Making Disciples in Malawi

Let me just quickly share how I started discipling. At first, I took time at home for thinking, processing, trusting the Lord, and praying, and then scouting and going into the communities just to see the environment and help the people. I'm from Malawi, but still we have different cultures, and the community is more like a Muslim community. So sometimes it's very different and it's very difficult.

So, I spent time in prayer. I had to take time scouting people, building up the relationship with them. I think I took three months just doing that: going into the community, prayer walking and trusting the Lord.

After three months, that’s when I felt like I was fully ready that I can go. And I started a movement. There was one young man in 2019 and 2020 and I shared with him my story.

So, I think the use of storytelling is so very important in building bridges and relationships with the people out here. So I was sharing my story more and more and how I became a follower of Jesus, and why I’m here, and what it is that I’m doing. So I was open to say that I’m here as a follower of Jesus and I love sharing Jesus stories. I love sharing those stories with people.

Also, I think they are more interested to hear about them as well. So then I started sharing the stories of Jesus. He was just at the right place that he could say, “I want to be a follower of Jesus.” And I baptized him right there.

After that, I continued to reach out to many more guys, building up the relationship, and doing what I did to the first guy until they felt led to say, "I would love to be a follower of Jesus."

So now it’s like I had made a team. At first, I was going at this alone, but I think my real focus was to find people that I can connect with and put into this community. So the Lord gave me two guys, who I started engaging, mentoring, coaching and discipling.

Then we were going together in the community doing evangelism and planting churches as well. We planted 74 house churches.

There was much resistance to Jesus and the Gospel as well. These people are very closed.

Are there any strategies you take when there seems to be a lot of resistance? What strategies seemed to help?

Sometimes I just allow them to be friends or just share some other day-to-day stories and life experiences with them. And in that way, I can see that I think now they are in the right place that I can ask them again. "Oh, do you really want to hear about Jesus again?"

So they're like, "Yes. You can do that." So there are many people that were not interested in the first time. I could wait. That was one of my strategies, to wait until they were ready, because they'll trust the relationship built like that. And if I can wait, the Lord will just put them in the right place where they could be interested.

How do you go about engaging with them when you think they’re ready for you to ask again if they’re ready to talk about Jesus?

Most of the time when I say this, sometimes I just ask them "Hey, I have this neat story that I want to share with you. And I'll just take two minutes or less than five minutes, so that I can share with you a story about Jesus." Then they could be open, because they know this guy is not going to take a lot of time with us.

Once I’ve told them a shorter story, we can create the relationship. Then when I come again, I can share bigger stories.

How do you go about meeting the folks to disciple?

For me, I've considered obedience as a number one tool to making disciples and raising leaders. And there's a time in our lives, or in my life, where I felt discouraged and I don't maybe want to go in the community. But when I step into faith, in spite of the fact, that maybe I don’t feel like I should go, but I will. I have to go and when I go, then I see the door is open. So obedience is number one.

Commitment is as well! I commit to what I said I will do with the people in persisting. So I say, "I'm coming on this particular day or this particular time." I do commit to those promises, and I'm also committed, and I'm passionate as well.

So I've been really also trusting the Lord and the Holy Spirit to raise my passion for Jesus. Sometimes, there's some times the passion can decline. It can go low. And there's time where your passion is just on a high level. So I've been trusting the Lord to keep my passion high.

About the author: Shadrack is a fieldworker in Malawi. He's been serving with All Nations for three years through the Cape Town Hub.

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