Tom McElroy, who works with Disciplemakers for Life, Navigator Church Ministries (NCM) in the Chicagoland area, filled us in on an NCM lunch event held this past March. Tom is the NCM Upper Midwest Regional leader and serves Chicagoland from his home in northwest Indiana. Please see his responses to our questions below as he tells us more about this event, as well as NMC!
Could you briefly describe the event?
On March 20th, six pastors from five Chicagoland churches gathered for lunch to meet Nav City and NCM leaders and to fellowship around the topic of disciplemaking.
They walked away from the lunch with a clear understanding of how NCM partners with churches to Grow Intentional Disciplemaking Cultures. They even began to evaluate their churches in terms of disciplemaking using a phenomenal Navigator Church Ministries assessment tool.
Why do you think an event like this is important for the city of Chicago?
I am so grateful for you who invited pastors to this event. Thank you! Chicago needs hundreds of centers of multiplying disciplemaking. Churches can be some of those centers! Events like these:
1). Create fellowship among pastors around the topic of disciplemaking and their common desire to see kingdom advancement in Chicago;
2). Expose concepts of Life-to-life discipleship to pastors;
3). Help pastors begin to evaluate the potency or weakness in their church’s disciplemaking culture and;
4). Set the table for an ongoing cohort of pastors seeking to grow disciplemaking cultures in their churches, and;
5). Lay the groundwork for an eventual Chicago area network of churches dedicated to multiplying disciplemakers in their churches and to spreading this passion and conviction to other churches!
How can people outside of Chicago join the Chicago Navigators in prayer? What are some things that they could be praying for?
People can pray for more NCM laborers in this vast city, as well as for the formation of a cohort of pastors who gather regularly to learn about, discuss, and encourage each other in intentional, relational, generational disciplemaking.
Lastly, you can pray for follow-up meetings and partnerships which are resulting from the lunch. “. . . The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and sowed in his field; and this is smaller than all other seeds, but when it is full grown, it is larger than the garden plants and becomes a tree. . .” Matthew 13:31-32.
