Pastors Thriving | Ministry, Leadership, Discipleship, Church Growth, Small Church Strategies · Kevin Elworth-Business & Ministry Coach, Passive Income, Entrepreneur Pastor, Ministry Marketing

075 - 3 Discipleship Mistakes Killing Your Church Engagement—and How to Fix Them by Sunday

·26 min·1 clip

He trained a new believer to preach, then put him on stage for a 12-minute talk on Psalm 46:10.

1. Pastors Thriving presents episode 075, "3 Discipleship Mistakes Killing Your Church Engagement—and How to Fix Them by Sunday," as a practical leadership talk for church discipleship strategy. 2. Kevin is the host and says he has "nearly 20 years of full-time ministry and leadership experience," which is why he frames the advice as lived church practice. 3. The episode asks why a church can preach, launch classes, and still feel "stuck, stale, or just straight up ineffective" in discipleship. 4. The first mistake is treating discipleship like a class instead of a culture, with Kevin contrasting curriculum and information transfer against life transformation. 5. He uses Jesus, John 3.16, and the call to "go change people's lives with it" to argue that one concept can be lived before more content is added. 6. Kevin says churches often give people information but not "opportunity," "responsibility," or "platform" to use what they know. 7. He says, "Discipleship isn't learned. It's lived," and repeats that churches need people to do something with what they know. 8. He tells a story about a transfer-growth attendee from the COVID season who came to his church, shared hard details of his life at lunch, and found acceptance rather than rejection. 9. That same man later asked, "Can you teach me how to preach?" and Kevin says he trained him with a class on using the one message God had placed in a heart. 10. Kevin then put him on stage for a 12-minute talk using Psalm 46:10, "Be still and know that I am God," and he says that talk became one assembly. 11. The man later was recruited by another group to pastor them several times a month, which Kevin treats as evidence that platform matters. 12. The second mistake is that the funnel ends too early, because churches are good at the front door but unclear about what happens after people connect. 13. Kevin compares that confusion to standing in an eye store with a wall of glasses and choosing nothing because every option feels vague. 14. He says churches create overwhelm when they list "a thousand next steps" instead of naming one clear next step that people can actually take. 15. He argues that salvation is not automatically the first step of discipleship and says evangelism is "a step along the journey." 16. He says some people can be discipled before they even know it, because Jesus called people to follow before they fully understood what was happening. 17. The third mistake is the absence of a "serve team coordinator," which Kevin calls the connector and director that prevents bottlenecks. 18. He says a recent church interaction about his daughter serving in children's care showed how confusion and no direct point of contact can make service fall through the cracks. 19. The episode uses a conversational, direct tone with repeated rhetorical questions, short imperative lines, and a sermon-like coaching format aimed at lead pastors. 20. Pastors running small churches or discipleship systems will likely get the most from it, while listeners wanting a light or non-practical conversation will probably skip it.

As heard by us

A practical case for moving discipleship beyond instruction and into repeated practice.

This episode makes a clear case that discipleship changes once it becomes a culture instead of a class, and once people are trusted to practice what they are learning.

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Why you'd press play

Your people need a culture, not another class.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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