“Discipleship matters!” That’s the message at the heart of the 2006 Planning Guide for Disciple-making Congregations. Available this year on a CD-ROM — in English and Spanish — the guide continues to carry out its central purpose of giving churches a shared plan for yearlong Christian education programming.

National Ministries is especially seeking feedback this year about the guide’s usefulness, which is why churches need to order it, either in the new CD format or as a printout. The guide was sent only to a test group of 500 regional and area ministers, National Ministries Board members and Ministers of World Mission Support, to pilot the CD and make it available more broadly. “Some ministry partners have publicized the guide this year, put in an order and distributed it to churches,” said Rev. Mayra Castañeda, a member of the Equipping Disciples staff, who produced the guide.

The guide, published as a booklet in previous years, has been sent free of charge to every American Baptist church for the past ten years. Every year, it features a planning calendar to focus discipleship emphases, including markers such as New Church Planting Sunday in March, Baptist Heritage Day in May and Human Rights Day in December, in addition to church calendar dates such as Lent, Pentecost and Advent. Over time, the guide increased the number and variety of articles and resource lists, as well as Web sites (more recently), to enable churches to reach further and go deeper in discipleship methods and presentation.

This year’s CD format is a test of the guide’s usefulness, while it is also a delivery means that has distinct advantages. For starters, the CD allows for direct access to Web-based resources and a ready means to print out articles. It is less expensive to produce than a printed guide and has the added benefit of transmitting feedback by direct access to an evaluation form on National Ministries’ Web site. “We consider the CD a good delivery means for a desirable resource,” said Curtis Ramsey-Lucas, a Equipping Disciples staff member. “We also want to know reasons when the guide isn’t used — having churches order the CD this year is giving us a feel for this,” he added.

The Equipping Disciples staff holds a vision of every American Baptist church becoming a disciple-making congregation and is intent on resourcing the churches, says Castañeda. Resources in the guide include descriptions of the marks of disciple-making congregations and then detailed explanations of each mark. Teaching tips for all ages cover topics such as story telling and meeting the needs of postmodern people who hunger spiritually. Articles give overviews for further consideration and study of small group ministry or conflict resolution as a transformational opportunity, for example. This year’s guide additionally gives specifics about the Children in Poverty Initiative that are geared toward education, advocacy and action on this issue of importance for American Baptists.

The 2006 guide continues to offer timeless helps from other years — leaders’ helps for teaching adults, youth and children, monthly devotionals and sample Christian Education ministry position descriptions. An updated list of regional discipleship contacts is ready at-hand as well.

To order the 2006 Planning Guide for Disciple-Making Congregations on CD-ROM, or printed out as a full-color booklet — in English or Spanish — call 800-4-JUDSON or visit www.judsonpress.com.

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