Join the Conversation with Alice Matagora

Join the Conversation with Alice Matagora, author of How to Save the World: Disciplemaking Made Simple

Q In your very first chapter, you share how you were the not-so-great disciplemaker. What do you mean?

“When I first started disciplemaking, I had just come out of a season of depression and anxiety, with an eating disorder. By being around The Navigators, I experienced so much healing and freedom in those areas. But what really accelerated my growth was being discipled.

And my discipler shared this vision with me: that a girl fresh out of her anxieties and depression could go and make disciples too. She didn’t need theological training. She didn’t need to have grown up in the church. She simply needed to pass on what she knew about having a relationship with Jesus to somebody else. That’s it.”

Q So what is disciplemaking?

“Very simply, it’s helping somebody have a relationship with Jesus, and then helping them help somebody else do the same thing. And that “somebody” can just be a couple steps behind you in your walk with Jesus.

Discipleship is intentionally spending time with someone reading God’s Word, praying together, and doing everyday life together.

You can always find one person to disciple. These days, I am a ‘naptime’ disciplemaker because I’m at home with two kids under the age of three. I don’t ask, ‘How can I add something else into my busy life?’ Instead, I offer it to the Lord. He can multiply it, like how He took a young boy’s fish and loaves and multiplied them to feed thousands. The two girls I’m discipling from the nearby university—they drive to my home while the kids are napping.”

Q Tell us more about why you call disciplemaking “friendship with a vision.”

“All of the women I’ve discipled have ended up very good friends. But when we first started, I saw what God could do if they had a deeper walk with Him. And I wanted to help move them toward this deeper walk, because I truly believed it would transform their lives. Which would transform their families, and then transform their communities. The impact is endless!”

Q. Why do people need to get your book, “How to Save the World”?

“My book is grounded in Barna and Navigators-funded research around the critical opportunities and obstacles of a disciple becoming a disciplemaker.

What I want people to take away from reading this book is that no matter where they are in their walk with Jesus, they can start making disciples right now. Disciplemaking is a calling for every person who says that they’re a follower of Jesus. But not only that, there are some people who will never set foot in the doors of the church—people you are living around, playing with, and working around, that only you can reach. God can use you in those spaces.

There is a great need for the message of God’s love to go out everywhere. But we need everyday people to do this.”