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March 5 - April 2, 2019
I’ve had to do a lot of deconstruction in my own mind to be able to even understand what my coaches and those involved in movements abroad are saying to me. The way they view church and discipleship is so different from the way they are viewed in America.
Each of our teams that have been sent out from eLife meets with one of our leaders weekly for coaching. We talk about how their implementation of the seven elements went that week and what they can improve for the next week. We tell powerful stories, and we pray for each other that we would see many disciples made and many churches planted.
I encourage you, if you’re interested in getting started in DMM, to reach out to us. We can pair you with a DMM coach who can conduct your training and then guide you along as you begin to implement the principles. Roy Moran said, “Movements live and die on good mentoring and coaching.”2
Goals for Ongoing Coaching •Participate in an Ongoing Coaching meeting at least once per week.
They told me that having gone through the DMM training, one thing they now ask people after they pray for them is, “Would you be interested in getting your family and friends together to discover more from the Bible about God and his plan for your life?”
Andrew said they have only started asking that question recently, but many say they’d love to. Then they exchange phone numbers.
Andrew also said that he and Kristin try to take people with them as often as they can so they can train their friends to do this as well. Andrew said he’ll say to his friend, “Here, watch me do it, then you can do it next.” He said his friends are usually pretty nervous; but after they see him do it a few times, they’re usually open to trying it.
Kristin said that their friends think they’re crazy, not only because they like to go out “fishing for people” (Matthew 4:19) at Walmart, but also because of how often they go to all-night prayer meetings. She said they just tell their friends that it’s not that crazy; they used to stay out all night doing sinful things, so why wouldn’t they stay out all night to pray to Jesus now that they’re his followers?
I now see this as the pivotal moment when I learned (and began to appreciate) the difference between knowledge-based discipleship and obedience- or experience-based discipleship.
I had already taken most of the electives that were offered, and the only one I remember being available was called Church Planting. I thought it was a class on botany—learning to plant flowers at churches—which sounded great.
Starting Reproducing Congregations. The book was written by the professor, and I was intrigued by what I read.1 Later that semester our class attended a church planting conference at nearby Northwood Church.
They called these churches simple churches. These churches had a simple structure. There were no elaborate buildings or monster budgets. They met in homes, gyms, or businesses—anywhere, really. The leaders of simple churches were just ordinary people. Extraordinary speaking gifts and a lifetime of pastoral experience were not required to start one. You didn’t even have to have a seminary degree.
As I was preparing to plant a church, I was inspired by what I read about cell churches around the world. Authors such as Ralph Neighbour1 and Joel Comiskey2 used Scripture and experience to convince me that “simple” was the way to go. In part, that’s why we started out committed to simplicity.
Obviously God was blessing these movement efforts all over the world. The only problem was that there weren’t many documented movements in America. There were tons in Asia. Tons in Africa. Even quite a few in Europe. But hardly any in America. So, why not here, God? Why not now? That very question began our journey from complex back to simple. We’re now asking the WIGTake question, “raising the sails” for movement, and asking God to do in our country what he’s doing around the world!
if your identity is in Christ, then you say, “I’m going to try this; if it works, great, He gets the glory; and if it doesn’t work—well, it didn’t work, but I am still secure in who I am in Him.”
We had fallen in love with a way of doing things, and we didn’t realize that we associated ourselves so closely with that way of doing things that to challenge the method was to challenge us. This was a big problem.
Honestly, I never thought I’d lead a church where we’d be celebrating people leaving even more than we celebrate people coming. But, in truth, sending people out on a disciple-making mission is far more exciting than seeing people sit comfortably in a chair each weekend, far from the people who need Jesus the most.
Different people have different opinions and varying tolerance levels for change. Some people love change. They’re the early adopters. Anytime change is announced, they’re the first to jump on board. Other people despise change. No matter how well you do at casting vision, these people are not going to catch the vision, and they’re going to do their best to undermine it. And there will be people at all points in between.
Initially the new idea is met with skepticism and criticism; and then over time, if the idea becomes successful, it’s met with admiration and emulation. The key is perseverance!
Typically, in the American church, we don’t consider a leader to be “successful” if people turn away and desert the leader—but this was part of Jesus’ strategy. He was going to speak the truth and see who really wanted to give up everything and follow him. He would hand those people the Great Commission, and our world hasn’t been the same since. It doesn’t take everyone catching the vision.
one often-repeated DMM principle is, “Focus on a few to win many.”
Change is hard, but if God is leading, it’s always worth it.
a Christian author that is fitting here. He tweeted, “Pastors, you will always discover a church’s idols by changing things. People may leave. Programs may stop. Giving may drop. Gossips may divide. Activists may undermine. Staff may revolt. You be courageous.”
Are you willing to count the cost? Are you willing to give up everything you have, including your church’s attendance count, to Jesus? Are you willing to watch half your church leave, if that’s what it takes for you to pursue this disciple-making vision? When you call people to give up everything they have, the crowds will often desert you. The disciple makers are the ones who will stick with you. And the disciple makers are the ones who are needed to see a movement of God in your city.
Here’s the truth. Just because God has given you a particular vision doesn’t mean he’s giving everyone else that same vision. He can lead people to pursue different visions. And that’s okay. As mentioned in the previous chapter, what matters is what you do with the news that people are moving on—and that still holds true when they are close to you or have been with you for a long time. Remember, it’s not that they’re wrong and you’re right. You can both be right. Bless them. Encourage them. Support them. Send them. You want them to pursue the vision God has given them, even if it’s not the
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this. A pastor’s most important job is to lead the church’s elders or Leadership Team to seek the Lord, listen to his voice, do what he says, and leave the consequences up to him. You aren’t the Senior Pastor. Jesus is! He gets to decide the direction of his church, and the job of the leadership is to listen and obey.
The traditional American church model is not primarily “missionary” in nature, where the goal is to “produce” rather than to “consume.”
Many American pastors I know would admit how consumeristic our church system is, but most are at a loss as to how to change it.
We need the pastors and elders who are leading Jesus’ church to be free to listen to Jesus and do what he says whether everybody likes it or not. As pastors, we must obey the Lord and leave the consequences up to him. It’s his church, not ours.
serving them (healing prayer, kind deed, community service) while consistently, simultaneously, and culturally appropriately pointing to God.”
Stan pointed out that some people enter new places and just serve people without proclaiming the Kingdom, while other people enter new places and just proclaim the Kingdom without serving people. He said, “You don’t want to work with one hand tied behind your back. Do both!”
How do you decide where to go? Look at Luke 10:1: “The Lord now chose seventy-two other disciples and sent them ahead in pairs to all the towns and places he planned to visit.” We go to the places Jesus has prepared for us to go, just as the disciples went to the places Jesus planned to visit. We pray and listen to Jesus for direction. We want to join him where he’s already working, and we trust that he will lead us to those places.
Our DMM teams like to remember these groups of people Jesus described by using the acronym PIPSY.
As we think about places where we want to go and gain access, we start with some of the poorest places in our town, because we know when we go to them, we’re going to Jesus (according to Matthew 25). Jesus is working among the poor. Will you join him?
To be clear, individuals do not have to meet every one of these qualifications to be considered PIPSY. They can be poor, international, a prisoner, sick, or a combination of the four to qualify as PIPSY.
We never pressured anyone to do a Discovery Group. We were there to simply serve people and see who was interested. If they were interested, then great. If they weren’t, that was okay too. The goal was to serve and meet needs, and we were able to do that for everyone we met.
In the first few weeks we taught the group the seven-question DBS process so they could eventually lead it on their own without our assistance.
We gave him free rein in our church to recruit whomever he wanted and so he started Phase One Goer Groups, where they would help people catch God’s heart for the nations and then begin to pursue internationals who attended the local university.3
We sensed God leading us to mobilize and send as many workers from our church as we could to Thailand. At the time, we had about five thousand people coming to eLife, and we announced that we wanted to offer to God a “tithe” of our church to send to the nations. We started praying that five hundred people from eLife would be mobilized to the nations long-term. Since then, we’ve sent three long-term teams to Thailand and plan to send many more.
We could meet them at their lowest point, introduce them to Jesus, and provide a community in jail in which they could begin to follow Jesus. Then, when they got out of jail for the lesser crime, they’d be far less likely to commit another, more violent crime.
Everything ended up coming together, and in 2014, we launched our first Freedom Campus in the Lubbock County Detention Center.3 God moved so powerfully through that campus that other jails in the area were asking us to come out and start a Freedom Campus in their facility as well.
Henry and the others in his training were challenged to go back to their pods and begin implementing the training. Soon after, Henry and one of the other inmates started a DG in pod 4D. This was done without assistance from us. We trained them and served as their coach but let them do the “work of the ministry” (Ephesians 4:12).
Henry’s group meets every single day in that pod, and lives are being transformed. They’re so hungry, and they just can’t get enough of hearing and obeying God’s Word and praying with one another. When I told Stan this story, he told me it reminded him of the early church, which met many times a week, not just once. In fact, Stan said one key hindrance to growth in movements is if the church gets the idea that they are only “supposed” to meet once a week.
Henry told us that he was getting out of jail soon but didn’t want to see the group come to an end. He said he had trained two other guys to take over the group. In addition, he told us that he planned to start another DG when he left the jail.
typically ask two more questions after praying: (1) Do you have any needs in your life right now, or do you know of any needs in this area? And (2) Is anyone in your family sick, or do you know anyone in this area who is sick? The reason we ask the first question is because we’re looking for means of access into the area. By meeting needs we establish a reason for being there and hope that God leads us to the person of peace. If they tell us of needs in the area, we begin to pray about how we could possibly serve those people and meet those needs. The reason we ask the second question is
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We’re talking about rabbit church planting or simple church planting.1 You can do that with a normal full-time job. It doesn’t take forty hours per week. Or even thirty. Or even twenty. If it took that long, the apostle Paul couldn’t have done it, since he was working too. He wouldn’t have had the time to plant an American church and carry a full-time job.
Because we’re trying to “multiply extraordinary prayer” as we raise DMM sails for movement, they’ll spend the first hour of their meeting in prayer. They’ll ask God to guide the preparation of the service and to move powerfully that weekend (Acts 4:31). After praying, they’ll start to talk about the upcoming weekend.
one of my DMM coaches said, “When people ask what DMM is, I basically tell them that we’re asking God that the book of Acts would happen again in our day!” People seem to understand that, since Acts is the powerful story of the early church and the rapid advancement of the gospel.
As our speakers prepare their outlines, the sections usually look like this: •Introduction •Read the passage •Retell the passage •Ask: •What does the passage teach us about God? •What does it teach us about people? •What should we obey in response? •Who should we share with? •Personal story of obeying and sharing the passage •Conclusion By formatting the “training” this way, it keeps the DBS process in front of our church. Not only are we focusing on reading, obeying, and sharing in small groups, we’re also focusing on those things when we get together in a larger group. The training shouldn’t
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Because we’re emphasizing immediate obedience, we keep the trainings relatively short. Typically they run about ten to twelve minutes.
