Alice Fryling’s ‘Disciplemaker’s Handbook’: Reviewed by Chad Harrington

In order to help others grow in their faith through healthy discipling relationships, you need to understand what disciple-making is and how to do it from a balanced and well-informed perspective. Alice Fryling’s Disciplemaker’s Handbook, a great book on disciple-making, can help you do just that.

My Three Biggest Takeaways from Alice Fryling’s Disciplemaker’s Handbook

While Disciplemaker’s Handbook was published in 1989, I consider this book as one of the top disciple-making books (my complete list forthcoming) because it serves as a reminder that some of the “newer” content coming out about disciple-making is not so new. Plus, the content of this book is great!

Let me tell you my three biggest takeaways.

1. Disciple-making is nuanced.

I was reminded while flipping back through Disciplemaker’s Handbook in preparation to write this post that disciple-making is nuanced. And this book is chock-full of great ideas. The book is divided up into two parts:

• What disciple-making is
• How to make disciples

Alice Fryling, the main author, is really a general editor with three others, so this resource offers a nice perspective. The publisher, IVP, approached Alice Fryling — an author, speaker, and former InterVarsity staff worker — to write this, and she says in the preface that she didn’t want to do it! She didn’t think there was just one way to make disciples. But as she brainstormed with the other contributors, she realized that she could just write the book that someone like her would appreciate.

You’ll find in this book a myriad of ideas, exercises, and guidance on how to make disciples from start to finish. The nuance that Fryling and her coauthors bring to the conversation I find as fresh as ever, with content about:

• The vital importance of relationship
• The role of friendship in disciple-making
• A practical chart for how various learning styles can be addressed in discipleship
• How to form a plan for your disciple-making efforts
• When you can help people too much in discipleship by trying to rescue them
• Various ways you can use Scripture to disciple people
• How to engage media for evangelism
• How to form a plan to help your disciples learn evangelism

Alice Fryling’s Disciplemaker’s Handbook offers a well-balanced, thorough, and rich resource for disciple-makers who are looking to acquire more tools for their tool belt, rather than a one-size-fits-all approach.

2. Disciple-making requires intentionality.

Sometimes I feel crazy because of how much I talk about having a plan as you make disciples. My spiritual formation course and spiritual formation book emphasize the importance of planning throughout the discipleship process. But Alice Fryling’s book includes templates and plans that make me feel sane again.

In the chapter called “Disciplemaking Is Intentional” she writes, “When I disciple people, I know that I can’t look just at their faults and weaknesses. Nor can I give into their fears. I must ask Jesus to show me who it is they will become in Christ, and then I need to keep this clearly in my mind” (27). Fryling encourages us as disciple makers to be intentional. This is simple to understand but hard to do.

For those who seek intentionality, we must remember that it takes time. Again, we find encouragement in that task:

Growth is not perpetual motion. It is more like mountain climbing, with steep inclines, plateaus and vistas along the way. As disciple makers, we need to be as intentional as mountain climbers are about reaching the summit. (27–28)

3. You can and must be friends with those you disciple.

Jim Putman emphasizes the vital importance of relationship in disciple-making, and Fryling does so in her own way here. Her writing feels compelling and fresh to me, even though she wrote this 35 years ago.

She writes a striking statement: “Many of the people we seek to disciple will already be our friends. If not, then the first thing you must do is to become friends” (86).

What is the role of friendship in disciple-making? It’s vital.

Alice Fryling offers instructions about how to become friends with people, how to cultivate friendship, and how friendship offers a framework for making disciples. She has a whole chapter called “How to Be a Friend.”

You’d think adults don’t need teaching on how to make friends, but I’ll tell you: True friendship is a rare commodity these days.

Fryling lists the questions you might ask someone to get to know them, to make them feel comfortable sharing. Then she helps you weigh the value of listening versus talking. In fact, she says that if you find yourself talking more than 40% of the time, then “consider closing your mouth and opening your ears” (119). Whew! Those are strong words, but if you’re like me, you might need to hear it.

Friendship is a vital lost art, and disciple-making circles need to keep up the conversation surrounding friendship in disciple-making. In such a lonely culture, let’s not allow our churches to be filled with lonely people because we’re too busy “discipling people.” Let’s integrate our lives and make friends with those we disciple and make disciples among our friends.

How to Use Alice Fryling’s Disciplemaker’s Handbook with Your Group

This book is perfect for a leadership group who is hungry to start making disciples, is hungry for more tools, or wants to freshen up their disciple-making skills.

Take a group of 3–12 through this book in as few as 8 weeks and as many as 14. I wouldn’t go longer or shorter than that, unless you have a group of strong leaders, then you could crank it out in about 4 weeks.

If you do 8–14 weeks, the first handful of chapters could be combined because they’re so short and introductory. Then go slower in part two, which is the more practical section, with exercises and resources.

So I’d do the reading like this:

• Week 1: Preface–Chapter 1
• Week 2: Chapters 2–4
• Week 3: Chapters 5–6
• Week 4: Chapter 7
• Week 5: Chapter 8
• Week 6: Chapter 9
• Week 7: Chapter 10
• Week 8: Chapter 11
• Week 9: Chapter 12
• Week 10: Chapter 13

Vital Information about Disciplemaker’s Handbook for Groups

• Chapter Count? 13 chapters
• Weeks of Study? 8–14 weeks
• Recommended size of group? 3–12 people
• Age of target audience? Adult
• Gender specific? No
• Reader difficulty? 5 out of 10
• Appropriate for New Believers? No
• What level of maturity does Disciplemaker’s Handbook assume? This book assumes that readers are eager and willing to begin making disciples, and that they want to gain various ideas, not just one approach.
• Discussion questions in the book? Yes
• Homework required? Yes
• Video series available? No

Theology of Disciplemaker’s Handbook

• Theological red flags? No
• Denominationally specific content? No
• Author’s preferred Bible translation? NIV
• Publisher? Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1989

What Can Alice Fryling’s Disciplemaker’s Handbook Accomplish for Your Group?

• Encourages you to overcome your fears about discipling others
• Teaches you how to be a friend and how to begin a discipling relationship
• Helps you model the Christian life
• Describes how to use Scripture in disciple-making, how to help a friend who is hurting, and how to help others share their faith
• Provides tons of practical tools, ideas, and approaches

Recommended Purchase Links for Disciplemaker’s Handbook

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• Buy on Christianbook here.
• Buy on Amazon here.

My Favorite Quotes from Alice Fryling’s Disciplemaker’s Handbook

Read below my favorite quotes from the book:

• “He invites us, not to a philosophy or a program, but to a unique relationship with himself” (19).
• “Disciplemaking is difficult” (19).
• “He actively sought out those he chose to love. He didn’t sit in a carpenter shop with a welcome sign on the door” (25).
• “The issue became not just to learn to do things but to be who God wanted us to be. The question was not what skills we should develop, but who we should become” (36).
• “He is at work in history” (49).

“Disciplemaking is not something nice to do if we have time. It s one of the most important things we can do in our lives” (49).

• “But Jesus’ view of his authority was not like ours. His view of authority was not about power and oppression, but love and service” (53).
• “So when we offer to help them grow in Christ, we are offering satisfaction, wholeness and freedom they will not get elsewhere” (57).
• “If you begin to behave as though you have secrets which will change people’s lives, I can almost guarantee that you will find others who want what you have to offer” (63).
• “God also takes novices, foolish people, simple people and weak people to be disciplemakers” (66).
• “Only one thing will help: experience” (66).
• “Curiosity is not so much a skill to be learned as it is an art to be practiced” (75).
• “Laughter is part of the glue that cements a friendship. … Laughter did what serious talk had only begun” (80).
• “As disciplemakers, the aroma of our lives should so permeate the atmosphere that those we meet will want to meet Jesus” (102).
• “We will not be perfect, and we must never be fake” (104).
• “Listening, in itself, is one of the things God uses to heal his people” (117).
• “Our goal is not to reproduce ourselves or prepackaged Christians, but to help our friends become all that Jesus wants them to be” (134).
• “Educators tell us that people learn best when they discover an idea on their own. This is true in Bible study as well as in other areas of life” (143).