Church & Discipleship Considerations

Due to the large number of questions about introducing better discipleship within churches, I wanted to make my favorite resources more available.

I care deeply about the topics of church and discipleship, and I really believe that God is shifting his Church into a new season of intentionality around making disciples who make disciples.

My soundbite: A few years ago I was all in on the ARC/CMN model, ready to craft a church plant launch plan as we attended conferences and were inspired by the “successes” of Furtick, Vous, etc., but then during Covid God truly did a shift in my heart and challenged me to rethink everything I knew about “church”. 

To be clear, although the current state of the Church is concerning, I fully believe that all churches have the opportunity to shift to a fresh model and could see more movement than they ever imagined. Shifting from a traditional model to a disciple-making model is simply an adjustment and can be done from within already existing churches.

My prayer is that you consider the long-term future of the Church and more importantly God’s heart for the state of His Church today.

Below are some resources and messages which helped shift my perspective:

Books that will Grow your perspective on discipleship and how it can be done through the local church:

I wouldn’t suggest creating any new discipleship model within a community until reading all of these books.

Hearing Francis Chan process his shift, his questions, and watching his journey was a major inspiration to me in many ways. 

Creative Expressions of Stateside Disciple Making Movement

More examples coming soon!

Mike Breen is the Francis Chan of the UK - He led the largest church in the UK and shifted the church towards a disciple-making mindset. Skip right to minute 30 and listen to minute 47 for some thought-provoking ideas on how we can better bring disciple-making into current churches.

Below is my attempt to prompt the Church towards disciple making:

Questions that church leadership and staff should be asking:

  • Are we making churchgoers or are we making disciples (who make disciples)?

  • Do our church staff meetings focus more on the production of Sunday morning/events or more on the discussion of how we are helping people grow spiritually in discipleship?

    • What if every staff meeting was committed to evaluating how we are doing at making a disciple-making movement (not a better Sunday production/experience or one-time events)?

  • See the segment below on potential metrics to consider.

Church Growth Can Be Misleading

Read this report here:

My experience from leading connections, next steps, and guest integration:

Most current church growth is simply made up of transferrence. Churchgoers leaving their old church for a number of reasons, to a new, healthier, or growing one. (Some reasons are more valid then others)

The problem is that this growth is misleading, if we define success as numerical growth such as attendance/giving then by all means it’s a win. But if success is truly making disciples who make disciples then we as the Church are still far from meeting our goals.

Better metrics to consider:

  1. Salvations

    1. Better: How many in your church are doing the work of leading people to Jesus? (In contrast to bringing them to you for the altar call?)

  2. Baptisms

    1. Better: How many of your leaders are doing the baptisms? (Because they are the ones who have been discipling these new believers?)

  3. How are our members doing with daily spiritual growth and obedience to Jesus?

    1. Knowledge Acquisition vs Obedience Based Discipleship

    2. Regular/Daily relationship with Jesus

      1. Prayer, Bible Reading, Abiding, etc.

    3. Think: Intimacy with Jesus, Intentional Relationships, and Multiplication

    4. Are they becoming more like Jesus? Loving more like Jesus? Living more like Jesus?

  4. Number of people in groups (You could scratch this one out but it’s good to know)

  5. Number of group leaders

    1. Add number of upcoming leaders being coached

  6. Groups that have multiplied

    1. Are you seeing clear multiplication from the investments into others by the groups?

    2. Or are you only seeing new starts? (Something to weight out)

  7. Leaders who are working themselves out of job, replicating themselves, and delegating leadership to upcoming leaders

  8. What percentage of the church are engaged, missional contributors?

    1. Are there only a few leaders doing all the ministry leading or is everyone in our church engaged and using their spiritual gifts for the mission?

    2. How can we get everyone within our church to become engaged missionally?

  9. Number of disciple-makers, evangelists, outreaches, missional communities, etc. that are sent out to do the assignments God has put on their heart.

    1. The idea of sent out here is a really a collaborative partnership where we are launching people into their next season of ministry.

  10. Number of missionaries sent out to the frontier towards the “unreached”

  11. Number churches planted - Sent out, released, equipped, no strings attached/expectations of benefit in return, and celebrated

The point is that attendance and giving are shallow metrics to gauge disciple-making growth.

As leaders, we need to re-evaluate the right ways to measure and the methods/outcomes that determine Kingdom success.

We need to value the right things and think critically about the best methods.

Quick stats around the state of the Church in the USA:

  • Some studies show in 10 years there will be a shortage of 30k pastors in rural churches 

  • Christianity on a broad sense is on a decline in USA as of 12% in the last decade

  • From 90% in the 1970s, to about a little over 60% today, to under 40% by 2070

  • The US Evangelical church growth rate is at just .8% 

  • 73% of churches in USA are declining

  • American churches are closing faster than new ones can open

  • 2019 4500 closed and only 3000 Opened

  • On average  a church needs to replace 32% of its attendance every year just to plateau

  • 42% of all pastors in 2022 considered quitting their jobs.

  • With our current model, the average cost to baptize one believer in the USA is 1.5 million dollars

  • Church congregations are growing older, and the average pastor is now 57 years old

In contrast to the fastest-growing church in the world:

The fastest growing church in the world is in IRAN.

    • Full of persecution.

    • Predominantly led by women

    • 20% annual growth rate

    • No church building, no seminaries, no big budgets. 

    • This church is following a Disciple Making Movement model (DMM).

      • Read Contagious Disciple Making by David Watson and prayerfully consider how to contextualize these principles into your specific demographic.

Note that new church plants are far more effective at reaching people far from Christ:

  • The average new congregation will bring six to eight times more new people into the life of the body of Christ than an older congregation of the same size.

The takeaway from stats:

I’m certain there are a number of different conclusions that we can arrive at based on the consideration of the data above. It’s far less important that we arrive at the same conclusion, but that we take a step back and ask some hard questions, and then consider what needs to be changed to create a better disciple-making movement.

Not sure where to start?

  1. Begin by reading the books I shared above at your own pace.

  2. Start an Ordinary Men or Ordinary Women’s Group.

    1. These groups are designed to help individuals become disciples who make disciples. The groups are best done with your church and will help shift the mindset of your community from church-going to disciple-making.

If you would like help in the pursuit of creating a better discipling culture within your church then please reach out. I would be honored to serve you all.