Testimony: Discipleship Where You Live, Work, and Play

One of the beautiful things about life-on-life discipleship is how it is both simple and effective.

Today we get to share the story of Warren Prehmus, who grew up an atheist but eventually became a Christian as an adult. Through discipleship, he became sure of his faith and used what he learned to disciple others.

The testimony highlights the way God has worked in his life and the lives of several others. Discover how discipleship made an impact on multiple groups, and consider how God can use you in the places you live, work, and play to make an impact.

You can watch the testimony or read the transcript below:

Transcript

I grew up in the Northeast as an atheist, part of an atheist family.

I moved down to the Atlanta area, and went through some very difficult personal times that drew my wife and I towards God, even though I was fighting it. And I ended up meeting a fellow named Randy Pope. He walked me through the gospel, and with great difficulty and challenges, I finally bent the knee and became a Christian. 

That was when I was around 30 years old. That was a long time ago. So when I became a Christian, Randy said, “What you do is you get in discipleship.” Coming from a non-church background, getting in a discipleship group was a little bit awkward for me because people were sharing stuff that as an atheist you don’t share. 

Randy’s focus always was, “You need to become a leader. Lead a discipleship group.” So I did. 

His focus also was evangelism, reaching out to people where you live, work, and play. So being in discipleship groups over time kept me in the word, kept me learning about the Bible, about God, getting in deeper relationship with him. 

About a year and a half ago, I was feeling God was leading me to start a group. But I wanted to start a group of non-believers. So where you live, work, and play. Where I play is the tennis center at the athletic club, and I have all these relationships there. 

I came up with my spiel on how I’m going to invite these guys. It’s not a Bible study. It’s a men’s group. It’s going deep and really finding out what’s going on in other men’s lives. And he interrupted me and he said, “I’m in.” I said, “Okay.” I| went to the second guy and I started my spiel, and he said, “I’m in.” 

We met together for eight or nine months, and they became believers. And so the first thing we did when they became believers was they started discipleship. That inspired some guys to say we need to start a second group of seekers. And then also at the tennis center, I ran into some guys that were pretty new to Perimeter and had never been in any Bible study or discipleship group.

And I said, “Really? You haven’t?” And they said, “Yeah. How about if you lead us?” So I have guys that are in their 30s, their 40s, their 50s, their 60s, and their 70s. 

This is such a good tool for not only for you to grow, but for you to become a leader and reach those in your sphere of influence to make disciples like we’ve been told we should. 

So you may not do four groups, but you sure can do one. It’s what we’re called to do, to become disciples and to make disciples.

Conclusion

As you can see, this testimony is a powerful example of both making disciples and training disciples. Warren moved from atheist to seeker to believer to disciple-maker. He invested in the lives of others, who became believers and disciple-makers as well.

Warren is not a professional pastor – he simply invested in the people God had brought into his life through tennis.

So what about you? Who are the people in your life, where you live, work, and play, that God might be calling you to disciple?

Want to dig deeper? Checkout our 5 training tools for evangelism >