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>>Ankerberg: There’s a ton of people, Robby. I mean, this is not hard to do. People think
it’s hard, but there are folks that need encouragement all over the place.
>>Gallaty: Yes.
>>Ankerberg: Alright. And if you just ask them, they will tell you. If they don’t
want to meet, they’ll tell you. But there’s more people that would like to meet, they
would like to share something confidentially with somebody, they would like to get some
advice from the word of God from somebody who’s not the pastor.
>>Gallaty: Yes.
>>Ankerberg: They would actually like to talk to somebody who is a lay person, who really
knows the Lord. You know and I know people, there are certain lay people that when you
ask them to pray, they really pray for you. And you kind of, you know, look for them again
whenever you have a tough time. If you would approach folks and say you’re interested
in them, you want to encourage them, would they like to meet together? These folks will
say, “Yes.” Now, let’s say the person says yes, and scares you to death, okay. How
do you decide where to meet? And when you do meet, what’s the first thing you say?
>>Gallaty: Yeah, great questions. I would suggest meeting away from church. And the
reason I suggest this is Jesus never met to teach the disciples in the synagogue. You
would think He would, as a rabbi, but He didn’t. He would always take these men out into the
world. And so I suggest to people I’m discipling, “Let’s not meet at the church. Let’s
meet out at a restaurant; let’s meet out at a complex; let’s meet out at a gym; at
a table; and let’s talk out in the community.” And what this does is, it gets them out of
their comfort zone. You know, they start to think, it’s okay to read my Bible at a restaurant;
it’s okay to pray in public; and so it gets them out of their comfort zone.
People ask me all of the time, how often should we meet? Should we meet once a week? Should
we meet twice a week? And I would suggest – this is not a hard and fast rule – but
I would suggest to meet once a week. It’s important that you meet at least once a week.
You can meet more than that, but I find that once a week’s good, because it gets them
the opportunity to process what you talk about. Now, they call me all the time, like people
call you, and so it’s not a once a week commitment, it’s an all the time commitment,
where they’ll call me for prayer requests, they’ll call me for questions about the
word. And so it’s good to start with once a week.
>>Ankerberg: Yeah. When I was at the university, I figured out the only time where I could
get together with the folks I was discipling was 6:00 in the morning. And I asked the guy
that had a restaurant and there was a back room that was not being used, and I said,
“If we come in there and have some BREAK fast each of these mornings, would you mind?
And could we just have a little privacy?” He says, “No problem.” He said, “Be
glad to have the business.” So, we had this beautiful back room. I used to have to get
up at 5:00 to drive downtown in Chicago to get there at 6:00. And we spent from 6:00-7:00
and then we took off for class. And, I mean, that was tough getting up. But I tell you
what, that hour of time with those folks, you know – we met three times or more a
week – was key in all of our lives, in terms of growing with the Lord, keeping accountable
to each other.