Women's Discipleship International
MDI - Men's Discipleship International
Tucker, the pastor of CSI (Christ Sanctuary International), asked me to come train his women in discipleship. We met in Togo, where my church was drilling wells for some Togolese Christians. I had been there several times, teaching women and Tucker had been invited from Uganda to help our church work on “next steps” in our Togo mission. Tucker had several (13 successful) churches in Uganda, South Africa, and Lesotho. This led myself and two friends in to creating a 3 year training program for women. Tucker did not believe he had anyone who could lead the women down this path and yet he could take on the men.
During the 2nd year of training, tucker said the men were “begging” to receive the same training as they were seeing the women making huge spiritual moves and changes and they were feeling quite left behind. Both in their community growth as well as their biblical knowledge growth. Ideally, they would have waited and allowed the women to train them after they finished their 3rd year. But no, they wanted it now
This led to us inviting two men to come the next year as trainers and begin with a group of 8-10 men pastors/leaders. With Covid, we were able to graduate the men the summer of 2021, however, it was Lori and me who had to finish the last 2 weeks as the men trainers were unavailable
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HOW DID A MEN’S GROUP (MDI) COME OUT OF THIS MINISTRY?
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Tucker was clear that he wanted Viva to work with the women and disciple them. As a pastor, he knew women should work with women on this. He felt comfortable training the men for the same reason. Our training is very different, as we bring with us resources for pastors and lay people for biblical training (Bible dictionaries, Concordances, etc.) as well as spending half of the time developing healthy communities among the women. During the 2nd year of training, Tucker said the men were seeing such amazing growth in the women that they just couldn’t explain. They were also amazed at how the women were using the new resources and the changes in their teaching and ministry styles. Now, they too wanted to have this type of discipleship training. They kept coming to Tucker and were saying, “what about us? We want this training too!” So, the next year, MDI began
