Church Engagement

Inspiring, encouraging and enabling churches on a disciple-making journey

Everyone a Disciple-Maker

Imagine the impact if every Christian in the UK was on an intentional journey to become a disciple-maker? We are passionate about working alongside the local church to see church members inspired, encouraged and enabled to help others discover Jesus, grow in their relationship with him, and go and make disciples, being confident to talk about their faith in Jesus naturally and as a way of life.

"Their enthusiasm and clarity in helping train people to be disciple-makers was extremely helpful for us as a church." - Matt, Church leader, Worthing

A Disciple-Making Journey

A disciple-making journey begins before someone has even discovered Jesus and continues through to someone being passionate about following Him and sharing the good news with others so they can do the same. Five simple questions can help you consider how your church is growing a culture of making disciples.

Connect – How are you connecting with your community?

Discover – How are you helping people discover the good news of Jesus?

Grow – How are you encouraging your church members to grow in their faith?

Train – How are you training and equipping your church members for disciple-making?

Go – How are you helping people go, make disciples and multiply in the spaces God has placed them?

Where are the gaps in this disciple-making journey? What is needed to ensure everyone is able to move from a first connection to disciple-maker? With over 50 years’ of experience and with our wide range of tried and tested resources we believe we have something valuable to bring to the local church.

What we offer

Tailor-Made Workshops

Whether it be a person, product or experience we often make choices on the basis of other people’s recommendations. Christians may have ‘tasted and seen that the Lord is good’ but often our attempts to recommend Jesus leave us tongue-tied and our hearers confused. Our Recommending Jesus workshops encourage and enable church members to have gospel-shaped conversations.

We offer a variety of workshops which can be combined with our Toolkit Training, tailor-made for a church’s context. A good place to start is with the The Biscuit Trail exercise as it identifies areas of need and facilitates good discussion on how to grow in witness.

Courses

Living and Telling is our flagship discipleship resource which unpacks how we can live and tell the good news of Jesus. Churches can lead this easy to follow, play and pause 10 session video course on their own with the help of a leaders guide, as a whole church or as part of existing small groups.

As a Church Engagement team we can provide guidance for your church in running the course. We also run live two-day events and online courses so individuals from across the UK can join the experience.

Here is what one church member said about the course:

“I wish I had done the Living & Telling course years ago. I used to avoid conversations with friends about God because I didn’t want to get into discussions where I couldn’t explain things well or respond to challenges about God’s existence or character. I felt inadequate and worried I wouldn’t represent God well.

Through the Living & Telling course I learnt that my story matters and how to tell it well. The four pointers for sharing God’s story are helpful, but what helped me most was learning to ask good questions. This has given me confidence to ask about people’s spiritual journeys in a more natural way.

I’ve had some amazing conversations and discovered what people really think about life, faith and God. I’ve been able to share who Jesus is, what He means to me and what He offers. I encourage anyone reading this to do the Living & Telling course to help explain the hope you want to share with friends and family.”

Resources

There are some excellent resources that aid sharing and growing in our faith but knowing what would be best for a particular context or how to use them takes research and time. We save church leaders the effort by presenting an overview of various resources or dig deeper into specific tools by guiding leaders through how to use them best. Resources include Living & Telling, The Biscuit Trail, Thrive, the Knowing God Personally booklet and Unfilter’d, and free apps such as GodTools, Jesus Film Project and Soularium.

Talks & Preaching

Using scriptures as the framework, our team of engaging speakers are keen to preach, inspiring church members on their whole-life disciple-making journey including how they can grow in their faith and go and make disciples, helping others discover Jesus for themselves

Connections

We recognise that every church has its own unique context. Whether your missional opportunities are in the workplace, at university, in the community, online, or cross-culturally, Agapé UK have different ministries working specifically in these spheres and the Church Engagement team can make those connections.

As our team travels the country visiting a variety of church settings it means that we keep our finger on the pulse. Our breadth of knowledge of other organisations, methods and resources means we have a greater understanding of how we might be able to a church on their journey.

Coaching and Consultations

With decades of experience in disciple-making, the Agapé UK Church Engagement team offers church leaders’ coaching and consultations on how to help shape a disciple-making culture of a church. We can support you as you define vision and develop simple, accessible and relevant disciple-making programmes and activities.

We would love to journey with you. If you would like to find out more download our Everyone a Disciple-Maker leaflet and get in touch by emailing connect@agape.org.uk