From Megachurch to Multiplication: A Church's Journey Toward Movement

by Chris Galanos

Many of these movements around the world use a tool called Discovery Bible Study (DBS) to help those involved focus on and stay committed to reading, obeying, and sharing.

After reviewing the previous passages, if a majority of the group has obeyed, they’ll move on to a new passage of Scripture. If the group has not obeyed, they may reread the previous passage and stay focused there until they have helped each other obey. Remember, the goal isn’t simply to learn and move on but to obey. It’s not helpful to move on until a majority of the group has obeyed.

Asking the group questions about the passage of Scripture, rather than teaching them about it, allows each person to “discover” for themselves, with the Holy Spirit as the teacher, what God wants each one to learn.

people are more committed to truths they discover for themselves than those they are taught by other people.

All you have to do is read the questions, open the Scriptures, and let the Holy Spirit speak to everyone in the room.

Goals for Focusing on God’s Word •Meet together each week as a group to “focus on God’s Word” by doing the seven-question DBS process. •Spend five days each week on your own “focusing” on God’s Word by reading, obeying, and sharing.2

characteristics of prayer that we have seen among the hundreds of ministries that we coach and train, and within our own teams. •Many Christians pray . . . and fast every week at least two meals in one day. •Many new Christians gather regularly for all-night or six-hour prayer vigils. •Midday prayers for members of churches and ministry teams are common. •Personal disciplines of early-morning prayer are very common. One hour to two or three hours of prayer is not uncommon. •Family devotions centered on discovering the Bible together and praying together are common.1

When I began to study movements from around the world, the thing that kept jumping out at me was the desperation for God and how people expressed that through prayer.

Stan has often said, “When we’re asking God for a movement, we’re essentially asking him to do again what he did in the book of Acts.”

if we want to see results like they saw in the book of Acts, we have to do what they did in the book of Acts.

“Your prayer life now is ordinary for you. Add something to it to make it extraordinary for you. Then when that becomes ordinary, add something again to make it extraordinary. Keep repeating the process.”

“Let’s start praying every weekday for an hour rather than just once a week, much like they started doing in the 1857–1858 Prayer Revival under the leadership of Jeremiah Lanphier.” After that, we started praying for one hour through lunch every day.

It’s not just about “extraordinary” prayer, though; it’s about multiplying extraordinary prayer. It’s not enough just that we pray in an extraordinary way; we want to challenge others to begin to do the same.

Jim Cymbala in Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire: “The more we pray, the more we sense our need to pray. And the more we sense a need to pray, the more we want to pray . . . When the apostles were unjustly arrested . . . they didn’t call for a protest; they didn’t reach for some political leverage. Instead, they headed to a prayer meeting”4 (referring to Acts 4:23–31).

Where did all of this half night of prayer and all-night prayer stuff come from anyway? Luke 6:12 says, “One day soon afterward Jesus went up on a mountain to pray, and he prayed to God all night.” I’m sure our friends overseas thought, If Jesus himself needed to pray all night long, how much more do we need to pray?

Will you allow the Lord to take your ordinary prayer life to an extraordinary level?

We’re definitely trying to catalyze a movement of prayer!

Jerry Trousdale, author of The Kingdom Unleashed, wrote, Prayer is the lifeblood of movements. The church in the Global North [referring to North America and Europe] does not rely on prayer, and if behavior is any indication, it does not believe in it, either. If we are going to see movements in the Global North, we will need to see a new, ongoing commitment to serious, intense, persistent prayer for God to open heaven, to raise up disciple makers and church planters, to guide us to His people of peace, and to empower our work.

Goals for Multiplying extraordinary Prayer •One hour of individual prayer at least five days each week. •One hour of corporate prayer with the group each week. •Four-hour extended prayer time at least once per month (half night or all night).

Movements are all about lost people becoming disciples of Jesus and gathering in churches, then making more disciples of Jesus. There is no movement unless lost people are becoming disciples.

An often-repeated DMM principle is, “Expect the hardest places to yield the greatest results.”

Inspired by Steve Addison’s book What Jesus Started, I contacted a friend of mine who was a Lubbock police officer and asked, “What neighborhoods are known to be the most dangerous in the city? Can you give me the top three?”1 He gave me the top three most dangerous neighborhoods, and several of our DMM churches decided to target them as they went out among the lost. We started prayer walking one of those difficult neighborhoods every week. We asked that God would allow us to meet and serve people as we walked. We also asked that God would lead us to the person of peace (Matthew 10; Luke 10) who was open to the gospel and prepared to help that neighborhood receive it.

As we walked, we would talk to people who were outside. We would tell them we were prayer walking the neighborhood; then we’d ask if they had anything about which we could pray for them. People are generally receptive to being prayed for, so we were able to serve many people in that way. This first step helps to determine if they are open spiritually.

As we prepare to go out among the lost, we pray first and ask the Lord where he wants us to go. Once he gives us direction, we begin prayer walking that place. We look for opportunities to meet needs, and we share about Jesus!

When Stan first talked to us about “going out among the lost,” we asked him, “Shouldn’t we start first with the people in our relational network who are lost?” He said that while we don’t want to neglect our relational network, if we wait to “go out among the lost” until we’ve shared with family and friends, we’ll inadvertently train ourselves not to “go out among the lost.” In other words, we won’t be in the habit of going out each week. Plus, he said, we’ll run out of family and friends to talk to quickly anyway.

Stan shared with us a helpful acronym to identify “persons of peace” using the characteristics listed in Matthew 10 and Luke 10. The acronym is WOOLY.

The acronym I learned was OHS: O: open to you & the Gospel H: hungry spiritually to discover and obey S: spiritually sharers with their family & friends

“Would you like to bring your family and friends together to discover more about God through his Word?” We call these groups of people who gather together Discovery Groups (DGs).

If, after some period of time, the oikos is obeying and sharing, you’ve likely found your person or household of peace. If not, this may not be the person or household God has prepared to receive the gospel and bridge it to the community.

Goals for Going Out Among the Lost •Spend at least one hour each week as a team going out among the lost (new areas with people you haven’t met). •Spend time loving, serving, and sharing with your family, friends, coworkers, and neighbors.

The prayer is that as the DG journeys together through a series of “Creation to Christ” Scripture passages, all persons in the group repent of their sin and place their faith in Christ as Lord. We then lead them through getting baptized together and beginning to function as a DMM church. We begin training them immediately to focus on God’s Word, multiply extraordinary prayer, go out among the lost, and see groups start so the process can repeat all over again.

Goals for Seeing Groups Start •See one DG (Discovery Group) started per person per year.

Note: If there are ten people on the DMM team, they’re hoping to see ten DGs started in a given year, which would hopefully lead to planting two new churches each year (based on the 25 percent principle mentioned above).2

DMM researcher and Beyond staff member Justin Long tweeted, “Raising up 1 team of 2 to 3 people can reach 100,000. Be a strategic mobilizer of 100 and you could potentially make a difference for 5 million or more (100/2*100k). This is a critical role.”1

One of the great tragedies of the American church model, and it’s happened at our church too, is an attitude that results in suppressing the gifts, ambitions, and callings of ordinary believers.

he and his team left our church and began to function as a DMM church planting team. I asked him later how it was going. He said, “I feel like we were set free.”

I had to wonder why he felt “set free” when we laid hands on him and sent him out with his team. Then I realized it was likely because, for the first time in his life, someone was saying to him, “You can do this! You don’t have to wait for your pastor to make disciples. You don’t have to just sit in a pew and hope your pastor plants churches. God wants to use you!”

Did you know that leaders of the movement in India that has reached millions point to this same “culture of empowerment” as being essential to movement? We’ve got to empower ordinary people once again. Remember this verse: “The members of the council were amazed when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, for they could see that they were ordinary men with no special training in the Scriptures. They also recognized them as men who had been with Jesus” (Acts 4:13).

Cast vision to one believer each week to be a part of an upcoming DMM training.2

After casting vision to people to be generational disciple makers and church planters, we need to train them! And what are we training them to do? Go out among the lost and see groups start! The same thing we’ve been doing! We’re training them to make disciples and plant churches. And, more specifically, we’re training them to make disciples who make more disciples who make more disciples, hopefully leading to multiple streams of disciples made down to the fourth generation and beyond.

The reason we spend time casting vision and training believers is because the more teams we have “raising the sails,” the more disciples we’ll likely make and the more churches we’ll likely plant.

So, while we’re going out among the lost and seeing groups start, we want to be training others simultaneously to do the same. The reason we

we’re assuming it will take casting vision to thirty people to find ten who are willing to go through the training. If you start with one person per week in January, thirty weeks later is approximately midsummer. Hopefully, by midsummer, you’ve cast vision to thirty people and have found ten who are willing to be trained. Then you can start the ten-person DMM training in August or September a...

Church Planting Movements are basically Training Movements. Training is vital for rapid exponential growth because new lead...

remember, training doesn’t mean teaching people a lo...

If my father had simply sat me down in our living room and given me a lecture on how to drive a stick shift, I never would’ve been able to do it. A lecture doesn’t help you learn to drive a stick shift. You’ve got to have someone get in the car and train you

Mac story, as Stuart taught me to drive a stick shift

Lectures aren’t designed to teach you to obey; they’re designed to transfer information into your brain.

Goals for Training Believers •Lead at least one training each year with the people to whom you’ve cast vision.1

I’ve always been helped most by people who have already been where I’m wanting to go—people who have already seen what I’m hoping to see.

These people can speak from having “been there, done that,” rather than guess based on what they think might work.

Harry Brown, in his foreword of The Kingdom Unleashed, said, The Global North [North America and Europe] has much to be proud of in what it has accomplished in the last two centuries of missionary work. But the cold, hard reality is that we have pretty much found the ceiling on what can be accomplished with the approaches we are using. By contrast, what God is doing through His people in the Global South [Asia, Africa, and Latin America] is creating an upheaval that is tossing the status quo out the window. A timeless truth states, “The humble get better.” It is time for all of us on this half of the globe to listen and learn from the folks on the other side.1