“I almost wish I hadn’t gone down that rabbit-hole—and yet—and yet—it’s rather curious, you know, this sort of life!”-Alice in Alice in Wonderland
Stumbling into DMM
Since the beginning of my faith journey, I have always had a sense of being out of time. Reading the Bible was not a cold distant experience. Whenever I would thumb through its pages I would put myself in the shoes of Paul and Jesus.
The Book of Acts was something we could experience today. This was never a question for me. At the same time, it also made me question the current Christian church and its practices.
Looking at Jesus’ practice and the practice of the New Testament church in Acts made me feel disoriented. The activities we were involved in and the manner in which we did them did not equate to what I read in scripture. Something was missing.
The centrality of the church building and the hierarchy of pastor and parishioner seemed foreign to the original Jesus movement (Acts 2:46, 2:20; Matthew 23:8-9). On top of that, the passivity of the congregation didn’t seem like what Jesus had in mind.
So I began searching. This was in the late nineties and early 2000s when the wonders of the internet became available to the masses and I devoured information about different ways of being church. I consumed it all. From parachurch to emerging to Reformed to Methodist. I knew there was something out there that better mirrored what Christ had in mind for his people.
Eventually, my internet journey intersected with real life when I became involved with Campus Crusade For Christ (now known as Cru) at my local community college. This was all due to a Christian club I started with a few other students called Warrior Christian Fellowship. In those days I learned how to do one-on-one evangelism and lead Bible studies. The camaraderie and sense of God’s presence was something I wanted more of as we all were one in mission and purpose. We wanted to see our friends and fellow students come to know Jesus.
This desire for my friends and family to know Jesus eventually blossomed into seeing people from other nations know Him as well. This all came from reading the scriptures and wanting to obey the words of the Great Commission (Matthew 28:19-20). After searching for months for the right organization to take me to the nations I was recruited to go on a summer mission project to Ethiopia with Campus Crusade.
This summer project exploded my framework of what God could do in this day and time. What I had longed for after reading the scriptures came alive before my very eyes. First with my team from the States and also with the Ethiopian nationals.
We were a multiethnic team from the States and through this team trained by Bobby Herron we became deeply connected and experienced God do amazing things through our group. We were of one heart and one mind and in the hotel where we stayed, we were in one place and on one accord. Everyone on the trip was there to see people saved and find Christ. We were all there to make disciples and God used us to bring healing, exorcisms, and salvations.
I learned the passion and commitment to Christ and obedience to the scriptures from national leaders. We saw people who had dedicated their lives to Jesus without any of the celebrity Christian trappings. They were focused on eternal reward. I saw believers who were content with the little they had and who would worship God in a packed house without air conditioning because they experienced his love for them. In other words, I learned what Christianity could be when it was about following Jesus.
After coming back to the States I was ruined and I’ve been searching for something consciously or unconsciously since then. No matter what church I was leading or was a part of there was a deep hunger and appetite to experience what I experienced there in Ethiopia. It was community and mission.
It was the communitas Alan Hirsch describes in his book The Forgotten Ways. Communitas is the sense of community formed out of the shared experience of an adventure, trial, ordeal, or mission. It’s what soldiers experience after boot camp or combat. This is what I experienced there in Ethiopia with our team and I had been longing for it ever since.
After a couple of starts with different expressions of church (A coffeehouse, missional communities, etc.) I was looking for something more. This coincided with my life coming apart at the seams and me coming to the end of my rope spiritually and professionally (This kind of thing happens in middle age. But that’s another article for another time). I was just ripe for what God dropped into my lap.
About two years ago while working as a limo driver I started noticing a lot of internationals parked in the limo lot at the airport. I couldn’t help but think “How can I introduce them to Christ?” And so I searched online for resources and stumbled on the website of Jeannie Marie an advocate for cross-cultural ministry and missions. A couple of weeks after signing up I received an invitation for a webinar from one of her partners and friends to learn how to have a massive kingdom impact making disciples. I watched the webinar, signed up for the course and two years later I’m still pursuing this approach.
The Blessing of DMM
This approach is called a disciple-making movement or DMM for short. If you haven’t heard of dmms then here’s a simple explanation: small groups of disciples making other disciples who establish churches of disciples. Rinse and repeat.
In other words, it’s about the church doing what it’s supposed to do. This is not a new idea. You can see it in the pages of the New Testament. Christianity was spread from household to household as followers of Jesus gossiped the gospel and full-time workers went into new territory to make disciples.
It’s the opposite of the spectator church. When it comes to disciple-making movements no one can hide in the back row. There is no back row. It’s about the whole church being on mission together.
The focus is on making disciples and not planting churches. It’s been said that Jesus’ command was to make disciples and not to plant churches. The twelve apostles obeyed this and made disciples and as a result, churches were formed. This is quite the opposite of the standard mindset in the West. We go out to plant or start a church. What we mean by this is to start a church service. After doing this no matter how big and flashy this weekly event gets we aren’t guaranteed many disciples.
This begs the question: What is a disciple? A disciple is a learner of Jesus who submits to him in obedience. This is what Peter and the boys gave their lives to. Jesus was a rabbi and rabbis in those days didn’t just preach or teach with words but with their life. In order to be a disciple of a rabbi you wouldn’t just show up weekly to hear him speak. You would get close to him and follow his life.
This is not what we see in the current Western church. What we usually see are people who give an hour and a half of their time to a weekly event and sing songs but who are not necessarily following Jesus in any measurable form. By measurable form I mean we can track what we have done to obey Jesus’ word substantially. By track, I don’t mean we get deep into the weeds of data analytics. I just mean have accountability for our obedience and we can point back to our journey with God regularly and see how our relationship with him brought about transformation. Most of what we consider following Jesus is actually just fulfilling religious requirements set up by the church. Attend once a week. Go to a small group. Tithe 10%.
These are all good things but you can do these things without following Jesus. You can do these things in order to stay in a good social position with other churchgoers and the leaders of the church. There should be a specific way you personally are following Jesus every week.
This means you need to hear from Jesus. Jesus must speak to us in order for us to obey. I love what Jim one of my friends and mentors always says when I present him with a dilemma or upcoming decision “What do you hear Jesus saying?” And this is where our churchgoing and following rules exhaust themselves. We can do all of these things and have no intention of obeying Jesus and that’s the opposite of discipleship. Discipleship is experiencing a love relationship with Jesus which results in obedience to Him out of gratitude.
I believe DMMs help to foster environments that produce discipleship. The contemporary church in the Western world is not doing this because it lacks the smaller structure and accountability for true obedience and reproduction of discipleship DNA. When any group gets bigger the original DNA—the values, principles, and ethos— of the group gets lost by the introduction of other members. Part of this watering down of the original Jesus discipleship DNA is due to the focus on the Sunday morning event. As much as there has been an emphasis on small groups the intention of most of those groups is pastoral care and less about accountability and multiplication.
The overall goal and intention to get more people into the building override any motivation for making disciples. There is a misguided notion that bringing people into the building is the primary method of making disciples. I say misguided because Jesus had no buildings and Paul had no buildings and yet they changed the world through intentional disciple-making.
Disciple-making movements can do this because they are small and reproducing. In spite of their smallness, the fact that they are made to reproduce means although the basic unit is small the movement has the potential to be big. Huge results can be gained quantitatively and qualitatively from going small. In other words, focusing on quality with a small group of disciples leads to massive results in both the quality and quantity of future disciples. It just makes sense in terms of resiliency and reproduction to go small with disciple-making movements.
Not only that, I’ve spent close to two years pursuing a disciple-making movement. I have yet to see the numbers and rapid growth I hear about overseas. I have seen the young people I’m investing in step out in faith and lead their friends to Christ. They even cast out a demon. I have seen others take steps of obedience that I know God is pleased and delighted in. But most of all I have seen my faith and love for Jesus increase dramatically knowing I’m more aligned with the Bible than at any other time in my life. This has been a radically transforming journey and I can’t wait to see where it takes me next.