The two women sat together with their Bibles and study materials. Though they shared a commonality through their church family, the tempo of their lives was vastly different. Emi Aprekuma, a lay leader at Overcomers Church of God, has two young children and works as a compliance officer for a non-profit. In her early 40s, she caters on the side. Adanna is a 25-year-old college student still finding her way in life.
It had been two weeks since they last met face to face. There was plenty to cover in the discipleship homework that now sat in their laps, but there were also life details that put the materials in perspective. How do you balance what you are reading and learning with the obstacles of living in an imperfect world?
"One of the most interesting things is that some of the off topics or the random conversations lead to the best practical biblical training."
"One of the most interesting things is that some of the off topics or the random conversations lead to the best practical biblical training," said Emi, who is mentoring Adanna through a one-on-one discipleship program. "I think it's interesting learning about each other's lives and seeing how we are applying biblical truths in everyday situations and interactions."
The pair alternate weeks for their in-person meetings. During their off weeks, they focus on homework, usually a video or research project that reinforces lessons studied during their one-on-one time. Sometimes they meet online or find another location that fits in with the needs for that week.
The mentoring meetings between Emi and Adanna are a new but vital ministry priority at Overcomers, which has shifted to a spiritual development emphasis after congregation leaders completed a 13-week discipleship course presented each Thursday evening at the church by Cru® Inner City Chicago.
Thursdays exhausted Emi. Each week, she would leave her job to attend the discipleship training course. Although normally a 45-minute drive, leaving at 4 p.m. meant rush-hour traffic often extended the ride to two treacherous hours. Ultimately, Emi decided that since God led her to participate in the four-month course, He would also handle the logistics.
"I said, ‘I'm just gonna trust you. But if I do this, you'll figure out how to get me there," she reasoned.
When she arrived at the church on Thursday afternoons, Emi put on her catering hat, crafting dinner for those attending the class. When the meal ended, attendees dove into the training material, designed to help area churches implement spiritual growth programs for their congregations and communities. At the end of the night's study, Emi packed up her cooking supplies, grabbed her classwork and headed home.
Before duplicating the hectic routine the following week there would be homework, enough that it required her daily attention to keep the pace.
Despite the added demands to an already full calendar, Emi said the training was life-changing.
"You could have just become a Christian yesterday, or you could have written every theological book that people are using in seminary and this would still be incredibly useful," she said. "Now we're internally figuring out how to launch discipleship training and how to keep the momentum."
At the course's conclusion, the leadership team at Overcomers decided its young adults would benefit most from the new training. As part of that vision, the church hosted a discipleship retreat earlier this year geared toward their needs. Emi also put her new skills into action by doing one-on-one discipleship with Adanna.
"For more than a decade, Inner City Chicago has been offering the discipleship program at its Agape Center headquarters, training 300-plus pastors and lay leaders.
"This year, we wanted to do something different," Marc Henkel, co-director of the Chicago team, shared during its recent annual Vision Dinner. "We wanted to host that training in a church so that we can make an even deeper impact."
Emi, in an interview earlier this year, said the timing for the course was divine as Overcomers was in the process of determining how to become intentional in broadening its community influence. Church leadership was drawn to Cru Inner City because of its commitment to use Compassionate Products™ and other resources to support the work of local congregations.
"When we were praying about it we just kept hearing from the Lord that we really needed to understand what was already being done in the community and to learn how to partner with our brothers and sisters already doing the work so that we would have a bigger safety net for people, a stronger one, rather than just a whole bunch of discrete ones," she said"
"It seemed like Scriptures on discipling others — really building community with other Christians — those were not things that applied to me before this discipleship training."
The resulting discipleship partnership with Inner City went well beyond fact-finding for Emi, who said God revealed to her a shortcoming in her ministry approach.
"There's Scripture about keeping the Sabbath holy, and I feel like that applies to me; loving your neighbor, I feel like that applies to me," she said. "But it seemed like Scriptures on discipling others — really building community with other Christians — those were not things that applied to me before this discipleship training."
She described the revelation as a "subtle shift" in ministry focus.
"There's no lights flashing," she said. "There's no Damascus interaction with the Holy Spirit. You know, why are you persecuting me? Nothing like that. It was just a tiny, ‘Oh, Wow.' It was something that I had completely overlooked because it is uncomfortable."
Armed with the new awareness, Emi said she and the leadership at Overcomers — where 80 percent of the congregation immigrated from Nigeria — immediately considered how to engage the youth.
"We have a culture that links age with the amount of respect you should have so discipleship will almost always trigger an age thing," she said. "Our older people need to be supporting our younger people. … Because of the nature of our culture, in their mind, it would be like ‘What? Am I going to disciple people who are my own age?'"
As a result of their cultural mindset, the young adults at Overcomers, ages 17 to 30, are active in all aspects of ministry. Nearly all those involved in the media team are youth, while Emi estimates that youth make up 80% to 90% of the choir.
"They're engaged and doing different things," she said. "What would change now because of the discipleship is that I would spend more time with training, more time breaking down the basics of Christian theology and then really starting to teach them about discipleship and them going out and making disciples."
Another factor driving their focus on the young adults, Emi said, is their tendency to latch on to false teachings, including questionable doctrine that embraces drug use to get closer to God.
"We've never been in a situation like this where people have so much access to nonsense. That's the fear. There's so much Jesus light out there and diet Jesus."
"How do we talk about what the gospel is without getting into some weird hocus pocus?" she said. "How do we talk about spirits that are not aligned with God or teaching that is not aligned with God?
"Some of that occult stuff can seep in very quickly without them even realizing because it's already predisposed because of aspects of Nigerian culture."
The issue is not limited to young believers. During a recent Nigerian faith conference attended by Emi, one of the speakers told the audience that "our faith in Christ leads us to be God. We are made in the image of God so we are God. It wasn't obvious to them that this is blasphemy."
By emphasizing personal discipleship, Aprekuma said leadership is hoping to not only curb "some of those weird, false teachings that lead to a different theology very quickly, (where) God takes on the value of an ATM or a push button," but also affirm the young adults' willingness to participate in ministry life.
"The fear is they are serving but we have no idea if they have a relationship," Emi said. "Those are two very different things. We've never been in a situation like this where people have so much access to nonsense. That's the fear. There's so much Jesus light out there and diet Jesus…. There is so much that is close to the gospel but leads to death.
"So that was our concern, that we don't have a way to corral them and consistently teach the truth, consistently combat the onslaught of lies that they're hearing over and over again."
To that end, the church held a training retreat for 17 young adults. Everyone who registered showed up. Since then, the young leaders have invited their friends, some of them from local colleges.
"We are still yielding and still enjoying the fruit of that," Pastor David Ogunbode said during the Vision Dinner for Cru Inner City supporters.
Lori Arnold serves as the senior writer for Cru's inner-city ministry.
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