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    Making Disciples: Coordinator's Guide
    Making Disciples: Coordinator's Guide
    Making Disciples: Coordinator's Guide
    Ebook92 pages1 hour

    Making Disciples: Coordinator's Guide

    By Bishop William H. Willimon

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    About this ebook

    Making Disciples is a 13-session mentor-based confirmation program that pairs confirmands with adult mentors and guides them through a variety of learning experiences that will strengthen the student's understanding of the faith while connecting him or her with the community of believers in a personal way. It can be used as a stand-alone program, or in conjunction with your current curriculum as a special experiential unit.

    This is a confirmation program that is more like a process and less like a reading assignment, more engaging and congruent with the nature of the Christian faith than existing programs.

    Using an “apprenticeship” approach to confirmation Will Willimon produced a series of learning experiences where adult mentors and confirmands are both teachers and learners at the same time.

    This time-tested approach has been extensively revised and updated for usage in today’s churches that take seriously Christ’s command to be engaged in disciple making

    The Coordinator’s Guide can be used by the pastor, if that is how your congregation chooses to oversee and support the process of confirmation. However, it’s good to involve as many laypersons as possible in mentoring and guiding. This Coordinator’s Guide is designed to be easily used by a lay coordinator to support the mentors as they guide their confirmands through the journey toward confirmation.


    Topics explore the basics of Christian faith:
    •God
    •Jesus
    •the Holy Spirit
    •worship
    •the Bible
    •gifts
    •ministry
    •baptism
    •spiritual life
    •death and resurrection
    •the church

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAbingdon Press
    Release dateJun 19, 2018
    ISBN9781501848179
    Making Disciples: Coordinator's Guide
    Author

    Bishop William H. Willimon

    Will Willimon is a preacher and teacher of preachers. He is a United Methodist bishop (retired) and serves as Professor of the Practice of Christian Ministry and Director of the Doctor of Ministry program at Duke Divinity School, Durham, North Carolina. For twenty years he was Dean of the Chapel at Duke University. A 1996 Baylor University study named him among the Twelve Most Effective Preachers in the English speaking world. The Pew Research Center found that Will was one of the most widely read authors among Protestant clergy in 2005. His quarterly Pulpit Resource is used by thousands of pastors throughout North America, Canada, and Australia. In 2021 he gave the prestigious Lyman Beecher Lectures on Preaching at Yale Divinity School. Those lectures became the book, Preachers Dare: Speaking for God which is the inspiration for his ninetieth book, Listeners Dare: Hearing God in the Sermon.

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      Book preview

      Making Disciples - Bishop William H. Willimon

      Section 1

      How Our Congregation Changed Its Approach to Making Disciples

      As I met with the Christian education committee that evening, I could not hide my displeasure at the thought of three long months of Thursday afternoons, trapped with a group of unwilling teenagers in our annual confirmation class. Despite my earnest efforts to make sessions on the sacraments, church history, the Bible, ethics, and beliefs more interesting, who could blame these youths if the last thing they wanted was the pastor putting them through two more hours of school every Thursday in Lent. For me and for them, Lent was truly the season of cross-bearing.

      I was reminded of an Episcopal friend of mine saying, Confirmation is a second-rate junior-high graduation ceremony. After we have marched the kids through a series of boring classes, we then lay on hands to graduate them out of the church.

      Can’t we come up with something better? I wondered aloud to the committee.

      One can’t devise an appropriate educational method, commented one layperson who teaches youth for a living, until one has first defined what it is that one wants to teach. What is the ‘end product’ of this confirmation? What do you hope to accomplish?

      Off the top of my head, I responded to her, All I want is a group of our youth who may one day grow up to resemble John Black. (John Black was a true leader of our congregation, everybody’s idea of how a Christian ought to look.)

      That’s it! she said. All we want is a dozen youth who, in their beliefs and lives, come to look like our best Christians. Is it too much to ask of confirmation?

      Now, how on earth do we go about doing that? asked another.

      So, we put our heads together and went to work creating an approach to confirmation that would most effectively meet our goal. We agreed on a number of points.

      Confirmation has as its goal discipleship—the production of people who resemble disciples of Jesus in their lifestyle, beliefs, and values.

      1.We are uninterested in our youth knowing more about Christ; we want them to know and follow Christ. Therefore, confirmation must be more than the elementary mastery of a few facts about Jesus, church history, and the Bible. Confirmation is nothing less than giving people the equipment they need to be disciples here and now. (See my article, Making Christians in Secular World, The Christian Century, Oct, 22,1986, pp. 914–917).

      2.Christianity is more than a mere head trip. It is a way of life together. The total person is engaged in the process. Education for the journey called discipleship must therefore be experiential, personal, and engaging, suggesting that confirmation doesn’t end our growth as Christians. Our youth already are Christians. They are not ignorant of the faith since they already have been trying to live as Christians in their own way. Confirmation continues and strengthens Christian growth that has already begun. It is an important step in the journey, not the end of the journey.

      3.The manner in which most of us became Christians was by looking over someone else’s shoulder, emulating some admired older Christian, taking up a way of life that was made real and accessible through the witness of someone else. So, while books, films, and lectures might play a part in confirmation, they will all be subservient to the main task of putting young Christians in close proximity with older Christian guides—mentors, we shall call them—who invite these younger Christians to look over their shoulders as they both attempt to live as Christians. The younger Christian will not be the only one who expects to grow and develop during the process of confirmation.

      In meetings over the next few weeks, the committee devised a new approach to confirmation, based on our assumptions. We polled various groups in the church, including the youth, asking them, Who comes to your mind as an adult in this church who would be especially good at helping our youth deepen their faith? Who are some of our most credible Christians? I then took these lists (which were confidential) and selected twelve adults ranging in age from 23 to 68. I contacted each of them, telling them what we were asking them to do. Some expressed reservations, and all but two agreed to help. All were deeply moved that they had been named. I then assigned each of our ten youth to a mentor.

      A setup meeting was called for the first week of Lent. Youth met their mentors, and the journey (as we called it) began. To each pair, we gave a one-sheet list of learning activities that had been devised by me and the committee. We told them to proceed at their own pace and to follow their own interests. The activities could be completed in a few weeks or inasmuch as three months.

      The following learning activities were included:

      •Read the Gospel of Luke together. As each of you reads at home, keep a notebook with you and note those passages that you find interesting, confusing, or inspiring. Every two weeks, make some time to discuss what you have read.

      •Attend Sunday services together for the next three months. After each service, discuss your reactions to and impressions of the service, and any questions you may have.

      •Get a copy of our church’s budget. Find out where our money goes. Discuss together how each of you decides to make a financial commitment to the work of the church.

      •Together, attend a board meeting of our church during the next three months. Decide what congregational board or committee you would like to be on at the end of the confirmation process.

      •In your own words, explain Why I like being a United Methodist Christian. Discuss two areas in which you would like to know more about our church. Ask our pastor or church librarian to help you find this information.

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