The Discipleship Cycle
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The Discipleship Cycle has three steps: Hear the Word, Respond Actively, and Debrief and Interpret.

  • ​Hear the word generally means just what it sounds like – reading or studying a passage of scripture. This often means studying scripture about God and Jesus. 
  • Respond actively requires action. You must put the application to work, something not always done with Bible studies. Contextualize for those who are not Christians, since they will need different responses than Christians. (You probably won’t ask them to share the gospel with their friends on day one.)
  • Debriefing and Interpreting helps the person you are leading think about what they learned about themselves, others, and God. Ask plenty of open-ended questions. You can debrief at any point, but try for within a week of the response without doing it immediately after. This gives them time to process the experience, but still takes place when it is relatively fresh in their minds.

​Discipleship Cycles are the atom-sized distillation of InterVarsity’s ministry.  Many times we do dozens of "D-Cycles" a day and are not even aware of it. Sometimes, we start a D-Cycle and don’t finish it...and it becomes a "fun conference," "great lecture," or "awesome experience" but it doesn’t create real and lasting change. Doing this one key practice means anything could happen! Use the provided samples (a PDF download or on this page) to help you prep a discipleship time with your friends on a blank Discipleship Cycle. You will be glad you did.