David and Kristia Abbott your connection to tribal missions 
Kristia and I have mentioned from time to time that we are involved in teaching, but we’d like to share with you a little more about our strategy and how it is going.
We understand the Great Commission as recorded in Matthew 28:18-20 to be more than sharing the Gospel. Jesus’ instructions are to “make disciples of all nations.” Sharing the Gospel is part of discipleship, but is only the beginning.
Successful discipleship eventually results in the one being discipled being obedient to disciple others. We see Paul telling Timothy to do this in 2 Timothy 2:2, “And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach others.”
There are many methods for teaching the Scriptures, but because Kristia and I understand that our goal is to replace ourselves with others who are qualified to teach, we embrace the idea of repeatability in our discipleship strategy.
Sunday School
During the last two-and-a-half years I’ve been teaching the elementary children from Creation to Christ, following the highlights of God’s Story in the order they happened. “Phase one” of this teaching was done in 50 lessons and emphasized the character of God, our separation from Him because of sin and God’s plan to send a Deliverer.
“Phase two” of teaching revisited the Creation to Christ events in 13 lessons. The emphasis was on the security of those who believed God and the role of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament and Gospels.
“Phase three” was to teach through the Book of Acts, paying special attention to the role of the Holy Spirit, the function of the church and its leaders and the responsibility we each have to make disciples. This is also done in 13 lessons.
One-on-one discipleship with Don
For the last two years, I’ve been meeting weekly with a man in our church, teaching the same way I described above. By the time I started teaching “phase two” to the Sunday School children, Don was sitting in with me and starting to teach occasionally. Now that we are nearly finished with teaching “phase three,” Don is teaching full-time and I am his assistant.
I just finished teaching through the Book of Acts with Don and am preparing to start “phase four” which will take us through the Epistles.
Home Group
For the past one-and-a-half years I’ve had the opportunity to begin teaching the same lessons I started with the elementary children and with Don in our home group. The goal is not only to build a firm foundation for our faith, but to prepare members of our group to disciple others in whatever context God is calling them.
It goes a little slower when teaching only twice a month. This last weekend we finally reached the Gospels.
One-one-one discipleship with Diana
Kristia has just started teaching one of our neighbors who expressed interest in hearing God’s Story. So far they have met three times.
At Home
We’ve also taught, and had Katrina and Caleb teach, through the first 50 lessons from Creation to Christ. Katrina has been given the responsibility of teaching these same lessons to Savannah each week. In our family devotions, we’re now going through the Book of Acts.
Prayer Request
Please pray for our family as we seek to grow in our relationship with our Savior and faithfully share God’s Story with those around us who are willing to listen. Pray that we will continue to have the opportunity to disciple others in such a way that will prepare them to teach others also.
PDF Tags: chronological teaching, discipleship, firm foundations
[...] Teaching strategy and progress from March, 2010: http://blogs.ntm.org/dave_abbott/2010/03/10/teaching-strategy-and-progress/ [...]
[...] our post titled “Our teaching strategy and progress,” Kristia and I mentioned something that has become important to us in our discipleship [...]