Just the term “disciple-making” can be intimidating, but I think that is because we tend to make things more complicated than they need to be.  Recently I was listening to an old Jerry Bridges interview that simplifies disciple making into two simple stages.  You can find the interview with Jerry Bridges here.  (It  runs for 12mins).

Jerry breaks down the idea of disciple making into two stages:

1. Having baby a Christian to be able to ‘feed himself’.  By this I take it that Bridges means that Christian who is able to stand without the help of others, so to speak.  The example that Bridges gives is being able to listen to a sermon and get the most of the Bible.  Some, but not all Christians will then be able to help with the second stage:
2. Helping a baby Christian to be able to ‘feed himself’.  Bridges points out this is not something that all Christians can do, but it is something that most Christians should be able to do.

That’s it!

Disciple-making is as simple as these two stages.  If we are able to think of disciple-making as these two simple stages then things like pathways will be clearer.  There may well be multiple pathways to these two stages, but they are the ones we need to be focussed on.

As the meerkat in the ad says “simples!”