Premise of the Book:
Healthy, effective churches develop and grow through intentional, on-going, church-wide discipleship building processes.

What the Book Does:
“Stride” is a great resource for congregations, modeled after Morning Star Church that created a discipling process for its members. The preface and introduction provide significant insight to the need, purpose and benefit of developing a process for members and leaders in the local church. This resource leads the group responsible for discipleship from process development and preparation to implementation of their own program. Further, this guide references other resources that can be used to produce a customized discipleship program. Each chapter concludes with discussion questions centered on what was learned, challenges and possible ways toward implementation in an on-going discipleship pathways process.

Chapters:

Preface: Morning Star Church and the Importance of Pathways
Part One: Preparation
Part Two: Implementing the Discipleship Pathway
Part Three: Sustaining the Discipleship Pathway
Appendix A and B
Suggested Reading

What are the Important Insights:
There are numerous insights and ideas through this resource, such as:

A) helping a church work on a discipleship pathway

B) consider ways to grow current leaders as well as reach new leaders for ministry opportunities

C) engage leaders with on-going learning on topics and areas that are essential to ministry.

D) assimilating persons absent from worship based on length of absence of 3, 6 and 9 weeks, using 3 different methods - phone call, email and post card, respectively.

E) discipleship activities fall within three groups: Belong, Become and Bless.

Possibilities as a resource for churches:
This a great resource for congregations who want to produce a discipleship process that suits or aligns with its membership and ministry context. A participant book is also available.