We informally surveyed 400 churches, and 86% of them said yes...

A few have stated with great certainty (and little research) that discipling relationships are not generally found in most of our churches any more. Others of us who are actually members of our churches are seeing a revival taking place. Things are changing.

Recently we here at IcocHotNews took a straw poll of our churches around the world to see how many churches still had discipleship partners. The results surprised us. It is actually far more widespread than even we had guessed. While we were not able to contact all our churches worldwide, we did speak with roughly 50 evangelists and ministry leaders who work closely with about 400 different churches around the world. Of those churches, 346 churches, or 86.5% of those surveyed, said yes, we practice discipleship partners.

Some churches have discipleship partners as a required part of their membership. Others said it was strongly encouraged and widely practiced, but not necessarily a requirement for membership. Some churches had changed the name to 'prayer partners' or 'gospel partners,' etc. For the purposes of the survey, if the congregation was strongly encouraging its members to pair up with someone for regular fellowship, prayer, and mutual encouragement, and they were confident that people were in fact doing it, then we put them down as a 'yes.'

A few congregations said, no, we have not really encouraged our people in that direction. Others said it had been mentioned but not followed up on. Others said that they weren't sure what people were doing. All of these were counted as a 'no' response.

In many situations we spoke to one leader who spoke for a region of churches. For example, Mike Fontenot let us know about the 18 churches in the ACR circle of churches (USA) who said 'yes.' Steve Chin told us about China. Roger Lamb and Jeff Mannel polled the Midwest. Etc. Thanks to all who helped us.

Some regions we simply did not get to yet. We can't comment on Western Europe or the Caribbean, for instance. Several states in the US we still need to speak with. We hope to correspond with them soon.

Still, many regions were unanimous. The Middle East, Africa, South East Asia, Mexico, Central America, the Baltics, and India/Pakistan were virtually unanimous in their practicing of discipleship partners. Several USA circles of churches responded that 'yes' all their churches were doing it. Other regions were mixed. Several places said 'no', but that they were going to implement discipleship partners very soon.

In summary, we have roughly 525 churches worldwide. We have heard from approximately 400 of those churches. We can now say with certainty that most of our churches worldwide do indeed have discipleship partners. In fact, of the churches we contacted, 86.5% said 'yes.'

We are elated at this news. We here at IcocHotNews are big believers in discipleship and close relationships. We hope that our relationship revival will gather steam around the world. We fully recognize that discipleship partners today are (thankfully) much different than what many were experiencing 10 years ago. We know that we blew it in this area in the past. We also feel that we have grown. As far as we know, no churches assign the partners (everyone chooses for themselves), and all respondents were very convicted about the need for relationships that are not harsh or bossy, but rather biblically balanced, respectful, and mature.

Our survey is not complete. So we will be teaming up with our friends at Disciples Today to attempt a much more detailed survey. In the next few months, we hope to be contacting ALL our churches. We will pass the news on to you as soon as it is completed.

What does this survey mean? Well, it means that close, discipling relationships are not dead or dying, but rather reviving. It also means that we still share the core belief in our churches that discipling is a key part of our faith.

Next article in this series: "What is a discipleship partner, and why do we have them in our churches?"

Copyright 2008 IcocHotNews.com

Disciples Today recommends listening to one of the keynote addresses at the 2007 International Leadership Conference by Mike Taliaferro, "Faithful Leadership to All Generations" Click here for the audio messages from the 2007 ILC.

Also, click here for a report of the ILC: