My Dissertation Proposal


The Kudzo Gospel: Assimilating for Life Transformation -
A Process for Making Disciples in a United Methodist Church

About a week ago I had to submit a proposal for my dissertation to the Doctor of Ministry office for approval. The proposal identifies a problem in church or ministry life and seeks to study the problem through the scriptures and the literature, developing a plan of action to implement a solution to the problem and evaluating the solution once it is completed. This is my proposal.


In Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Steven Covey stated that effective people and organizations begin with the end in mind. If that is true, what would an effective church look like?

In Matthew 28:19-20 Jesus gave us what is known as the great commission to go and make disciples. The mission of the local church and each individual member is to go and make disciples of Jesus Christ.

Many churches and individual Christians in America are not effectively making disciples of Jesus Christ. We have many people in our pews who made decisions but are not disciples. Most churches have no idea what a disciple of Jesus looks like and/or have no identified plan or process to “produce” disciples. Consider the following statistics according to T-Net International:

· The average "evangelical" church in America wins 1.67 persons (less than 2) to Christ and their church each year for every 100 persons who attend that church.
· Only 2/3 of the persons in the average evangelical church say they "feel" they are growing spiritually. Fewer still (just 1/3) say they have changed even one behavior to be more Christ-like in the last three years.
· One-third of church members state their greatest individual needs are not being met by their church.
· Less than 50% of church members pray for 5 minutes at least twice a week.
· Only 11% of church members have shared the gospel even once in the last year, and 33% have never shared the gospel with anyone.
· Most church leaders, when asked, cannot even define "Disciple," and hardly any have been trained to "Make disciples."

In my own experience, there are many folks who grew up in churches all their life, who came almost every time the door was open, who cannot pray in public, do not read their Bible, and have never won anyone to faith. These statistics include our church leaders! The discipleship process of a majority of churches is a lot like the making of a stew; a dab of Sunday School, a pinch of small group, a helping of committees. As shown above, this plan is not producing the disciples that it should and could be.

In addition, since many seeker oriented churches use entertainment evangelism on Sunday morning services to attract a crowd; I fear a large percentage often do not get into the deeper maturity of being a Christian because of lack of time or interest. Of the thousands of churches who use small groups as their primary discipleship and caring mechanism for assimilation, the majority are care and share groups which do not push people to maturity. In addition the majority of these groups do not multiply and they see evangelism and discipleship as two separate entities. These groups encourage loyalty to the church but do not encourage disciplemaking as a personal ministry to be embraced by every Christian.

Rev. Randy Frazee, former pastor of Pantego Bible Church in Texas, is convinced former business leader and church leader Bob Buford is correct; whatever we measure is really our mission. Frazee says that his church like others measured the ABC’s (attendance, buildings, and cash). These are incomplete measurements, for our goal is to see Christ formed in people. Even when people participate in our discipleship ministries such as small groups and Sunday Schools, we assume attendance equals growth. What we need is a plan to purposefully assimilate for life-transformation; a plan that encourages a multiplication of disciples, not just building bigger, larger churches.

Purpose Statement

Therefore the purpose of this study is to develop and evaluate an assimilation process which helps produce life-transformed disciples who in turn produce other life-transformed disciples.

Research Questions
1. What is the baseline level of discipleship?
2. What is the level of discipleship measured at the conclusion?
3. What aspects of the intervention process appear to be the most related to the outward changes?

During the first two weeks of October before I leave for London, I will write chapter one of my dissertation. In it I will explain what a life transformed disciple is. I will also look at discipleship models in the New Testament. If you have ideas or comments, please feel free to submit them. Thanks.