Rev. Jeff Campbell, who serves as Chief Executive Officer / General Secretary at Discipleship Ministries, shared insights during the afternoon “Disciple Making” plenary session. He shared that the team at Discipleship Ministries is available to help and support United Methodist Churches through ministry focus areas including church planting, stewardship/generosity, fresh expressions, age-level resources, worship planning, disciple-making, and evangelism.
In addition to offering the well-known Upper Room devotional, Campbell suggested other resources including a devotional called Disciplines, and announced the creation of a Center for Healing and Resilience focusing on the fatigue and burnout present in clergy and laity. Campbell pointed out, “You can’t make disciples if you’re not whole yourself.” He encouraged those gathered to remember their “why” in disciple-making because understanding why helps us return to a movement based on the belief that the world would be a better place with more followers of Jesus.
SeeAllThePeople, a resource billed as: “A movement of United Methodists who have decided to keep our focus on the main thing: making disciples of Jesus Christ” is available for churches who do not currently have an intentional disciple-making system. Citing surveys, Campbell said that only 2% of churches already have a discipleship pathway and emphasized SeeAllThePeople as a uniting tool. He shared Paragraph 121 from The Book of Discipline: “Whenever United Methodism has had a clear sense of mission, God has used our Church to save persons, heal relationships, transform social structures, and spread scriptural holiness, thereby changing the world. In order to be truly alive, we embrace Jesus’ mandate to love God and to love our neighbor and to make disciples of all peoples.” Campbell said that using the calling defined in that passage offers churches a clear missional focus.
Based on the scripture from Matthew 9:35-38, the system gives United Methodist churches a way to address the spiritual, mental, and physical needs of the people in their churches and communities and helps give meaning to people’s lives. Because it was developed by and for disciple-making within the denomination, Bishop Connie Mitchell Shelton encouraged churches to make use of the resource – calling it “an extraordinary gift to The United Methodist Church.”
Discipleship Ministries is now developing storytelling video resources churches can use to help their congregations see that “not just the pews are sacred” and live their faith in the day-to-day. He asked everyone gathered to take a survey on the meaning of baptism and to review the new “Belong” series, which includes resources on Baptism, Membership, and Communion.
At the close of his presentation, Campbell presented the One Matters Award to Ware’s Chapel UMC in Washington for their inspiring work connecting within their community and offering hope and welcoming new visitors every week. The church celebrated professions of faith and baptisms after a period of time where they previously had none.
“With the One Matters Discipleship Award, we want to lift up the importance of discipleship and help interpret across the connection what zeros in professions of faith and baptism mean and what moving away from the zeros means. Each ‘one’ in those categories represents a transformed life – a life that matters to God, and a life that should matter to us,” said Jeff Campbell, General Secretary.
Every year, Discipleship Ministries partners with Annual Conferences by offering the One Matters Award to one eligible congregation at each annual conference. The award, consisting of a commemorative plaque and a check for $1,000, is delivered to the congregation during the annual conference session.