Developing a discipleship ministry at Port Charlotte Seventh-day Adventist Church (Florida)

The purpose of this Ministry Focus Paper is to develop a systematic discipleship ministry in the life of Port Charlotte Seventh-day Adventist Church.; The Seventh-day Adventist Church, in general, is pretty good at doing public evangelism. We baptize about 2,100 people each day and accept them into church membership. Our worldwide membership is currently over ten million members. Evangelism and missions are the footings and foundation of our explosive denominational growth.; But, in my opinion, we are not doing a good job at intentionally developing new members into mature Christians and leaders. Do we not have a biblical responsibility to all those who join our churches to develop and nurture them into strong spiritual leaders in the church? We all know the answer. Jesus, the head of the Church, clearly answered this question when He gave the early disciples the Great Commission of Matthew 28:18--20.; I believe that a biblically based systematic discipleship program is vitally necessary at Port Charlotte Seventh-day Adventist Church. Our membership is 675 with an average attendance of four hundred. To break the six hundred-member barrier and continue growing both spiritually and numerically, we must shift from a traditional pastor/shepherd model to the Priesthood of All Believers discipleship model. Perhaps this systematic discipleship program will become a model used in other Seventh-day Adventist Churches denomination wide.; This paper will be divided into three sections. The first section will provide a biblical and theological rationale for a discipleship ministry. Included in this section is the biblical mandate for discipleship as well as a look at the discipleship model ministry of Jesus, Paul, the early church, and early Adventism. This first section will develop the theological framework for lay ministry. I believe that discipleship and lay ministry go together hand in hand. Another important part of this first section is what the writings of Ellen G. White reveal concerning discipleship. Seventh-day Adventists believe that Ellen G. White demonstrated the biblical spiritual gift of prophet. What she wrote one hundred years ago still has a tremendous influence on Adventist church members today. Thus a complete analysis of her writings on this topic is included.; The second section will provide an accurate profile of the community and church. Information on geographical, economic and demographic factors will be published and analyzed. Membership trends from 1988 through 1998 will be carefully evaluated locally and denomination-wide.; The third section will set forth a systematic plan for developing a discipleship ministry at the Port Charlotte Seventh-day Adventist Church. In this section I will in detail outline the four-year Discipleship Curriculum that I am developing and currently implementing into our church life.; The goal and objective of this Discipleship Curriculum is to develop a systematic course that will take individual seekers who may or may not even know Jesus Christ and lead them to full acceptance of Jesus as Savior and Lord. And then lead them further into spiritual maturity, church leadership and finally to the ability to reproduce other disciples.