The Friendship Factor

Studies show that feeling connected is highly important to new church members. They desire meaningful Christian friendships. Without those bonding relationships, over time, they tend to exit unnoticed through their churches’ “back doors.” This is one reason why Becoming A Disciple-Maker has been developed. It helps create a sustained environment of enjoyable fellowship. This warm spiritual atmosphere produces contentment and increased maturity. Because your teaching assignment is to provide immediate and long-term spiritual growth for new members, your emerging disciple-makers will meet a strategic ministry need. Without their investment of time and encouragement, a significant percentage of your church’s new believers and other new members would predictably fail to mature. As a result, many of them would never learn how to effectively share their faith.

This simple but often repeated pattern of neglect is why so many new Christians gradually become discouraged and inactive. Looking back, few of them will ever comprehend why their church experience was so unfulfilling. They will live with mixed feelings of guilt and frustration, having once tasted the truth and liking it, but not learning to grow. Sadly, this failure describes the ongoing observable pattern of many new Christians worldwide.