Discipleship Tools Available for Churches: A Practical Guide for Pastors

What Discipleship Tools Are Available for Churches Today?

If you're a pastor or ministry leader, you've probably asked this question more than once: "Are there any discipleship tools available for churches?" The short answer is yes — quite a few. The longer answer is that not every tool fits every church, and choosing the right one depends on what stage of the discipleship journey you're trying to support.

Below, we'll walk through the major categories of discipleship tools available for churches, what each one does well, and how to evaluate which fits your ministry context. Whether you're a church of 50 or 5,000, there's something here for you.

1. Discipleship Curriculum and Content Platforms

The most familiar category. These tools provide structured teaching content — usually video-based or workbook-based — that walks believers through foundational topics like prayer, Scripture, sharing faith, and spiritual disciplines.

Examples:

• RightNow Media — Often called the "Netflix of church content," it offers thousands of video-based studies from well-known pastors and teachers. Churches pay a subscription that gives every member access.
• The Bible Project — Free, high-quality animated videos that help people understand Scripture. Great for small group sessions or sermon supplements.
• LifeWay's DisciplesPath — A free resource designed to help churches evaluate and strengthen their disciple-making process, including structured pathways for new and maturing believers.
• The Navigators' discipleship resources — Free and low-cost materials focused on one-on-one and small-group discipleship, including their popular "Basics of Discipleship" series.

Best for: Churches that need ready-made content and don't have the bandwidth to write their own curriculum from scratch.

2. Small Group and Life Group Management Tools

Discipleship happens in relationships, not just classrooms. These tools help churches organize, communicate with, and support their small group infrastructure.

Examples:

• Planning Center Groups — Lets you organize groups, track attendance, and assign leaders. Integrates with other Planning Center modules many churches already use.
• ChurchTrac or Breeze CHMS — Church management systems that include group management features alongside membership tracking.
• GroupMe or WhatsApp groups — Low-tech but surprisingly effective for keeping group members connected between meetings.

Best for: Churches where the primary discipleship structure is small groups and the bottleneck is coordination, not content.

3. Church Follow-Up and Pastoral Care Systems

This is where many churches have the biggest gap. You can have great curriculum and well-organized groups, but if people who visit your church — in person or online — fall through the cracks, your discipleship pipeline leaks at the very top.

Follow-up and pastoral care tools are designed to solve this problem. They help you:

• Capture information from visitors, seekers, and online viewers
• Track prayer requests and care needs
• Assign follow-up tasks to staff and volunteers
• See a timeline of every interaction with each person
• Know who hasn't been contacted and who's ready for a next step

Examples:

• Barnabas One — A discipleship and pastoral care platform built specifically for this stage. It captures people who show up (livestream viewers, prayer requesters, Life Question seekers) and gives your team tools to follow up, shepherd, and disciple them over time. Think of it as a shared inbox and care pipeline in one.
• Trello or Asana boards — Some churches build DIY follow-up workflows using project management tools. Free and flexible, but they require manual setup and don't integrate with church-specific data.
• Shared Google Sheets — The classic church follow-up tracker. It works for very small teams but breaks down quickly as you grow past a handful of contacts per week.

Best for: Churches that are reaching people (especially online) but struggling to turn that reach into relationships. If your follow-up is ad hoc, reactive, or dependent on one overworked staff member, this category is where you'll see the most immediate improvement.

4. Bible Study and Devotional Apps

These are tools your members can use on their own throughout the week — between group meetings and Sunday services. They're not a replacement for relational discipleship, but they're a useful supplement.

Examples:

• YouVersion / Bible App — Includes reading plans, devotionals, and community features. Many churches create custom reading plans to align with sermon series.
• Logos Bible Software — A powerful study tool for pastors and serious students of Scripture. More of a leader's resource than a congregational tool.
• Lectio 365 — A daily devotional app with guided prayer and Scripture reflection. Free and accessible for all ages.

Best for: Supplementing relational discipleship with daily personal rhythms. Don't mistake app usage for spiritual growth — but do use these tools to encourage consistency.

5. Assessment and Spiritual Growth Tracking Tools

How do you know if discipleship is actually happening? These tools help you measure spiritual growth and relationship depth rather than just attendance numbers.

Examples:

• REVEAL Spiritual Life Survey — A research-based assessment tool that helps churches understand where their people are spiritually and what's helping (or hindering) their growth.
• Custom surveys via Google Forms or SurveyMonkey — Many pastors build simple quarterly check-in surveys to ask members about their prayer life, Scripture engagement, and sense of community.
• DisciplePath (LifeWay) — Helps churches evaluate their overall disciple-making effectiveness and identify gaps in their pathway.

Best for: Churches that want to move beyond vanity metrics (attendance, giving, downloads) and start asking harder questions about whether people are actually growing in Christ.

How to Choose the Right Discipleship Tools for Your Church

With all these options, how do you decide? Here's a simple framework:

Step 1: Identify Your Bottleneck

Where in the discipleship journey are people dropping off? Is it at the front door (new visitors not followed up), in the middle (no clear next step after salvation), or at maturity (long-time members stuck in spiritual infancy)? Your bottleneck determines your tool priority.

Step 2: Match the Tool to the Problem

• Front-door problem (follow-up): Invest in a follow-up and pastoral care system like Barnabas One.
• Content problem (what to teach): Subscribe to a content platform like RightNow Media.
• Coordination problem (managing groups): Use a CHMS with group management features.
• Measurement problem (is it working?): Run a spiritual assessment like REVEAL.

Step 3: Start Small, Then Scale

Don't roll out five new tools at once. Pick the one that addresses your biggest bottleneck, pilot it with a small group of staff or volunteers, and expand from there. Tools are only as good as the people using them — and overwhelmed teams adopt poorly.

Step 4: Train Your People

The most common reason discipleship tools fail in churches is not the tool — it's the lack of training. Budget time (not just money) for onboarding your staff, volunteers, and small group leaders. A 30-minute training session can be the difference between a tool that transforms your ministry and one that sits unused.

The Bottom Line

Yes, there are many discipleship tools available for churches — and the landscape is better and more accessible than ever. But tools are not a strategy. They serve a strategy. The best discipleship tool is the one that helps your specific church turn reach into relationship and relationship into maturity in Christ.

Start by identifying where people are falling through the cracks. Then choose the tool — or combination of tools — that closes that gap. And remember: no app replaces a pastor who knows the sheep by name. Tools just make it easier to get there.