Time is one of our most precious resources. How we spend our time will show people what we value. Therefore, in order for someone to commit to spending time meeting and sharing about their spiritual life every week, they need to have a desire to grow in Christ. With that being said, there is no set of tasks someone must complete or accomplish in order to be ready to join a Discipleship Quad. The only prerequisites are the willingness to commit and the desire to grow as a disciple of Christ as a Catholic.

This is very common and good. Most Catholics have not been discipled by someone and are not discipling others. Therefore, people who are actively living their faith can still greatly benefit from being in a Discipleship Quad and learning how to disciple others. It is possible that God will lead you to start a Discipleship Quad with people you know from church; they can go through the process with you in order to learn how to lead others to Christ.

Based on the research, including the model’s 35+ years of success, mixed-sex Quads are not recommended. The Quads are single-sex in order to create an atmosphere of common intimacy and vulnerability in sharing.

Being Catholic is not a prerequisite to joining a Quad, but the content of the lessons is explicitly Catholic. As long as people understand that the content will be Catholic, have a desire to grow in their understanding of the Catholic faith, and are able to commit to the elements in the Discipleship Quad Commitment, they are welcome to be in a Quad. Depend on God’s guidance when asking him who to invite.

The following benefits are listed in Transforming Discipleship by Greg Ogden:

• The one on one sets up a teacher-student dynamic. The pressure is upon the discipler to be the answer person or the fountain of all wisdom and insight. This dynamic discourages many people from wanting to disciple others. When a third (or fourth) person is added, the dynamic shifts to a group process. The discipler can more naturally make his or her contribution in the dynamic of group interchange.

• The triad/quad … views discipleship as a come alongside relationship of mutual journey toward maturity in Christ.

• The sense of “groupness.” The sense of the Holy Spirit being present in our midst occurred much more often in the group versus the one on one. Accountability is stronger than one on one.

• The group approach multiplies the perspectives on Scripture and application to life issues … By adding at least a third person there is another perspective brought to the learning process. The group members serve as teachers of one another.

• By adding a third or fourth person who is being equipped to disciple others, the multiplication process is geometrically increased.

Although the possibility of doing a triad (three people) is mentioned in the comments below, the quad (four people) model is recommended.

You should absolutely still make time to meet together as a group after completing the Guidebook. Remember, though, that one of the objectives of the Discipleship Quad model is that you will each start a new Quad at the end of the 12 months. The next step is mentoring each other as you form your new Quads.

If it is early in the process (during the first one or two months) you could add another person to fill the spot. Go back through the process of praying about who to invite. If it is more than two months into the time the Quad has been meeting together, just stay with a group of three people and do not add another person. The intimacy among Quad members has been formed too much at this point, so it would be difficult to bring in a new person into it.

Absolutely nothing! All Discipleship Quad resources are available, free of charge, on steubenvilleconferences.com.