Wessex Synod

Discipleship – a Study Resource for Churches

In 2020, just as we all went into Lockdown, a small group of people at United Church Winchester began to put together a booklet entitled ‘Discipleship: Know it. Nourish it. Live it.’ In the following year the church engaged with this in 3 parts, with preaching and in small groups. This is what Tim Clifford has written for us:-

“United Church Winchester adopted the topic of Discipleship as a theme for 2021, with twelve services and six study groups using the material from the booklet. Services took place every other week during Lent/ Easter, May/ June, and September/ October, with study groups meeting in the week after the relevant sermon in church.

The feedback from the congregation and study groups was very positive – the topics were interesting, the subjects engaging, and together the reflection on our discipleship journey was very challenging! People especially enjoyed the audio introductions to each of the sessions (link in the booklet), the ‘real life’ video clips shown, and the opportunity based on additional material for further reflection privately between sessions. There was also a very popular online session called ‘Going Deeper’ (run by Revd Tim Searle) which provided a less structured open discussion about issues and questions concerning the relevant sermon.

The booklet and a similar approach is now also being used in other churches in Winchester, Eastleigh, and Romsey Circuit, and other Methodist Circuits during 2022. Meanwhile at United we continue to challenge ourselves on how we build true discipleship in our community”.

You would not need to follow the same pattern in your churches, but the booklet may be a very good resource.