The First Program I Created...
- Andy Hodgson
- May 23
- 4 min read
Would I change the way in which I created the first program that I ran with my wife?
It's a question that I think about at times as a leader, and yet, regardless of how rough, unfinished, on the go, the program was, I come back to the conclusion, no, I wouldn't change it. It seems odd to say that, after all that we have learnt since then, with parts that I still cringe at today...and even at the time.
Yet still the answer is no!
Now I'm not here to say that it was perfect, or even close to being a well-structured program. And in fact, we only ran it for one year, and then we never had another group go through the same program again. But in many ways, that wasn't the point; the point was that it was a shift in thinking, in mindset, in strategy, and the program became the bridge to achieve that shift. So what is the program, and what am I talking about, 'shift'?
Well, we called the program 'Going Deeper' (original, I know), and the shift in thinking was moving more intentionally towards a disciple-making framework, or perhaps more accurately, the implementation of the bridge towards 'the few'. We will touch on the 'shift towards the few' in a moment, but firstly, 'Going Deeper', the program.
The program was simple enough; we prayed and waited on the Holy Spirit to reveal who might be the ones that He had gone ahead and prepared. Your Andrew, Peter, James and John's of ministry when Jesus calls the four along the shores of the Sea of Galilee. We landed on asking 5 individuals, two of whom were dating at the time. The process included 10 teaching sessions, scattered one month apart from the previous session (Feb - Nov), with a social activity between each session. The purpose of the social activities was an opportunity to have fun, do different things that we all enjoy and to invite our friends who don't know Jesus to also come and have fun. For each teaching session, we broke it into three components;
Look Back: A chance to reflect on the time since the last meeting, discuss successes and failures, accountability and encouragement through prayer for each other.
Look Up: A time to focus on equipping each other (the practical content of the night)
Look Forward: The practical aspect as we looked to apply that which was taught, pray with and for one another, and of course, organise the next social activity.
We explored topics such as God's Plan, Intentional Relationships, Holy Spirit Living and Prayer. We equipped them through working on their story (testimony), God's story (basic gospel presentation), lifestyle evangelism, DBS (Discovery Bible Study method), and multiplication. And we finished the year off with a celebration and invitations towards some next steps.
So as you can see, there was nothing special about the program, and if anything, it left a bit to be desired...especially the finished product.
But as I stated before, it was the shift in thinking or more precisely, strategy.
Up to this point, we had been at the church leading a young adults ministry at a small suburban church for one year. We always had a mindset that the fruits of our ministry would be measured in 10 or 20 years' time rather than in 1 or 2 years' time. Our focus was disciple-making, and this is what we had spent the best part of the past 6 months (leading into this program) talking about.
Unfortunately, but far too common, there was a sense that those with the most amount of bible trivia knowledge were the most equipped, and those who felt less comfortable having theological discussions or running bible studies were the least.
Yet, as I often find, the ones who feel the least comfortable in these settings are often the ones who feel the most comfortable with non-churched people. Feeling comfortable with people who don't know Jesus (non-churched) is important if you are going to make disciples, and even more important if you are going to equip disciple makers. I am still amazed by the number of people who are good church going Christian's and yet when asked who their non-churched friends are, they fail to think of one.
Anyway, I digress, the importance I want to point out here is that we had a different purpose that was driving us, and to put it simply, it was to create a disciple-making environment for the young adults to be equipped and trained for a life of disciple-making.
The purpose was to create a disciple-making environment for the young adults to be equipped and trained for a life of disciple-making.
The easiest thing in leadership is to continue to focus on what everyone else thinks is the 'big thing'. The hardest is to focus on what the actual 'big thing' is.
In this case, the 'big thing' everyone thought we needed to focus on the most was the main gathering, what we did by running this program was prioritise our focus on equipping disciple makers and training the few. In many ways, the program itself didn't matter; it was that
the program became the clear bridge from a strategy of disciple-making that never shifts beyond the main event, to a strategy of equipping disciple makers for a lifetime of multiplication.
For reasons out of our control, 'Going Deeper' never ran again, but the strategy of equipping disciple makers for a lifetime of multiplication continued for the remainder of our leadership and ministry with the young adults at this church.
It's interesting when you look back with the benefit of hindsight and realise that the Holy Spirit in that moment was not birthing an incredible program but rather incredible, fruitful disciples makers.
It seems that far too often we focus our success on the program rather than the actual people, and their journeys to becoming disciple-makers who walk as Jesus walked.
So, would I change anything about the first program we ran? I look no further than the fruit of the people that were involved and can straight away say know. As I say regularly to other leaders,
it's not what you do, but how you use what you do that matters.
So the real question at this present time...
As leaders, are we focused on the event, or are we focused on multiplication?
By Andrew Hodgson © 2025
Ministry Director of The Emerging Leaders Program
Published by The Emerging Leaders Program, 2025.
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