Discipleship.org Leadership Transitions to Josh Howard
Josh Howard is taking on leadership of Discipleship.org as Bobby Harrington gives more attention to RENEW.org. The transition follows several years of planning and mentoring, with Howard preparing to expand training, conferences, learning communities, and resources for disciple makers.
- Howard succeeds Harrington after roughly two and a half years of mentoring and preparation.
- Discipleship.org plans to strengthen practical training, regional gatherings, learning communities, and resources for everyday disciple makers.
- Harrington will remain involved as founder, adviser, and mentor while devoting more attention to RENEW.org.
By Jordan Arnold
Churches and church leaders have plenty to keep them busy. Making disciples who make disciples can get lost in the busyness of programs and maintenance. For more than a decade, Dr. Bobby Harrington has worked through Discipleship.org to help churches across North America put that calling first and become disciple-making churches. He’s done so with the support and oversight of Harpeth Christian Church. Now Josh Howard is taking on leadership of the network as part of Ignite the Nations.
Harrington founded Discipleship.org with Todd Wilson of Exponential to bring disciple-making leaders and ministries together and make their resources available to churches. Broadly evangelical in its reach, the organization grew through national gatherings, ministry partnerships, books, podcasts, and training materials. Its guiding conviction has remained straightforward: Jesus’ way of making disciples should shape the ordinary life of the church.
A Leadership Handoff Years in the Making
The handoff has been several years in the making. Howard and Harrington began talking about four years ago, connecting at an Exponential Conference. Harrington raised the possibility of Howard eventually succeeding him as he prepared to devote more attention to RENEW.org. Together, they developed a plan. Howard joined Discipleship.org as director of vision and mobilization about two years ago, with the eventual transfer of leadership in view.
Since then, Harrington has brought Howard into the conversations, relationships, and decisions involved in directing the ministry. Howard describes roughly two and a half years of mentoring that prepared him for his new responsibilities. Harrington will remain involved as founder, adviser, and mentor.
Howard brings years of experience from India, where he moved in 2008. During about fifteen years with Central India Christian Mission, his responsibilities included leading a seminary, a church-planting school, and work that developed into multiplying disciple-making movements.
He hadn’t arrived in India familiar with those movements. The early years required considerable learning. Ignite the Nations grew out of that experience, eventually concentrating its efforts on helping disciples make disciples and churches plant churches. As persecution increased, the ministry also had to conduct more of its work out of public view.
Discipleship.org will be Howard’s first experience leading a stateside organization. He recognizes that the setting brings different challenges, and Harrington’s continued counsel will be part of the transition.
Plans for Discipleship.org Under Josh Howard
For churches already using Discipleship.org, much will remain familiar. Its resources and intellectual property will continue with the organization. Howard wants to preserve its broad evangelical partnerships while making its training more useful to the people who come looking for help.
That includes greater selectivity in conference breakout sessions. Howard wants participants to receive the strongest practical instruction available, with less emphasis on promoting the organizations providing it. A minister who takes time away from a congregation should return better prepared to help that congregation make disciples.
He also plans to expand regional and one-day conferences, including opportunities on both coasts. Spring and fall national summits are under consideration as part of a move toward a fall schedule.
Some of Howard’s most significant plans concern what happens between gatherings. He wants to develop learning communities and cohorts where pastors and church leaders in similar circumstances can receive ongoing support. Church size, staffing, and cultural setting would help determine which groups could serve them best.
Individual Christians are part of that effort, too. Howard plans additional resources for everyday disciple makers and an app to support their work. He wants people to find a community they can learn alongside as they begin discipling others.
Bobby Harrington’s Continued Work with RENEW.org
For Harrington, the transition allows more attention to work already well underway at RENEW.org. He’ll continue drawing on what he considers the strongest contributions of Restoration Movement theology to fuel disciple making, equipping leaders to teach Scripture with confidence and help their churches live by it.
That work includes upholding biblical authority and responding to the challenges of progressive Christianity. Harrington sees the need for church leaders who can explain Christian convictions clearly and hold to them when the surrounding culture presses in another direction. Making disciples requires attention to what those disciples are being taught.
RENEW.org will remain a partner of Discipleship.org. Howard will carry forward the broader evangelical collaboration, while Harrington gives more of his energy to the theological teaching and resources he believes sustain the mission.
Both efforts ultimately come back to the people in local churches: the pastor trying to get a congregation started, the Christian learning to disciple a neighbor, and the new believer who will one day help someone else follow Jesus.
Author: Jordan Arnold
Jordan Arnold serves as the Teaching Minister of Harpeth Christian Church in Franklin, Tennessee.
