Discipleship Ministries Seeks to Serve What the Church Is Becoming

NASHVILLE, Tenn. March 15, 2018 /Discipleship Ministries/ – The board of directors of Discipleship Ministries, at its spring meeting, took additional steps to position the agency to be more relevant and useful in order to better serve the future needs of the United Methodist Church.

“We are relentlessly committed to reimagining and reshaping our agency to match the needs of the church we are becoming,” the Rev. Junius B. Dotson, General Secretary (CEO) of Discipleship Ministries, told board members during their March meeting in Nashville.

“This includes an ongoing effort to maximize our resources, while we live fully into our strategic priorities,” Dotson said. “It also means thinking ahead as we prepare for the uncertainties of the future of our church and our denomination and as we prepare for the uncertainties of the next quadrennial budget allocation.”

Discipleship Ministries is strategizing around what is mission critical in a time of great change in the church in order to position the agency to continue helping local churches make disciples of Jesus Christ, Dotson said.

“Our major aim is to maintain the core of ministries we offer that serve churches of all sizes and focus on the task of disciple making,” he said.

The agency is asking what it means to be “brokers of knowledge and conveners of strategic conversations,” Dotson said. The church needs not only experts, but perhaps even more importantly, it needs those who can leverage a village of experts and practitioners across the connection, he said.

The board reaffirmed its commitment to the agency’s ministry focus.

“We believe there is a continued hunger in our congregations to create relationships with those outside our local churches, and we are poised to help congregations create intentional disciple-making systems to fulfill those goals,” said Bishop Mark J. Webb of the Upper New York episcopal area, who chairs the board.

Discipleship Ministries is using the #SeeAllThePeople movement (www.SeeAllThePeople.org) to help congregations reach out to people outside their churches. In addition, the agency is also cultivating local resources around the globe in order to bring the voice and contributions of Central Conference thought-leaders to the entire connection.


The mission of Discipleship Ministries is to support annual conference and local church leaders for their task of equipping world-changing disciples. An agency of The United Methodist Church, Discipleship Ministries is located at 1908 Grand Ave. in Nashville, Tenn. For more information, visit www.UMCdiscipleship.org, the Press Center at www.UMCdiscipleship.org/about/press-center or call the Communications Office at (877) 899-2780, Ext. 1726.

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