As a Community on Mission: Submitted to Christ and Committed to Disciple-Making, everything we do centers around discipleship.

How are we growing in Christ, and how are we leading others to do likewise?

Personal Discipleship.

Discipleship begins with our personal commitment to Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord: when we receive salvation through Christ, we are submitting ourselves to literally take on His life as our own. At New River Fellowship, we want to see every member involved in taking on Christ’s life as our own! 

Scripturally, we are given two clear mandates to follow to grow in Christ’s nature: praying and being in the Word of God. In John 15, as Jesus is spending one of His final moments with the disciples, He calls them to abide in Him: a call to submit who they are completely to take on His life as their own. How are they to do this? Jesus tells the disciples in John 15:7-8 that they will bear His fruit (live as true disciples) when they remain in His Word and in prayer.

Engage in Personal Discipleship:

1. Join us in our weekly church Bible-reading plan through the Bible Recap

2. Commit to pray daily

Corporate Discipleship.

Discipleship is centered around the concept of community: our community with God and the community He leads us to have with others. In Jesus’ call to discipleship in Matthew 4:19, He highlighted both of these: “Follow me, and I will make you (community with God) fishers of men (community with one another). Therefore, if our discipleship pathway starts with personal discipleship, it should naturally lead us into corporate discipleship.

 

Engage in Corporate Discipleship:

1. Participate in our Sunday Worship Service (weekly)

2. Join us in our church-wide fellowship gatherings (monthly)

Family Discipleship.

God naturally designed discipleship to take place within the family unit. This started all the way back in Deuteronomy 6, where God revealed His desire for the family unit to be the place where the next generation would hear of who God is, what He did for us, and how we ought to respond. Yes, families are not perfect; and the picture of your family might look radically different from someone else’s: but the structure isn’t the main point. Sharing who God is, what He’s done for us, and how we ought to respond with those closest to

 

Engage in Family Discipleship:

1. Join a Family Discipleship Community Group (begins Spring 2022)

2. Grab a meal with a visitor (anytime!)

Life-on-Life Discipleship.

God created us to bear His image: that’s our purpose in life (Gen. 1:28). It’s a purpose that we lost in our fall from God in sin but have regained through Christ. Once we have been saved, we are now to be “imitators of God” (Eph. 5:1): we’re image-bearers again! This level of discipleship is intimate and familiar, with every part of who we are fully submitted to bearing God’s image. Growing in this avenue of discipleship requires us to step back from our weekly hustle-and-bustle to come to God’s Word and evaluate our lives in community with others doing likewise.

Engage in Life-on-Life Discipleship:

1. Join an IB (Image-Bearer) Group (begins Fall 2022)

2. Serve the church and community (weekly/monthly)