Kelly Arabie

Debbie Swindoll

What does effective discipleship entail? What can we do in our churches to become more successful disciple-makers? How can we as individuals do a better job of discipling others?

Debbie Swindoll joined BOW Ministry Team Member Kelly Arabie to discuss this important topic. Debbie calls us to dive into community if we want to grow as disciples of Jesus. What does that look like? Debbie provides practical and insightful answers to guide us to effective discipleship.

You can watch this episode if you prefer.

Other resources

Don't miss the other discipleship video that Debbie did for BOW, Re-imagining Discipleship: A Spiritual Formation Perspective. It is part of a series that you won't want to miss if you are involved in making decisions about discipleship or if you disciple others. Other podcasts in the Re-imagining Discipleship series: A Theological Perspective, A Church Leader Perspective, A Missions Perspective, and A Kingdom Perspective, and Reclaiming the Fear of the Lord.

Receive a free sample of Debbie's spiritual formation curriculum Life with God

Time Stamps

00:24 Introductions

01:36 Ministry of Grafted Life

02:54 What does effective mean in terms of discipleship?

05:35 Developing the Fruit of the Spirit

09:35 The relational component

15:16 The challenge to experience being seen & known

19:05 What does this kind of relationship with others look like?

22:02 What does such a relationship with God look like?

24:43 It's very personal

29:37 Growing in community

33:03 Helpful resources

TranscriptKelly >> Welcome to the Beyond Ordinary Women podcast. My name is Kelly Arabie. I'm one of the team members here at Beyond Ordinary Women, and today we are talking with Debbie Swindoll of Grafted Life Ministries. Along with her husband Kurt, Debbie founded Grafted Life and serves as the Executive Director and the director of Church Formation. Debbie graduated with a Masters in Spiritual Formation and Soul Care from the Institute of Spiritual Formation at Talbot Seminary and Biola University.

Debbie also serves as the Spiritual Formation Pastor at her church, Journey Community Church. Debbie, welcome. We are so happy to have you.

Debbie >> Thank you. It's a long thing there. I'm getting older. I'm old now.

Kelly >> No.

Debbie previously spoke with Kay about Reimagining Discipleship. And so I want to encourage our listeners to go ahead (and we'll talk about that more at the end) but listen to that video as well. That will give you an introduction to our topic today. Today we are talking about effective discipleship.

Deb, why don't you start with telling us a little bit about the Ministry of Grafted Life.

Debbie >> Well, we started Grafted Life in 2010 and it was a bunch of colleagues of mine that had degrees in spiritual formation, which is kind of another word for discipleship, or how people grow, how we're formed as Christians.

And we really had heart for the church. We'd gone to this graduate program and we'd experienced a lot of life change and we'd seen people change significantly. And yet we knew that everybody can't go to a graduate program. Everybody can't go to seminary. And so what, what could we bring back to the church that would maybe be more effective, more meaningful, more transformational for people in their lives and in their growth, in their spiritual growth. So we started really praying into that and thinking about it.

We ended up developing some curricula and also starting an association for spiritual directors that could really serve people in the church and come alongside them in their spiritual growth.

Kelly >> So as today we're talking about effective discipleship, what in your definition is effective?

Debbie >> Okay, that's a really good question because I'm not sure when we think about discipleship, we always think about effective.

You know, if you just look up in the dictionary, what is effective,