God's Training Plan | Why We Don't Need A Discipleship Training School

We want to help make disciples who make disciples. Disciples who share about God’s love from person to person or in groups or whenever they make a new relationship. It’s slow going, but it’s ongoing.

Wouldn’t things go faster if House to House had a discipleship school?

We hear that question all the time when we talk about our focus on discipleship in Uganda. Many of our own staff have been through, or even taught at, discipleship training schools. We understand that a concentrated amount of time to focus on learning about God can be valuable and help with the maturation of a believer rapidly… but it is not replicable.

We strive to be replicable in all of our methods so that the spread of God’s word throughout Uganda is as grassroots as possible. Creating a discipleship school simply isn’t going to work with that goal in mind.  

There are some obvious reasons that a school would slow the organic spread of discipleship. Creating a school takes time, money, a location, books, material, people to administrate, and people to teach the students. Schools are costly, and finding the financial resources to sustain a school is difficult and time consuming.

The less obvious but more important reason that a school disrupts the organic spread of discipleship is that if it comes in the early years of a believer’s life, it can hamper their ability to share their faith. Young believers share with their friends the little bits they learn about God as they slowly grow in their understanding of him. The slow exploration into learning about God’s character through his word and the Holy Spirit is new and exciting knowledge. Naturally, they take each little piece of new knowledge they acquire and try to apply it to their lives. This process is slow for a reason; it is a complete transformation of their character. 

If they attend a discipleship school before they are able to be confident in God’s training plan (growth through trusting God, his word, and the Holy Spirit) then once they attend a school, they are filled with a flood of knowledge of the Christian life and have no way to convey all of it to someone else. It’s just too much.

We have seen time and again that putting a believer through a school at the wrong time in the maturation of their faith can hinder their ability to trust the Holy Spirit’s leading. Sharing what they are learning through the bible and the Holy Spirit is enough to evangelize to those around them.

With the heavy knowledge download that is a discipleship school, a believer can become more reluctant to share their faith with others. How can I convey all that I now know about God to someone else on my own? they ask themselves. A training school at the wrong time in a believer’s life undermines their confidence to make disciples and turns them into a neon sign pointing toward a discipleship training school instead.

We at House to House know God’s original training plan is enough. It is an act of trust in God, his ultimate training manual (the bible), and his best trainer (Holy Spirit) to grow people in their faith.

The Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything and make you remember all that I have told you. (John 14:26, GNT)

When we allow new believers to rely on God’s training plan and they are pursuing that plan within a small gathering of believers who hold them accountable to grow and develop, then we see them grow in their faith and their ability to share their faith increases.