The Child Discipleship Podcast

About The Child Discipleship Podcast

The Child Discipleship Podcast is a conversation dedicated to anyone who cares about the future of the faith. Melanie Hester leads listeners through conversations happening within the world of children’s ministry, with insights from thought leaders and front-line servants in the local church and throughout the child advocacy space. We believe this generation of kids can be the greatest generation of disciples this world has ever seen, but they need loving caring adults like you to help make that happen. New episodes drop every Thursday, listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts!

Publisher

Awana

Category

religion & spirituality

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

10 Jan 2020

Latest episode

24 Aug 2026

Latest episodes

15 of 278 episodes have a transcript.

1. 

   24 Aug 2026TRANSCRIPT

   Teaching Kids About The Wilderness From Exodus 13-17:6 (September 27)

   Host [Host Name] interviews [Guest Name] about teaching children biblical wilderness lessons from Exodus 13-17:6.

2. 

   23 Jul 2026TRANSCRIPT

   Effective Child Discipleship: Looking at Outcomes Rather Than Just Activities

   Summary Matt Markins and Mike Handler open with a 2014 Awana research finding that keeps Matt awake: asked how carefully they evaluate and track the impact of their children’s ministry, leaders averaged 2.99 on a five-point scale. A collective shrug. Mike’s analogy is the car with no fuel gauge and no temperature reading, driving toward a failure point it cannot see coming. The hosts frame the problem using 4DX language of lead and lag measures, or drivers and outcomes. Lasting faith at 37, 47, 80 years old is the lag measure. Nobody in ministry gets to read that gauge. So the question becomes which drivers plausibly shape it, given that worldview largely settles by age 13. Their answer is the belong, believe, become framework. Belong is relational: is every child named, noticed, known, greeted by a specific adult with multiple touchpoints? Believe is scriptural: is Scripture read weekly, sung, memorized, spoken creedally, held as a physical book rather than a screen? Become is experiential: is there silence and stillness in a high-energy room, practiced prayer, service, drama, parents equipped for bullying and cultural pressure? Each church identifies its own top three to five markers per sphere, tracks them week to week, and notices when one quietly drops out. Mike closes with Carl Trueman’s medieval cathedral builders, men who broke ground knowing they would never see the roof. The blueprint, Matt adds, is the point. Faithfulness without visible fruit is still faithfulness with a plan. Show Notes Most children’s ministries cannot tell you if what they’re doing is working. Awana’s research puts the self-assessment at 2.99 out of 5. Matt Markins and Mike Handler take on the hardest problem in child discipleship: the outcome we care about most, lasting faith in adulthood, is one most of us will never live to measure. In this episode The 2014 data point that still keeps Matt up at night Lead vs. lag measures, borrowed from Chris McChesney’s The Four Disciplines of Execution Why age 13, not 18, is the real deadline Belong: named, noticed, known, and what that looks like operationally Believe: the irreducible minimum of weekly Scripture engagement Become: creating stillness inside a high-energy room “Every system is perfectly designed to produce the results it gets” Carl Trueman on medieval cathedral builders, and why blueprints matter more than timelines Referenced in this episode The Faith of Our Children (https://store.awana.org/product/the-faith-of-our-children) The Four Disciplines of Execution, Chris McChesney (https://www.amazon.com/Disciplines-Execution-Revised-Achieving-Important/dp/1982156988/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1TR63241L8Y8F&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.7SgwG9hfJvJp98mSTyT4qMPKNYrOlGsC-6EguFz501ao4gp6BqkqNTN5xDCfmZbeMjEieIIIcIRQ1bLgqBxFHt8BvfBcvIZ3CgSv8mb6IIHf8uk522Ro0hs2Nmeg3bjd7le38I6gAe_JVgevW7KWYljJvtR2RA_s8hloJY_BT6nZTJwhLe-pWRT18cwP23pZutqs3fRJoejkIUwQ3LZRILYL9P10WcT5gUSvjc7PM3k.hLiskmPC-SQOlUU0csMx0VHHMCpf9hQ9rK59nG1kt7E&dib_tag=se&keywords=The+Four+Disciplines+of+Execution%2C+Chris+McChesney&qid=1784813455&sprefix=the+four+disciplines+of+execution%2C+chris+mcchesney%2Caps%2C191&sr=8-1) Appleton Alliance Church (https://www.alliancechurch.org) Child Discipleship Forum (http://childdiscipleshipforum.com) childdiscipleship.com (https://childdiscipleship.com) The post Effective Child Discipleship: Looking at Outcomes Rather Than Just Activities (https://childdiscipleship.com/effective-child-discipleship-looking-at-outcomes-rather-than-just-activities/) appeared first on Child Discipleship (https://childdiscipleship.com).

3. 

   15 Jul 2026TRANSCRIPT

   Creating a Culture of Discipleship in the Home

   Matt Markins and Mike Handler discuss how parents can cultivate a culture of discipleship at home by focusing on vision, time, and place, offering practical strategies for spiritual formation.

Who has been a guest on The Child Discipleship Podcast

Names identified in recent episode analyses. Showing up to five guests.

• Sam Luce
• Sean McDowell
• Kenneth Padgett
• Diane Comer

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

53 ratings

Spotify

5.0 / 5

6 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 47 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

60

Social presence

0

YouTube

0

Engagement

85

Contact The Child Discipleship Podcast

Guest appearances

Does not typically book guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.

Shows with a similar audience

• 

  Knowing Faith

• 

  The Intentional Parents Podcast

• 

  M Is for Mama Podcast

• 

  FamilyLife Today®

• 

  Daily Drive with Lakepointe Church

• 

  The Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast

Questions about The Child Discipleship Podcast