Pastor Alvin Thomas

Pastor Alvin himself as the young adult pastor is faced with as many churches call it, the impossible college-age young adults, the problem can be anywhere from the variety of people in a young adult ministry there are the college students and the non college students, the older and the younger, the married and the unmarried, oh and of course males and females but either way you need to be able to disciple your ministry and that is what Pastor Alvin is doing, his focus and strategies to discipleship is through small groups. Each of his small groups work together they each have a study, an outreach project, fellowship times and prayer. The studies can vary they are never exactly the same, they change in order to keep interest and focus on growth, they can be on certain books of the bible, subject studies, from a devotional, or anything really; expect to be stretched and grown. The groups each have an outreach program, I really liked this idea because these groups are not self-centered, his small groups are not only growing each other but they are teaching and growing others as well. In addition to a ministry that is discipleing disciples there is of course the opportunity to gather and fellowship, Pastor Alvin believes in relational discipleing which I have to admit I am right there with him, I believe that relational discipleship can be very affective and of course lots of prayer is worked into his program.

Pastor Alvin has developed a leadership class that he teaches on a Sunday morning where he likes to challenge his class with practical applications that he feels is not only equipping them but allowing them to hands on get involved in discipleing. No worries this isn’t all sugar and rainbows, I got down to the harder questions and asked Pastor Alvin how it is that he measures his effectiveness in discipleing and he answered “in the long term, are they producing spiritual fruit” are they producing fruit, a worker can only be measured by his effectiveness for the kingdom, by his fruit. I them asked him to be honest in answering how successful he’s been in creating effective disciples? He answered “I have been affective on a small level” but of course he’s looking for the long term and he has a young ministry is where he has seen many step up as leaders in his ministry in the church, a modest answer in my opinion. He did say however “I am producing some solid disciples, but I would like to improve the multiplication of disciples”

 I then asked his to share what his biggest challenges in making disciples has been and I came to find that his biggest challenge was with the high school graduates from the youth ministry, they feel that they know all there is to know, he said “many of think that the level of discipleship they reached in youth group is good enough”