Discipleship Seminar

On our second night in Calapan, Mindoro, Pastor Mike Arzie began teaching his Practical Discipleship Seminars. He taught about how disciple making is “deliberately doing spiritual good to someone so that he or she will become more like Christ,” and walked us through 9 principles to keep in mind when making disciples.

After each night of the seminar, Mariam and I turned to talk to a group of girls our age. It sounded like they were excited we were here, and were openly sharing their experiences with evangelism and discipleship with us. It was really special to connect with girls our same age who lived in a different part of the world, and to see the similarities in our experiences following Jesus and sharing about Him. We discovered that they had been attending UEC since they were very young growing up in the Compassion program. We had a lot of fun getting to know them and their individual walks with the Lord. They even were trying to help us learn more Tagalog and were curious to how our experience in the Philippines had been so far.

Discussing discipleship and their walks with God opened my eyes to see how God is working through people in every part of the world. It was cool to see the different parts of our stories were similar even though we live in very different areas and with very different lifestyles, and made it easy to connect and encourage one another. Colossians 3:11 says, “Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.”

By the end of the seminar, it sounded like one of their main takeaways was how we as believers don’t have to have any special requirements to become disciple makers, but how God will work through each of us as we share of him and help others grow in Christ. It was amazing to see how encouraged they were by the seminars, and how they felt inspired and capable to go make disciples in their schools and friend groups!