I have had a few conversations in the past few weeks with discipleship leaders who have had people remove themselves from their groups. And when you only have 3 people connecting, losing one person means that you are losing 33% – Yikes. The reasons have varied – some have given “legitimate” reasons, others just aren’t calling and showing up.

Some of the conversations I’ve had with these leaders have to do with their own self-worth – are they failing in what they believe they are called to do. Others have questioned whether they moved to quickly in inviting someone in, that perhaps they weren’t discerning enough. Others are wondering if there really are people “out there” that want to take their relationship with God seriously or not – is it worth their time to engage in such an intentional way.

I will offer some simple guidance on this from my experience:

1) It won’t always be smooth sailing. I have had discipling relationships that were amazing right through and I’ve had others that were cut short for many different reasons. I have had times when the guys I’m with didn’t want to commit, and I’ve had times when I wondered if I personally still wanted to commit. This is just the reality of relationships – messy and often confusing.

2) My role is obedience to the process, my role is not life change. I love 1 Corinthians 3 when Paul states: “It’s not important who does the planting, or who does the watering. What’s important is that God makes the seed grow.” Believe me, I don’t always think this way. I want to control the life change, I want to determine what the person learns next, I want to control the rate of change. But I don’t and I can’t. My role is the planting, the cultivating, the watering. The mystery of the growth has nothing to do with me. This can be both comforting and frustrating all at the same time.

3) Know when to move on. To many times I have wanted to “save” someone.  I believed that I knew what they needed and I was going to drag them along whether they liked it or not. The reality is that sometimes I need to cut someone lose. They just aren’t at the place to receive what I believe I have to offer, for whatever reason. This is not for me to always understand. I do know however that at times I simply need to move on, and that there is nothing wrong with this. I didn’t fail, they aren’t bad people, but it just isn’t moving in the direction I believe it should be moving.

Faithfulness to the process, that is all I can control. May God grant us the strength to keep moving forward, and may we always be humble to keep learning as we continue.

For the kingdom.