Why Discipleship Curriculum Should Be Designed for More Than Sunday
Architects do not design buildings merely for beautiful days. In parts of the country where hurricanes are possible, buildings must meet standards designed around the winds they might someday face. Engineers think about uplift, pressure, structural connections, impact resistance, and what happens when a building encounters forces far beyond normal conditions. The goal is not simply to construct something that looks good when the weather is calm. The goal is to build something that will still be standing after the storm.
We should think that way about discipleship.
Our children and teenagers are growing up in a world that will test what they believe. Scripture itself uses the language of construction to describe the importance of what we build and the foundation upon which we build it. Jesus warned about building on sand rather than rock, and Paul later described the testing of what we build. Kids, teens, and young adults will encounter difficult questions about God, Scripture, identity, morality, suffering, science, sexuality, and truth. Their beliefs will face scrutiny from friends, professors, coworkers, social media, and a culture increasingly comfortable challenging Christian convictions. Add peer pressure, disappointment, doubt, temptation, and the inevitable storms of life, and the question facing the church becomes larger than, “Did we teach a good Bible lesson on Sunday?” We must also ask, “Are we helping build a faith that can withstand what is coming on Monday?”
That question became increasingly important to me while researching Backward Discipleship. Instead of studying only those who walked away from faith and asking what went wrong, I examined research surrounding those who remained committed to Christ and asked what had been present in their lives. Across numerous studies, five influences repeatedly emerged: consistent Bible engagement, faith practiced at home, meaningful mentoring relationships, sharing one's faith, and active involvement in serving through the church. I call these the Faith-Forging Five.
Those findings should influence how we design discipleship. They certainly influenced our team as we developed the new D6 Curriculum and the widely anticipated Discipleship Journals for every age.
Consider Scripture engagement. Research from the Center for Bible Engagement identified a striking threshold among people who engaged Scripture four or more days each week. The differences were not nearly as pronounced at one, two, or even three days. At four or more days, researchers found significant differences in spiritual practices and behaviors. The number is not a formula suggesting four Bible readings earn greater spirituality. Scripture engagement is relational, not transactional. But the research reinforces what Scripture has taught for generations: people are formed by repeatedly placing themselves under the influence of God's Word.
That raises an architectural question for curriculum designers. If research tells us that engaging Scripture repeatedly throughout the week matters, why would we design discipleship resources primarily around one hour on Sunday?
There are 168 hours in every week. For many children and teenagers, the church might directly influence approximately one of them. That is the idea behind 1/168. One hour matters enormously, but one hour was never intended to carry the entire weight of spiritual formation. The remaining 167 hours contain school, sports, meals, friendships, phones, social media, entertainment, family conversations, disappointments, temptations, questions, and decisions. Those are not interruptions to discipleship. Those are the places where discipleship must learn to live.
Deuteronomy 6:5–7 understood that long before we did. God's people were instructed to talk about His truth while sitting at home, walking along the road, lying down, and getting up. In other words, faith formation was designed into the ordinary rhythms of life. We do not need to add more time blocks to already crowded calendars. We need tools that help layer discipleship onto what people are already doing. The church gathering matters deeply, but biblical discipleship was never designed to remain inside the church building.
That thinking became part of the architecture behind the newest generation of D6 Curriculum. We did not want to begin with the question, “What should go into another Sunday School lesson?” We wanted to work backward from the kind of disciples we hope to see and ask, “What practices help produce a resilient, lifelong faith, and how can curriculum make those practices easier for churches and homes to cultivate?”
That idea is especially evident in the design of the new D6 Discipleship Journals. They are not simply take-home pieces added to the curriculum. They were intentionally designed as a bridge between gathered discipleship at church and lived discipleship throughout the week. From elementary students through adults, the journals create repeated encounters with Scripture through daily Bible engagement, devotional insight, prayer, reflection, application, sermon notes, and space to process what God is teaching. They also incorporate apologetics because young people need more than answers to what Christians believe. They need opportunities to wrestle with why those beliefs are trustworthy and how biblical truth speaks to the questions they are actually facing.
The why behind the design matters. A middle school student might hear biblical truth on Sunday and revisit it in Scripture on Tuesday. On Wednesday, an apologetics question may push her to think more deeply about why she believes it. Later in the week, a parent, grandparent, mentor, or caregiver can continue the conversation because D6 aligns generations around the same biblical truth. The objective is not page completion. The objective is reinforcement, relationship, and rhythm. We want to help people move from simply hearing biblical truth toward understanding it, wrestling with it, and ultimately owning it for themselves.
Research also points to the importance of relationships. Children develop stronger faith when caring adults intentionally invest in them, and D6's design brings parents, grandparents, mentors, caregivers, teachers, and ministry leaders around shared biblical themes. The goal is not to make the parent the only spiritual influence in a child's life, nor to expect the church to replace the home. We need both, surrounded by other faithful adults who reinforce truth through relationships.
Relationships are another reason curriculum architecture matters. Curriculum cannot disciple anyone. People disciple people. The Holy Spirit works through God's Word, God's people, and intentional relationships to transform lives. But a well-designed tool, whether curriculum or a Discipleship Journal, can intentionally encourage the practices, relationships, and conversations that contribute to lasting faith.
An architect cannot guarantee that a building will never encounter a storm. Instead, the architect anticipates the forces the building will face and designs accordingly. We cannot remove every difficult question, cultural pressure, disappointment, temptation, or season of doubt from the lives of those we disciple. Nor should that be our goal. Our responsibility is to help build deeply rooted disciples who know God's Word, understand why they believe it, experience faith in meaningful relationships, and learn to live that faith beyond the walls of the church.
Sunday matters enormously. But we are not designing discipleship only for Sunday, because discipleship is not tested inside the church. It is tested during the week.
We are building for the storm.
Check out a free digital sample of the new D6 Curriculum here.
