Discipleship at The District Church

At The District Church, we exist to make disciples who Love, Think, and Act like Jesus. This is not only the Lord’s command, it is for our benefit as well: the more we all resemble Jesus, the more our lives will look like heaven. Learn more here how you can love, think, and act more like Jesus and help others to do the same.

How To Grow In Your Faith

Discipleship Spaces

If you want to grow in your faith, we ask you to commit to engaging in the following four areas: worship, community, service, and giving. This is what the early church did (Act 2:42-47) and what Christians across millennia have done. The extent to which you participate in these four spaces strongly correlates to the extent you will grow to love, think, and act more like Jesus.

Worship

Spending time with God every day, especially through prayer and Scripture AND worshiping corporately every week, in-person if possible. Jesus himself regularly spent time alone with God (Mark 1:35; Luke 5:16; John 5:19) and regularly worshiped in community with others (Matt 4:23; 12:9; 13:54).

Community

Sharing life as you follow Jesus together. This is what Jesus did – he lived in community with his disciples and pursued God with them. At The District Church, Rooted is the first step towards participating in Christian community, with Life Groups coming afterwards and serving as the primary space to share life with others and grow in your faith.

Serve

Using your time and talents to bless others. Jesus himself came to serve, not to be served (Matt 20:28), and we ought to do likewise. There are many ways to serve at The District Church; you can learn more here. Note: we recommend serving more deeply on a single ministry team than spreading yourself across multiple teams.

Give

Regularly sharing your financial resources with our community. Jesus gave everything he had to us, even his life (Matt 8:20; 20:28), and the early church was also extravagant in its generosity (Acts 2:44-45). You can learn learn more about giving here.

Discipleship Loop

It is not only what discipleship spaces you enter that matters, it is also also the manner in which you engage in these spaces. The more you engage, the more you will grow. Whether it be worship, community, serving, or giving, there are essentially four levels of engagement: an observer, a participant, a leader, and an ambassador.

Observer

if you are an observer, you watch more than you participate. In other words, you are more like a spectator than a player in the game. You primarily know others from afar, through observation rather than through interaction, and chances are that others don’t know you well and don’t know much about you. You think primarily in terms of what this space and/or what others can do for you vs. what you can do for them. You haven’t yet committed; you show up when it suits you.

Participant

If you are a participant, you have made a commitment to engage. You orient your schedule/finances around the discipleship space so that you can participate regularly. You make an effort to get to know others and you open up about yourself. You increasingly come to feel like you belong. You no longer think mostly about what you can get out of something for yourself, you now also think about what you can contribute; you give out as well as receive. At this point, though you are regularly engaged, you are mostly led by others; you follow more than lead. You don’t have significant ownership in shaping the space and discipling others within it. You are mostly focused on your own development rather than developing others.

Leader

Engaging as a leader does not mean that you must be the official “leader” of the group. Rather, it means that you are as much or more concerned with developing others as you are with developing yourself. You strive to be an example worthy of imitation in how you love, think, and act like Jesus. You invest in the growth and well being of others. You help cultivate the culture of the space, reinforcing the rhythms and norms to create a healthy and formative environment that helps form everyone into the image of Christ.

Ambassador

If you are an ambassador, you serve as an exemplar to others outside of the space. You invite others into it. You may also serve as a leader of leaders, helping them to develop in their Christlikeness and in their leadership.

Help Others Grow

While spiritual growth is the work of God, He has nevertheless chosen to work primarily through people in bringing it about. We all are meant to help each other love, think, and act like Jesus, with those who are more mature in the faith taking a more active and intentional role in developing others.

At The District Church, we disciple others by trying to imitate the way that Jesus did it. This means that discipleship, Helping others love, think, and act more like Jesus (i.e., discipleship) is primarily about relationship – it is something caught more than taught. If you want to help others grow in their faith, strive to love, think, and act like Jesus and share your life with them.