By TheChurch.Digital: Pre-COVID, very few churches were doing groups online. Now as a result of social distancing, churches had to onboard their groups very quickly to digital methods. Interestingly though, as we’re coming out of the COVID and getting back to the building, some churches report up to 90% of their groups are staying online.

So, since our groups are staying Phygital, let’s talk about how to give our groups purpose. In a recent webinar I (Jeff) did with Gloo we talked specifically about strategies to get our groups on mission… multiplying…

So many challenges for 2021’s church. So many opportunities for ministry not of large masses, but of smaller individuals. This is the heart behind this conversation to get our Phygital Groups to Multiply.

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Source: PODCAST 119: Phygital Groups that Multiply

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By Ken Adams: I remember many years ago learning my multiplication tables. You probably do as well. I started with 1 x 1 and then continued to recite them all the way to 12 x 12. The repetition drove those tables into my mind in such a way that I still know them decades later.

Learning how to make and multiply disciples is also something we need to learn, it doesn’t happen automatically. The best way to learn how to make and multiply disciples is from the Master Disciple Maker. Jesus is the perfect model of what it means to make and multiply disciples. He took twelve unschooled and ordinary men and turned them into world-changers. Jesus led these men to be disciple makers in three years. Let’s identify some of the key steps in Jesus’ approach to disciple making that we need to follow today.

Recruit a group of people to train

There are lots of different ways to state this first step, but at the end of the day, Jesus made and multiplied a movement of disciples because He selected twelve men to come and learn from Him. Jesus spent a majority of His time with the twelve and He used that time to teach and model for them what He wanted them to be and do. In its most basic form, disciple making means identifying a handful of hungry people who are willing to commit to being trained and taught how to be more like Jesus.

Train that group of people to be like Jesus

Jesus calls us to make and multiply disciples who look and act like Him. During the time you commit to training your disciples, be sure you are training them in the character and conduct of Christ. The end goal of disciple making is that those you recruit will become more like Jesus and know how to help others become more like Jesus. Keep it simple. Train your disciples to be like Jesus the same way Jesus did. Spend time with them. Model for them. Teach them. Give them experiences, and then send them out to do the same with others.

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Challenge them to reproduce more disciples

People are slow. They need help understanding what the true outcome of disciple making really is. I know this to be true because of how many Christians have actually ever made another disciple. Very few have! Christians are very good at sitting in small groups, filling in blanks, and placing our notebooks on the shelf before finding another small group to join. We are very good at consuming. We are not so good at reproducing. We need to be challenged to make more disciples and held accountable to do so. When you make disciples, don’t stop at the training phase and assume they will reproduce. Go the extra mile and hold them accountable until they repeat the process you did with them with someone else.

Making and multiplying disciples is not complicated. It is more a matter of obedience than anything else. If you study the life of Christ and are willing to make disciples who make disciples, you already have the plan and power to accomplish the task. All you need is the willingness to go and do it.

By Ken Adams

Used by permission. Originally posted here:

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Source: How Do We Multiply Disciples?

The post How Do We Multiply Disciples? appeared first on Passion for Planting.

Source: PODCAST 109: Multiplying Churches Until There’s No Place Left

The post PODCAST 109: Multiplying Churches Until There’s No Place Left appeared first on Passion for Planting.

By NewChurches.com: In Episode 554 of the NewChurches Q&A Podcast, Daniel and Todd discuss how the church should multiply in the midst of a culture continuing to grapple with COVID.

In This Episode, You’ll Discover:

Some of the challenges the church will continue to face in 2021
How you grow in micro-ways and a macro-way

 Shareable Quotes (#NewChurches):

“How in the midst of all of that should we multiply as a church?” – @danielsangi
“Jesus never said to go and make disciples until you have COVID.”  – @danielsangi
“Part of being a disciple is making other disciples.” – @toddadkins
“Perhaps in 2021, your vision for multiplication is actually a downward sort of root-focused based multiplication.” – @danielsangi
“Perhaps you need to grow in depth before you can be sent out and send others out.” – @danielsangi
“What does it look like for you as a church to be on the offense as it relates to multiplying and being a blessing?” – @danielsangi
“Your church is strategically positioned to bring the gospel to that subdivision, to that community through where people live, work, and play.” – @toddadkins

Recommended Resources:

Read Multiplication Today, Movements Tomorrow
Read 1,000 Churches

Help us Multiply the Mission:

Please subscribe
Leave a rating and review on iTunes
Ask a question by clicking Send Voicemail on the right hand side of NewChurches.com
If you’re on a phone or a tablet, then go to www.speakpipe.com/newchurches to download the app and record your message
When you’re recording, introduce yourself and your context in about 15 seconds and then record your question for 30 seconds

The post Episode 554: A 2021 Vision for Multiplication appeared first on NewChurches.com – Church Planting, Multisite, and Multiplication.

Source: Episode 554: A 2021 Vision for Multiplication

The post Episode 554: A 2021 Vision for Multiplication appeared first on Passion for Planting.

by The Church.Digital: We’ve talked a lot here about the idea of multiplying church, which can be difficult to understand sometimes since the idea of multiplication is so, well, rare in the US church world. Even pre-2020, we’re lucky if we’re growing, most likely we’re flatlining, or even trending down. Even now in the foreseeable post-COVID future we are trending away, where Barna predicts 20% of churches shut down in the next 18 months, the idea of church multiplication seems a distant memory.

Or, maybe we’re just not doing it right? Have we overcomplicated the idea of church, and in the process designed something that actually prevented multiplication?

Enter Ed Love, Director of Multiplication for the Wesleyan Church. Ed, and the Wesleyan Church, has been wrestling with this issue for a while, and several years back hit the scripture again to discover the Wesleyan Church’s “essential ecclesiology” for church multiplication.

Healthy things multiply and through this essential ecclesiology from the Wesleyan Church, we’ve got an excellent blueprint towards Church as Platform, Microchurch, and even Digital Church Planting. What’s the ecclesiology look like? Dig into the conversation here, at The Church Digital Podcast.

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Source: PODCAST 102: Essential Ecclesiology Enabling Digital Church Planting

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by unSeminary: Welcome to this week’s unSeminary podcast. I’m excited to have David Putnam with us today. David spent many years as a church planter and executive pastor and today consults with churches as a lead navigator with Auxano. David has also founded the organization Planting the Gospel which helps transition churches from a weekend-only disciple-making culture.

David is with us to share simple tools that will help your church make disciple-making organic and accessible to everyone.

What kind of disciples are we making? // We are all making disciples, but what kind? Much of the time, without realizing it, churches make organizational disciples rather than gospel-centered disciples who in turn make more disciples. Covid has revealed to us that when our programming changes, our organizational disciples can vanish. How can we equip people so that even when there are unforeseen changes in the church, our disciples are still fully plugged into Christ and able to follow Him, doing the work of the great commission?What is a disciple? // We’ve allowed religion to take over the gospel and make it more complex than it needs to be. We need to take it back to a place of simplicity as found in scripture. There are three fundamental questions that David suggests we take a look at: What is the gospel? What is a disciple? And what is the church? David defines a disciple as a follower of Jesus who’s learning to live out the realities and implications of the gospel by living like Jesus, loving like Jesus, leaving what Jesus left behind. What did Jesus leave behind? Disciples!Living on mission. // Churches that are focused on making disciples have practical tools in place for their people. This includes life on life, life in community, life on mission. Many churches might have life on life and life in community built into their rhythms, but they neglect the life on mission aspect. How can we maximize our impact by releasing people instead of simply gathering people? We need to be equipping our people to enter the “mission field” right where they are, teaching them to be missionaries where they live, work and play.Disciple-making is evangelism. // David identifies five types of disciples: pre-disciples, new disciples, growing disciples, multiplying disciples, and catalytic disciples. An unbeliever is a pre-disciple. We need to equip people in our churches to engage pre-disciples in disciple-making by providing tools so that they can tell their story, and tell God’s story.The Gospel Disciple Life. // David has created a free resource called The Gospel Disciple Life: A Quick Start Guide for a Micro-Group Strategy for Making Disciples that Makes Disciples that will help you introduce disciple-making to your church. Consisting of simple Bible reading and meeting in micro-groups, this practical tool uses an organic method which is accessible to everyone. Who is the next person you will invite into a disciple relationship?

You can get help with disciple-making at your church by visiting www.plantingthegospel.com.

Thank You for Tuning In!

There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!

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Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Chemistry Staffing

Great things happen when the right leadership is in place in a local church… lives are changed and churches thrive.

With all the craziness that has gone on in 2020, we know that many churches are beginning to ask hard questions about what their current team looks like and how ready they are to lead into our new reality. Download Chemistry Staffing’s Restructuring Playbook to develop clarity around where you need to be focusing your time, resources, and team.

Source: A Simple & Scalable Way to Reproduce Christians with David Putnam

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Source: What Are Micro Churches?

The post What Are Micro Churches? appeared first on Passion for Planting.

Source: Leadership Development in Your Church

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By: Discipleship.org

Albert Einstein wasn’t trying to explain disciple making in the church. But, like most pastors, Einstein thought there was something missing. The famous scientist was convinced of a yet-undiscovered framework that tied together the two known forces (gravity and electromagnetism) in the physical universe.

For decades he worked on equations and experiments to prove the framework existed. Despite forty years of effort, he went to his grave still convinced, but unable to prove what he called the “unified field theory.”

The concept of a unified field can be a game-changer in disciple making. It’s a foreign concept to most, so let me explain it this way. Imagine you knew nothing of baseball as a sport, but as a child your Dad gave you a big leather glove and taught you how to throw a moderately sized white ball. Next, he taught you how to catch.

Once you had that down, he bounced the ball to you quickly and taught you how to catch those. Then you learned how to catch balls that came from high in the sky. After that he taught you how to catch the ball and then touch someone with it quickly. Finally, he gave you a rounded piece of wood and instructed you how to stand and swing the piece of wood so that you could hit the ball. He even taught you how to catch the ball with your bat, so that the ball would dribble slowly out in front of you. You loved it!

You’d learned virtually all the skills of baseball, but still knew nothing about how they related to the whole. Without the unified field of baseball to connect and hold these individual parts together you can’t see the bigger picture.

Now, imagine one day being taken to a major league baseball game. Almost instantly you’d discover the unified field for all those skills you’d been taught. Baseball would provide a framework through which all of those skills would have new meaning and significance. On the one hand you knew the game already, on the other hand you were learning it for the first time.

Many of the church’s challenges exist as a result of a yet-undiscovered framework that ties together the two chief commandments (to love God and to love others). Churches know they need to do those two things, but struggle to connect them together. Churches that lack disciple making can’t see the bigger picture.

Justin Gravitt, author of this blog, is with Navigator Church Ministries. They have made available to you, The Start Small Grow Slow Strategy, which you can download for free here.

When a church lacks a unified field, confusion shows up in its practice. Think about it: most churches are primarily focused on either loving God (through exegetical preaching, deep Bible study, worship services, and vigilant watch over their own lives) or on loving others (by serving the poor, connecting in fellowship groups, sharing with skeptics, and mission trips). In spite of being called to do both, most churches don’t have a framework that binds the two together. Without big picture clarity priority is impossible.

When churches make disciples like Jesus (not just discipleship) they discover a unified field that brings clarity and context to all that Jesus did and all that Christ-followers are called to do. Churches miss disciple making when they can’t see the bigger picture. And since they can’t see the bigger picture, they emphasize some components while neglecting others. When disciple making is embraced as the unified field of following Christ it requires that we love God and others.

We love God by submitting our entire life to Him.

At a local level, this means going wherever, to do whatever, whenever He asks. It means suffering so that we may know Him better and become more like Him. It means making disciples because we’re in the middle of His story, rather than Him being in the middle of ours.

We love others by putting their needs above our own.

At a local level this means sharing their burdens, being patient, risking rejection for the sake of conversation, and being generous. It means intentionally making disciples because we want others to have the joy and fulfillment God has given to us.

And to do either of these things, we must engage in all the normal things that churches teach members to do. But we do it with a purpose that goes well beyond ourselves. That’s the power of a unified field. It may or may not change what we do, but it changes why we do it. It gives us a perspective that carries with it a depth that’s draws others to Christ because He is lifted up in word and deed.

Though Einstein never found the unified field for the physical world, Jesus revealed the unified field for His followers. He did it by boiling the faith down to two commandments (Mt. 22:37-40), by lifting Himself up as the example (Lk. 6:40), and by explicitly telling His followers to do what He had done (Mt. 28:18-20).

By Justin Gravitt. Used by permission.

Justin Gravitt is the Dayton (Ohio) Area Director for Navigator Church Ministries. Read more from Justin at his blog, One Disciple to Another, where this article first appeared.

The post Unified Disciple Making Theory appeared first on Discipleship.org.

Source: Unified Disciple Making Theory

The post Unified Disciple Making Theory appeared first on Passion for Planting.

Source: When Coronavirus Interrupts Your Plans

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