Eddie Mosley on LifePoint’s Discipleship Pathway

One of the most important current grouplife trends is a more intentional discipleship effort.  LifePoint Church is a good example of this trend.  A dynamic, growing multi-site church that has a heart for its community, its region of Middle Tennessee, and the world through global initiatives, LifePoint has been very intentional about the development of its discipleship strategy.

Eddie Mosley is the Executive Pastor of GroupLife at LifePoint Church.  I recently had the opportunity to ask him to give some insights into their dicipleship direction.

Mark: I know that LifePoint is launching a new discipleship pathway called The Christ Centered Journey.  What’s motivating your new emphasis?

Eddie: LifePoint’s purpose statement is “Leading people to a Christ centered life.”  We continually evaluate the progress of our discipleship and evangelism efforts so that we can help people become Christ centered.  Following the release of the REVEAL study from Willow Creek Association we developed our own Journey Map.  The Journey Map helped us think about classes, groups and resources we were offering for various stages of spiritual maturity.

What we have now not only helps individuals identify where they are on the journey, but enables them to help others in their group by identifying where a person is on the journey, the needs that stage has and next steps (whether that be a class, a resource, a conversation, etc) that will help them move toward the next stage.  The Christ Centered Journey helps someone move along the Journey Map to be Christ-Centered.  Real Life Discipleship by Jim Putman was a big influence in developing our Discipleship Pathway.

Mark: Is this an all church emphasis?  Is it broader than just small groups?

Eddie: LifePoint is a church of Small Groups, therefore this is a church-wide strategy.  It is more than an emphasis as it is being used to determine classes, curriculum and events to facilitate movement on the Christ Centered Journey.  This Christ Centered Journey (for discipleship) is also being mirrored by a Leadership Pathway that our Executive Pastor of Worship Programming, Jason Stewart, is designing (@stewonline).

Mark: What are you anticipating the Pathway will do for your members?

Eddie: The conversations that have resulted from the four-week roll out of the Journey have been encouraging.  People are sharing that they have a new understanding of their life in Christ.  No longer is it to just get “baptized and attend church.”  The Journey shows the needs of each stage and offers a next step for them in order to move on the journey to become more Christ centered.  We are anticipating this will become known as a clear plan for individuals and leaders that will help them shepherd and apprentice those around them to become Christ centered.

Mark: Have you already defined some measurements you’ll take to determine if the new direction is working?

Eddie: We are currently designing Christ Centered metrics that measure how well we are moving people along the Journey.  At LifePoint, we’ve identified five characteristics of a disciple and want to partner with every member for personal development of these.  These characteristics are introduced in  Discover LifePoint, a one time class offered every month at our campuses.  As we point toward the characteristics of Worship, Biblical Community, Service, Influence and Generosity, we want to be able to evaluate how well we are doing in helping people live out these characteristics.  There will be weekly, monthly and even quarterly reporting that will guide us in planning for the next season.

Mark: Is it something you’ll be growing into over time?  Or will you be at full speed right away?  How will you roll it out?

Eddie: The Christ Centered Journey was initially rolled out via a Wednesday night series. We will continue to use it as we train Small Group leaders with the continued initial introduction to everyone through Discover LifePoint. Although we have already begun to implement this Journey, we realize there are going to be adjustments as we communicate it more and continually evaluate via our metrics.

Mark: Really appreciate your insight and input!  Thanks for taking the time to explain the process that you’re introducing at LifePoint!

If you missed my article on current grouplife trends, you can read it right here.