How Ordinary People Built a Real Discipleship Program in Their Church

Most churches are doing Bible studies. They're not making disciples. Here's what one church in Mississippi did about it.

Last Updated: February 2026

Nobody ever showed Patty Wendell how to make a disciple.

She and her husband Craig have been pastoring in DeSoto County, Mississippi for eighteen years. They planted South Point Community Church for the unchurched and the dechurched — people who weren't done with Jesus but were done with everything that had failed them. And for years, Patty did what most churches do: she tried everything she could find.

Book studies. Marriage curriculum. Small groups around shared interests.

None of it multiplied. None of it lasted. When the study ended, the relationships fizzled.

"We were floundering," she said. "We were trying our best, but it wasn't sustainable. It wasn't reproducible."

If that sounds familiar — if you're doing Bible studies but not making disciples — keep reading.

The Discipleship Problem Most Churches Can't Solve

South Point was doing well by every visible metric. They were one of the earliest churches in the Association of Related Churches — number 36 out of what's now over 1,100.

But several years in, Patty and Craig realized something: success by the world's standards doesn't automatically produce discipleship by the Kingdom's.

The pandemic sharpened that realization fast.

"Church can go away," Patty said. "The pandemic taught us that the institution can disappear in an instant. If your relationship with Jesus depends entirely on a building and a weekend gathering, it will crumble when the doors are locked."

They needed people who could feed themselves. People who had a personal, everyday walk with God — not one that required the church to carry them.

They were looking for a real discipleship process. What they had were programs.

A 2023 Barna Group study found that only 17% of practicing Christians are actively discipling someone else — despite most churches offering regular small groups or Bible studies. The gap between gathering and growing is exactly what Patty was living inside.

How They Found a Discipleship Process That Actually Works

The moment that changed things happened during a family Christmas.

Patty came downstairs one morning and found her daughter Amanda curled up in a chair with her Bible open and a workbook in her lap. On vacation. During the holidays.

"I just noticed it," Patty said. "I got my coffee, sat down, and when she was done, I asked what she was studying."

Amanda said it was something called Ordinary Movement. "It has been life-changing," she told her mom. "David's already been through it. Now I am."

Here's what got Patty's attention: Amanda and her husband were raised in pastors' homes. They weren't unchurched or dechurched. They'd been around the things of God their entire lives. For them to call something life-changing — and to be committed enough that they wouldn't skip it even on a holiday visit — that meant something.

"It was barebones, basic, and yet incredibly deep," Patty said. "I knew we had to bring it to South Point."

Why Small Group Discipleship Needs Three Things, Not One

Patty describes discipleship as a stool with three legs. Miss one, the whole thing topples.

Most small group discipleship programs give you the first leg — information, growth in the Word. That's real. But they stop there. Ordinary Movement doesn't stop there.

The first leg is intimacy with Jesus. Not information about Him. Not facts about Him. The practice of actually abiding. Staying in His presence. Learning to walk closely enough that you wear the evidence of His path.

John Mark Comer, in Preparing the Way, puts it this way: he wants to be covered in the dust of his rabbi. In the ancient world, a disciple followed so closely that the dust kicked up by the rabbi's sandals would settle on the disciple's clothes. Dallas Willard made a similar observation in The Spirit of the Disciplines — that transformation requires habituation, not just information. That's the goal.

The second leg is intentional relationships. Patty deliberately built her first group with two kinds of people: natural-born leaders and brand-new believers. Half had been leading things for years. One of the women needed help buying her first Bible.

Watching those two worlds collide was the point.

"We had conversations that were deep enough for the veterans and accessible enough for the new believers," she said. "Today, those women are doing life together. One moved to Florida, but she still checks in daily. She came back for Easter and the first thing she did was get together with that group. That doesn't happen with a standard six-week curriculum."

The third leg is multiplication. The one most small group discipleship models miss entirely.

"My husband says it's like finding your favorite fishing hole," Patty said. "At first you don't want to tell anyone — you don't want anyone else fishing there. But eventually the catch is so good you can't help but share it."

When Patty was halfway through her first group, she told the women they needed to start making a list. She didn't finish the sentence. Two of them said they already had their lists. They already knew who they were inviting.

Out of that one group, three more discipleship groups launched immediately. One was led by a woman Patty expected would step up. Another was started by one of the new believers — someone who, six months earlier, had needed help buying her first Bible.

Multiplication isn't a stage that comes after discipleship. It's the evidence that discipleship happened.

What Discipleship Training Looks Like When It Actually Works

Every discipleship model gets tested eventually. The test isn't how many people show up for meetings. It's what happens when life falls apart.

One of the families at South Point went through something unimaginable. Their seven-year-old son was diagnosed with a softball-sized tumor in his head. Because they lived in the Memphis area, he was accepted at St. Jude. But as a pastor, Patty's first thought in her staff meeting was: how do we care for this family?

Before she finished the thought, one of her staff members stopped her.

"We've got her," the staff member said.

Patty assumed she meant her specific ministry team.

"No," the staff member said. "Her Ordinary Women group has her. They're taking care of meals. They're with her at the hospital. They're helping with the other kids. It's done. It's taken care of."

Patty sat back and realized she didn't have to do anything as a pastor. These people were being pastored by their peers.

"I don't know that a pickleball group has the spiritual capacity to carry a family through a pediatric cancer diagnosis. But when you've built relationships through the Seven Principles — accepting Him, knowing Him, obeying Him, making sacrifices, sharing Him, loving others, making disciples — pastoral care becomes natural. It's part of who you are."

This is what Ephesians 4:11–12 actually looks like in practice: equipping the saints for the work of ministry, so the body builds itself up. The staff member didn't have to be dispatched. The group was already there.

What This Discipleship Curriculum Gives a Church

Patty is direct about what this model did for South Point: it gave them a pathway they didn't have to invent.

"Was it sustainable? Was it reproducible? Those are the two questions that tell you whether something is worth keeping. And Ordinary Movement does both."

She also talks about the resources: the workbooks, the companion books — titles like Bob Sorge's Secrets of the Secret Place, Watchman Nee's The Normal Christian Life, and Francis Chan's Forgotten God — and the QR codes that lead to podcasts leaders listen to while getting ready to facilitate. "It's a level of resourcing you don't get from a Bible study off a shelf. And I don't have to spend forever vetting whether these books are solid. That work has already been done."

What it gave Craig and Patty was permission to let go.

"There's a fear in some churches that if a pastor isn't in the room, someone might teach the wrong thing," Patty said. "That is such a stressful way to live. I trust the resources. I trust the 27 sessions. I can hand this to someone and say: this is what you study. If you teach this, you will be okay. And I can take my hands off."

Her dream for South Point is what she calls a Rotation of Grace: one new discipleship group starting every single month. Twelve women's discipleship groups a year. Twelve men's discipleship groups. So that no one ever has to wait more than thirty days to begin.

"I had a woman email me this week wanting to join Ordinary Women," she said. "It broke my heart to tell her she had to wait until August. That's the dream — that no one ever has to wait."

"When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus." (Acts 4:13)

That's the endgame. Not a polished program. Not a crowded building. A community of ordinary people who have been with Jesus long enough that the world can't help but take note.

"I'm not a great fire builder," Patty said. "I need a fire starter. That's what this is. A fire starter for the soul."

The fire does the rest.

Ready to start a group?

If you're a pastor or leader looking for a discipleship program your people can actually run — not something you have to manage from a distance — Start a Group.

If you're a man who's ready to lead, start with Ordinary Men. If you're a woman, start with Ordinary Women. And if you're building a church discipleship pathway, this was built for you.

Patty Wendell co-pastors South Point Community Church in DeSoto County, Mississippi with her husband Craig. South Point was planted through the Association of Related Churches eighteen years ago and has been running Ordinary Movement as its church discipleship program since 2023. South Point has seen multiple generations of new groups launch from a single starting group, including groups now led by participants who were new believers when they began.