Disciple Making and Church Planting: The DNA You Want to Multiply

Dear Discipleship-First Friends,

One of the most important questions church planters must answer is this: What kind of church are we trying to create?

If we want to plant churches that make disciples who make disciples, then we must begin by making disciples who make disciples. The methods we use at the beginning will establish the DNA of the church for years to come.

I spent two days earlier this week with my friends at Renew Movement Church Planting (https://renew-movement.org/) and our time together triggered me to advocate something extremely important for church planters.

Too often, church planting begins with a focus on launching a Sunday gathering. Leaders spend months raising money, building teams, developing praise and worship teams, creating children’s ministries, and preparing for a public launch. None of those things are wrong. Sunday gatherings matter. Corporate praise matters. The gathered church matters.

But there is a danger.

When the primary focus is launching a Sunday service, disciple making often becomes something we hope to add later but it is very difficult to turn that into a church with a culture of disciple making. The result is that many churches become excellent at gathering crowds but struggle to develop disciples who make disciples.

What if we reversed the process?

What if church planting started with disciple making before it started with Sunday gatherings?

Be What You Want the Church to Become

Every church planter (and minister/pastor) reproduces who they are.

The church plant will be more effected by the lead planter than by any strategy, program, vision statement, or ministry model. People will imitate what they see.

If we want a disciple making church, we must be disciples who make disciples ourselves.

Before we gather a crowd, we must personally invest in and disciple people in smaller communities. Before we build systems, we must model obedience. Before we ask others to make disciples, we must invite them into our disciple making lifestyle.

Church planters should never outsource disciple making to a future ministry leader or small-group minister/pastor. Disciple making is the foundation of the church, and the planter must establish that foundation through personal example.

The church will become what its leaders consistently practice.

Start with Simple and Reproducible Disciple Making Communities

The first step in church planting is not launching a service. It is making disciples.

We begin by gathering a simple disciple making group or community. The focus is not on creating a complicated ministry structure. Instead, we create a simple, effective, and reproducible environment where people learn to follow Jesus and help others do the same.

In these disciple-making communities, people learn to:

Care for and support each other.
Follow Jesus together.
Obey His teachings.
Pray (and fast) together
Share their faith.
Make new disciples.
Reproduce groups that will replicate their experience.

Because simplicity drives multiplication, these groups should be easy to reproduce. Almost every participant should eventually be able to lead a similar group.

The goal is not merely spiritual growth. The goal is reaching lost people and spiritual reproduction.

Start Two Disciple Making Communities

Lets say the church planter starts with two discipling communities. Then, as the first disciple making community begins to mature, the church planter should consider leaving one group in the hands of a disciple making leader that he has raised up to start a third community. This expands relational networks and increases opportunities for multiplication.

These early communities become laboratories for disciple making. People learn by watching the planter model how disciples are made. They experience accountability, mission, Scripture engagement, prayer, and reaching unchurched people firsthand.

Most importantly, they begin to understand that disciple making is not the responsibility of a select few leaders. It is a calling for every follower of Jesus.

At this stage, there may be no Sunday service, no praise team, no church building, and no public launch. Yet the church is already being planted because disciples are being formed.

Reproduce Before You Gather

A critical principle in planting a disciple making church is this:

Reproduce Multiple Disciple Making Communities Before Launching Larger Sunday Gatherings

As disciples mature, they should be coached and encouraged to start new disciple-making communities of their own.

The people who were discipled in the first groups become disciple makers themselves.

The process begins to look like this:

A church planter starts two disciple making communities.
New disciples are developed and equipped.
Those disciples launch one or two new communities.
New leaders emerge.
Additional communities form.
Disciple making becomes normal.

This is where church DNA is established.

People learn from the beginning that making disciples is not a ministry program. It is the mission, the core identity of the church.

By the time a larger church gathering begins, the expectation that everyday disciples make disciples is already deeply rooted in the culture.

Establish the DNA Before Launching Sunday Gatherings

Whatever receives the greatest emphasis at the beginning often becomes the defining culture of the organization.

If Sunday services are the first priority, then Sunday attendance is likely to become the primary measure of success.

If disciple making is the first priority, then being and making true disciples becomes the measure of success.

This is why church planters should focus first on establishing a network of healthy disciple making communities.

The question is not, “How quickly can we launch a Sunday service?”

The question is, “How effectively are we multiplying disciples who make disciples?”

When enough disciple making communities have been established and sustained, the gathering then becomes an expression of the disciple making value of the church rather than a substitute for it.

Let’s Be Honest: Most Churches Struggle with Disciple Making

One reason many churches struggle with disciple making is that they began with a different primary focus.

Sunday gatherings require enormous amounts of time, energy, leadership, and resources. Worship planning, production, children’s ministry, hospitality, facilities, communication, and administration all demand attention. Some say, they take 80%+ of the energy and resources of church leaders.

These ministries are valuable, but they can easily consume the church’s energy.

Again, think about it: many churches spend most of their effort attracting people to a Sunday service and then try to add disciple making groups later.

Unfortunately, what starts as secondary often remains secondary.

It is difficult to build a disciple making culture after years of emphasizing attendance and programs–bodies, bucks, buildings.

A church rarely drifts toward multiplication. It must be intentionally designed for multiplication from the beginning.

Gather After Multiplication Has Begun

There is certainly a place for larger Sunday gatherings.

The New Testament presents both gathered and scattered expressions of the church in the book of Acts (Acts 20:20). We need teaching, fellowship, prayer, praise and mission. We need the church gathered and the church deployed.

But disciple making church plants learn to gather after disciple making multiplication has already begun.

Start disciple making communities.

Reproduce those communities several times.

Develop disciples and disciple makers.

Raise up leaders.

Create a culture of multiplication.

Then launch Sunday gatherings as a celebration of what God is already doing through a growing network of disciples who make disciples.

When the church gathers, it will gather with the right DNA already in place.

The End Goal

The goal is not merely to plant a church.

The goal is to plant a disciple making church.

We want disciples who make disciples, who make more disciples, who then gather together in larger Sunday gatherings. Then they make more disciple making disciples who plant more churches… and on and on it goes.

When disciple making comes first, Sunday gatherings become stronger. Leadership becomes healthier. Mission becomes clearer. Multiplication becomes normal.

The church is no longer trying to add disciple making to an attractional model.

Instead, disciple making is the foundation upon which everything else is built.

That is how we establish a church that remains faithful to the mission of Jesus—not just for a season, but for generations.

For King Jesus,

Bobby Harrington, Point Leader

Discipleship.org