Guidelines and Checklist for the One-to-One Discipler
Jack Griffin
From The Adventure of Discipling Others. Order from NavPress
These pointers on one-to-one discipling are from the booklet Man to Man: How to Do Individual Disciplemaking by Jack Griffin, who began the Navigator ministry in Australia with his wife, May, in the 1960s.- Make sure you are well prepared. Pray before spending one-to-one time with someone, and organize yourself.
- Remember that you can't lead anyone further than you have gone. You cannot lay solid foundations in someone else's with what are only sketchy outlines in your own.
- You teach by the example of your life. The person who is ministering one to one must be what he is trying to teach.
- Tailor your help to meet the need of the individual. Every person is different. Don't try to pour them all in the same mold.
- Repeat everything. "He tells us everything over and over again, a line at a time and in such simple words!" (Isaiah 28:10, The Living Bible). Make no apologies for repeating things.
- In everything, show him how. We are generally too long in telling people what to do, and too short in showing them how.
- Give achievable assignments. If you happen to be shoveling everything you have at the person you are individually following up-throw away your shovel. Get out an eyedropper or a thimble.
- Take nothing for granted. Check and double-check his progress on past commitments. "How have you been doing in your quiet times these last two weeks, Joe?"
- Keep emphasizing the lordship of Christ. Jesus said, "Anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple" and "Any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple" (Luke 14:27 and Luke 14:33).
- Help him establish his goals in life-the goals of knowing Christ and making him known.
- Meet his needs through the Scriptures.
- Keep sharing with him the importance of the "basics"-God's word, prayer, fellowship, witnessing, and keeping Christ at the center of everything. "For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ" (1 Cor. 3:11).
- Explain the 2 Tim. 2:2 principle--which is concentrating on faithful men who will be able to teach others also. Teach him to give his life to a few, who in turn will multiply into many. Keep sharing the vision of disciplemaking (Matthew 28:19-20).
- Remember Psalm 127:1-"Unless the Lord builds the house, its builders labor in vain." It is God who builds disciples. He is the Master Trainer
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