“What do disciples need?” Too many of our ministry philosophies follow a consumeristic mind-set that tries to give disciples what they want instead of giving them what they need. In order to make growing and maturing followers of Christ, how should the church intentionally be training their people so they may be equipped to equip others?

Local churches need to think through how they can develop a philosophy of ministry that will do just that. Depth with God is the way of holistic discipleship.

People are leaving not because we have given them too much but because we have given them far too little. They are leaving the church because we have not given them any reason to stay. We

Over the past several decades the Western church has noticed alarming symptoms of our discipleship disease. Some of these symptoms include people leaving the church; students dropping out of church after high school; attendance dropping; and perhaps most important, a lack of seriousness among our people about what it really means to be a follower o

Deep discipleship is about giving people more Bible, not less; more theology, not less; more spiritual disciplines, not less; more gospel, not less; more Christ, not less.

they are using to form holistic disciples. Are disciples formed primarily in the gathering, in-home groups, or in educational environments?

We have asked our pastors to be marketers, not ministers of the gospel. In the church we focus on keeping people, but if they want to grow, they have to go outside the church. We think about how to keep people rather than how to form people.

The first question in chapter 1 is, “Why does deep discipleship matter?”

3. People are leaving the church, not because we have asked too much of them but because we have not asked enough of them. We are giving people a shallow and generic spirituality when we need to give them distinctive Christianity.