by Mario Vega
When Elim made its transition to become a cell church, we saw immediately the need for having a equipping course for leaders. Our first Leader’s Route, however, was extremely short and simple. There were only four lessons that were completed in a month. But there was a reason for that. Elim already had 3,000 members when it made its transition. Consequently, it had enough mature people in the faith that did not need more than a few weeks of instruction to become leaders.
However, when that initial base ran out, we soon discovered the need to improve our route. Little by little new lessons were added. But the purpose of the route was always to train believers to become leaders. In other words, we always started with people who were already disciples of Jesus. This is how we managed for many years, but then we noticed that the rate of cell multiplication began to drop. We realized that we needed a discipleship equipping route that started with conversion and ended in leadership.
I checked out other discipleship routes from different churches, but the common problem in these routes was that their material did not relate to our culture. In fact, none of these equipping routes were from a Latin American author.
So we decided to produce our own Leader’s Route, which takes a person from conversion to leadership. We made sure our route was presented in a simple and practical way, specifically for a Latin American audience.
