The Disciple Plan
 
Each session will include these elements to help you to have an effective group discussion: 1. Getting started - This is just to warm your group up and get them talking. Have fun with this. Don’t be afraid to veer from this element. Your group might want to jump straight into the scripture. That’s fine. The purpose is to clearly focus on the main idea of each session. 2. Get Creative – This is designed to dig a little more into the main idea for each session. The idea is to be creative and to write down some personal application. Make sure and read over this before you start each session. 3. Scripture Study – In The Disciple Plan, we have intentionally put only a few scriptures to learn at each session. It is more important to really discuss these scriptures than to skim over numerous ones and not remember them. 4. Chew on This – This can be read aloud by one member of the d-group, or you can ask them to read it on their own. Discuss this and ask questions. 5. Disciple Stories – Read this aloud and ask how these are examples of making disciples. Ask them to share other disciple stories that they may know! 6. Excerpt from the book The Disciple Plan - Read this and discuss. 7. Questions – There are questions throughout each session and at the end of each session. The idea is to get them talking and sharing by asking good, clear questions. Your job as a group leader is not to make sure everyone fills out each blank. We want them to be honest and open. You might run out of time to answer all the questions. That’s fine. Session1 Mission Possible? “For nothing is impossible with God” Luke 1:37 Getting Started What seems the most impossible for you: 1) Getting along with your brother or sister? 2) English homework? 3) Dealing with your parents? 4) Getting up in the morning? 5) Your team winning? 6) Other? Get Creative What is something you have done that would be impossible for everyone else in the group? Write it down and see if everyone can guess what it is! Scripture Study Without looking it up, can you write John 3:16? ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Look up and write down 2 Peter 3: 9: ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ What do you think Jesus ‘ hope for the world is? How does He feel about you? How does He feel about people in Africa? People in Iraq? Chew on This Considering the state of the world today, seeing all people saved for Jesus Christ seems like a total impossibility. Think about the hundreds of other religions, the decline of the Christian church, the breakup of the family, war, famine, disease, and materialism. The list goes on and on. Think about just the people that you know at your school who could care less about knowing Jesus. What about those across the world who have never heard about Him? What about atheists and members of cults? People who totally oppose Christianity? Yet what did Jesus do for them on the cross? The purpose of this study is to reexamine Christ’s plan to save the world. If John 3:16 and 2 Peter 3:9 are true, then why are there those in the world who do not even know the name of Jesus, much less what He did on the cross to save them? First let’s take an honest look at ourselves (the church) and ask, “ Are we truly making a difference? Is what we are doing working? Are we following the plan of Christ to win the world for Him?” Years ago, reaching teens for Christ meant sitting around a campfire and singing “Kumbayah” (no kidding). This was the popular method. What are some of the popular methods of reaching teens today? Are they effective? It’s okay, you can be honest. Part of being a Christian is dying to ourselves and our own plans and desires. God said, “pray for thy kingdom come,” not for just our own churches or youth group. He calls us to pray for His kingdom. Being a kingdom Christian means that it is not about me; it’s about God! Disciple Story: Pauline Hord Pauline Hord was a simple, retired teacher living in Memphis, TN, going to church. She was reading the Bible one day where it was talking about visiting those in prison. She told her friend, “I guess that means I need to start visiting people in prison.” So she started to try to go to her local prison and visit the inmates. The guards and prison officials asked why she wanted to do this. Did she have a relative in prison? Pauline told them, “Because it says to in the Bible.” Yet she kept getting denied going to the prison. One day, an attorney in her church heard about her desire to visit prisoners. He took her to meet a prison warden at a state penitentiary where many prisoners were there for life. There was little hope for these murderers and hardened criminals. When the warden met Pauline, he asked her, “Mrs. Hord, what do you do for a living?” Pauline replied, “I am a retired elementary school teacher. I taught little children how to read in Memphis City Schools.” The warden stopped in his tracks and said, “Mrs. Hord, God sent you here. You see, most of these prisoners here cannot read well or at all. We have all these preachers come in here and talk about Jesus and then they leave. They tell them to read their Bibles, but they can’t, because they can’t read. Mrs. Hord, will you invest in our prisoners?” Mrs. Hord invested in those prisoners for years and years, teaching them how to read every Tuesday. Tutoring takes time and it is one on one. But guess what? Pauline was following Jesus’ words to change the world. In fact, years later, George H. Bush (then President of the United States) started a program called “A Thousand Points of Light.” The President heard about Pauline and what she was doing to change the world by teaching prisoners how to read. Pauline was given an official award for being a “point of light.” There was an official ceremony in Washington D.C. with a big dinner to recognize all the recipients. Pauline was asked to go and meet the President of the United States. What a great honor - what an opportunity of a lifetime! There was only one problem. The ceremony was on a Tuesday. Guess where Pauline is on Tuesdays? That’s right, she was going to be with the inmates teaching them how to read, so she declined dinner with the President. Remember, being about the kingdom means it is not about me! Excerpt from the book, The Disciple Plan Let the entire world know - that is our mission. How can we as Christians really save the world? Only God can save the world, but He wants to use us as His vessels to share the Good News. This mission is bigger than one denomination. It is bigger than any preacher, evangelist, school, seminary, church, organization, crusade, or event. It is bigger than Billy Graham, bigger than the Pope or any famous Christian. We have tried all of those things and methods, but the facts are that we have a massive population of non-Christians throughout our world: Hindus, Muslims, Jews, atheists… literally millions of people who do not have a soul-saving relationship with Jesus Christ. First, the world has to hear the Good News, and then hearts must be changed! In the U.S., we are surrounded by churches on every corner. Television has gospel channels, our radios play preachers all the time, and there are literally millions of books on the subject of Jesus Christ. There are probably billions of Bibles that have been printed. The word is out there. Yet even deep in the heart of the Bible Belt of the U.S., there seem to be many who do not know Jesus. How about you? Do your friends at school have a real relationship with Jesus? How many non-Christians do you know? What are we going to do to let our own friends know about Jesus, let alone the whole world? How is it possible to tell the people in the ghettos of New York? How can we convert the devout Muslims in Iraq? How can we reach the Hollywood elite? Christianity to the unsaved looks like it has become some weird, evangelistic subculture in our world. Or worse, it is simply grouped with all the “other great religions of the world.” Oprah Winfrey would simply say that they all point the way to God. But Jesus said, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me” (John14:6). This might sound elitist, but that was the last thing Jesus was. God loves the world. He desires that no one should perish. He paid the price on the cross. The hard work is done. It was completed. But here comes the mission possible: How do we tell the world? So far, what we are doing is not working! More discussion questions for Mission Possible? 1. How have we (the church) tried to save the world? 2. What is effective evangelism? What works and what does not work? 3. What about TV evangelism? What is your response to this form of spreading the gospel? 4. How can we think more about the kingdom of God, instead of just adding to our own individual churches?