When St. Clair Baptist Association churches were heading outside the continental United States for a missions trip, SCBA associational mission strategist Danny Courson was told an Alaskan church that they would be visiting wanted to incorporate discipleship training in their churches.
Courson made a call to Trussville, Alabama, pastor Bill Wilks, co-founder and author of the discipleship ministry D-Life, and asked that he tag along with them on their trip.
“[Courson] contacted me and said their association was going on a missions trip to Alaska and that one of the churches wanted to do discipleship training,” Wilks recalled. “He asked if I would be interested in going with them to do that training, and I said, ‘Yes, I would very much be interested.’”
Wilks then reached out to Jimmy Stewart, director of evangelism and church development for the Alaska Baptist Resource Network, and they organized three D-Life bootcamps, one at Hillside Baptist Church in Anchorage, one at Anchor of Hope Church in Kenai and one at University Baptist Church in Fairbanks.
“I think in all, we trained about 150 to 170 new disciple-makers in Alaska, and a lot of them are already getting started with their discipleship groups,” Wilks noted.
Spreading impact
While D-Life has spread well throughout the Bible Belt, Wilks said it also is breaking out and having an impact across the U.S., noting bootcamps they held in previous years in Maine and Pennsylvania. He said they were excited to take the training to Alaska.
Stewart said ABRN was always on the lookout for potential partnerships, and he felt that D-Life brought in a renewed emphasis on disciple-making for Alaska Baptists.
“[Discipleship training] comes better from churches that are actually doing the training, that are doing it live in their own churches,” Stewart said. “I look for these kinds of opportunities.”
Stewart said they are now following up with the pastors of the D-Life host churches to see what kinds of groups are being created and how this training is paving the way forward in each church’s discipleship ministry.
“My goal over the next year is to see these groups flourish and be able to report on it, be able to come back and do some other bootcamps,” Stewart said.
Each bootcamp session lasts four hours, and each portion within that time frame is focused on some element of discipleship and disciple formation.
“[D-Life] has done a great job of producing a discipleship program that really gives the average church everything they need to do the program, and you’re not having to recreate anything, and it gives a platform and a basis for people to immediately begin groups and have something that can become reproducible,” Stewart said.
Making disciples
The purpose of D-Life, as Stewart sees it, is not to create theologians who have a deep knowledge of the Bible — but people who know the gospel and can proclaim it wherever their feet are and make new disciples.
“D-Life is a little different focus [than some discipleship programs]. It’s … simpler in that what you’re doing is depending on the Holy Spirit to work in people’s lives as they go through it,” Stewart said. “It’s teaching them the spiritual discipline of waiting and praying and meeting together. … Many of our past books were great — past discipleship materials were getting people into studying — but [D-Life] gets people beyond that.”
Wilks and his wife, Rondie, led the training and described the two-week trip as a “fruitful experience,” noting that when given the opportunity to help another association or state convention in need, it’s important to take it.
“Anything we can do to go help them, we should,” Wilks said. “We should want to go and encourage them and share resources with them, and that’s what D-Life is: it’s a great resource for disciple-making to share with them.
“I think that going on trips like that, you hopefully go to bless them, but you always get a blessing out of it because of just the relationships you build.”
