Insourcing: Bringing Discipleship Back to the Local Church (Leadership Network Innovation Series)

Highlighting the successful “life-on-life missional discipleship” practices that his church has refined for over twenty years, Randy Pope inspires pastors and church leaders to leave behind ineffective programs and to stop “outsourcing” the task of discipleship by moving it from the margins of the church back into the mainstream.

Too many of today’s pastors and leaders mistakenly think that thriving programs, lively worship services, and relevant preaching are adequate for developing people into the spiritual dynamos God desires. In many churches, the primary objective of the church—discipleship of people into mature followers of Jesus—has been “outsourced” to programs and large-scale efforts to train and teach. But is that happening? Are people growing in spiritual depth and missional determination?

Twenty-five years ago, the leaders of Randy Pope’s rapidly growing church took serious stock of their own spiritual development and realized all of them had benefitted from a personal discipleship relationship that had helped them grow in their faith and discover where God was calling them to service. As a church, they decided to make personal discipleship their do-or-die aim: applying one person’s real life to another’s to accomplish something far bigger than that single life. Perimeter calls their approach “life-on-life missional discipleship” and Insourcing tells their story.

Randy Pope writes for church leaders who recognize the value of discipleship and need practical ideas for reorienting church ministries around personal discipleship. Readers will be encouraged that a wide scale personal discipleship program is attainable for any church.