Meet Judy Fetrow.
When Judy registered for “Intentional Discipleship,” an online course offered through Equipping for Ministry’s Directed Study Program (DSP), she had little knowledge of the topic or the applicability of the course material to her ministry.
“I took the course as one more step toward ordination with the Brethren in Christ Church. I had no idea how good of a class it was going to be,” recalls Judy, who pastors the Llewellyn (Pa.) BIC and Hillside Chapel BIC (Tremont, Pa.) churches. “It helped me to really understand what it means to disciple someone—really being in that person’s world, taking time, being alert to teaching moments, and having input in a life.
“I realized that this is what I want to do,” Judy states. “Right away, I thought of new people that had started coming to our churches, and I said, ‘I don’t want to just merely evangelize and invite them to accept Christ. I want to disciple them.’”
As an outgrowth of her newfound passion for discipleship, Judy began spending time with a single mother and the father of her children. Judy describes the father, who was recently released from prison, as “hungry-hearted. He’s so wide-open. He is so sorry for his past. He came out of his sin—he says, ‘I’ve been a sinner, I’ve blown it.’ But the mother —she’s been ‘the good one,’ she took care of the girls, so now she has to see herself as in need of God, too,” Judy states.
Judy and her husband, Tim, meet regularly with the couple in a program of discipleship and Bible study. “If they have problems, if they want to share anything—it’s just me and Tim and the two of them,” Judy says.
“They’re both precious souls,” Judy adds. “So we want to help them as they go through all this.” Judy credits her dsp class with giving her the insight and the skills to establish this kind of relationship. “I don’t think I would have seen it so clearly if I hadn’t taken the Intentional Discipleship course. My eyes were opened to a whole new approach to my ministry.”
