Can you answer this question? If not…UH OH!

Can you answer this question simply and clearly: 

What’s your discipleship strategy?

(Cricket, cricket, cricket.)

Yeah…don’t feel too bad if you can’t. You’re not alone!

Most KidMin leaders can answer the mission question pretty easily. We want to help kids know and follow Jesus. We want to make disciples. Great! That’s the “Where am I going?” question.

But strategy answers a different question: “How am I going to get there?”

And that’s where a lot of leaders get stuck.

Because without a strategy, it’s really easy to confuse activity with progress. You can have packed rooms, energetic games, creative lessons, great volunteers, and a calendar fuller than your church parking lot on Christmas Eve…and still not be forming lifelong disciples.

That’s like loading a bunch of kids onto a bus, starting the engine, driving all day, and then realizing nobody actually knows the directions.

A good discipleship strategy provides you with those directions. It helps you decide:

• How do we intentionally move kids toward spiritual growth?
• What’s our pathway from first-time guest to mature disciple?
• Are all of our ministry pieces pulling in the same direction?
• How do all the pieces fit together?

Without that clarity, ministry becomes reactive instead of intentional. You just keep spinning plates and hoping discipleship happens somewhere between Goldfish crackers and small group time.

A clear discipleship strategy won’t solve every problem in ministry. But it will help make sure your ministry is actually producing the thing you say matters most: disciples who know, love, and follow Jesus.

That’s exactly why I created the E.A.T. Strategy — Education, Application, and Transformation. It’s a simple discipleship roadmap designed to help KidMin leaders move kids beyond just learning Bible stories and toward building a lifelong faith in Jesus.

Because discipleship doesn’t happen by accident. It happens when we intentionally teach truth, help kids apply it to their lives, and create space for God to transform their hearts.

If you want to dive deeper into building a discipleship strategy that actually leads somewhere, that’s what my book Feeding Faith is all about.

And here’s my promise:

If you read the book, the next time someone asks you, “What’s your discipleship strategy?” they won’t be hearing the sound of crickets!