachings of Jesus in the Bible are the greatest source of wisdom for transforming a nation.

7. Every person has the resources within them through faith in Christ to be a leader in their community; the greatest obstacle to being a transformational leader is not poverty of circumstances, but poverty of mind and spirit.

8. God has prepared persons of peace inside every culture, business, government, neighborhood and sphere of society who are the key persons to bring about transformation. Such persons are not just “networkers”, or “gatekeepers”, but persons ready to obey Jesus, to change their mind and behavior about sinful, selfish choices that are destructive to themselves and their community.

9. Discipleship is intentional relationship. Transformational discipleship is intentionally investing in someone so they might have the opportunity to experience the life-transforming power of knowing and obeying Jesus Christ and as a result, bringing transformation to their community.

10. Jesus invited people who did not yet know him to be his disciples; he discipled people to convert them, he did not convert them to disciple them.

11. Belonging leads to believing, not just believing to belonging. In other words, Jesus modeled inviting people to be part of his spiritual family as a way of bringing them to obedient faith – he did not wait for them to believe in order to invite them to belong. If they did not grow to obedient faith, he did not kick them out, but at the same time, he gave attention to those most serious about obeying him.

12. Discovery discipleship happens best in small discovery Bible studies that provide opportunity for accountability and practice of the above mentioned principles. These discovery groups are capable of growing into simple churches that can multiply and bring transformation in every sphere of society.

By Floyd McClung (used by permission)
All Nations

For more ministry resources visit Floyd's homepage:
www.floydandsally.org/