How to Mobilize Your Church to Make Disciples that Multiply

Imagine sitting in the pews of your church, loving your spiritual community yet feeling alone. That’s how it can feel when you discover God’s heart for His people to make disciples that multiply but no one else at church has experienced a similar revelation. Oftentimes, the pastor understands the need to fulfill the Great Commission, but he’s called to shepherd the Church, and can only do so much when so many people aren’t yet on the same page.

In this article, you will learn exactly how to introduce Disciple Making to your church and mobilize it to reach its community. It can seem like a daunting task, but we’ll walk you through the first introductions of the idea, all the way through fully training up your first squad of disciple makers.

Overview

When we talk about mobilizing our churches to make disciples that multiply, we’re really just talking about doing our part to fulfill the Great Commission, and using the methods found in the book of Acts to do so. These are all explained in the Waha Disciple Making Course, so this will be key in your journey to help your church reach its community. To get there, you will need to do 5 key things:

• Start by living a Disciple Making Lifestyle yourself. This will help you generate some encouraging stories to share from your own life, and give you some credibility to share.
• Talk to your spiritual authority figure first. In most churches this will be your pastor, but sometimes it might be a Bible Study leader, a deacon, or an elder. 
• With your pastor’s blessing, host an interest meeting to help people get an idea of what you mean when you talk about making disciples that multiply.
• Host the Waha Disciple Making Course, which will guide you and your group through the process of understanding how to make disciples, and help you start doing it yourselves.
• Start a Disciple Making Community, because to really have an impact, church members will need a community of like-hearted believers around them supporting each other. 

If you think you could accomplish these simple steps, read on to find out everything you need to know in order to make them happen.

The Steps

1. Start by doing! Try starting your first Discovery Bible Study with the Waha app. This step isn’t a requirement, but it helps to have some social proof. When people hear about new ideas, it’s often hard to imagine applying those ideas right away. But, if a person they know has already done so, it makes them feel as if they can too. If there is at least one other person at Church who can do this with you, try to work together with them. If not, don’t sweat it. Just start living a Disciple Making lifestyle, engaging the lost and working towards your first group.‍

Having trouble with this step? Read this article all about sharing Jesus in a simple, low-pressure way even when people don’t seem interested.

2. Talk to your pastor! As the leader of your church, he is probably the most interested in making disciples. Be sure to be relational and encouraging. Many pastors deal with the stress of unhappy Church members complaining about various things. Ask how he’s doing with genuine interest, and perhaps mention something you’re thankful for about his leadership. Then, share your heart for disciple making with him.

Looking for more advice about casting vision to your pastor? Check out this article all about that very thing.

3. Plan an interest meeting! Imagine going on a first date, and the handsome guy or beautiful girl across from you drops to one knee and asks you to marry them on the spot. They would be coming on too strong and you’d want to throw on the brakes. So why would you jump into a Disciple Making training the second your pastor expresses openness to the idea? Instead, offer to hold an interest meeting. It can be simple and informal. Just show them the trailer for the Disciple Making Course to give an idea about what you are proposing.
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4. Host the Disciple Making Course! Congratulations, you made it! It’s finally time to host your first Disciple Making Course. Be expectant for God to open peoples’ eyes to their own need to make disciples that multiply and how easy it can be. Begin by deciding how you will present the material to your group. The first two sessions are video-based and, while they are available to be viewed on the Waha app, you may want to check out the course on our website so you can watch the videos around a computer screen. If you have an HDMI cable, you can even connect your computer to most modern television sets and projectors, and display the videos in your living room or a meeting room at church.

Yep, we have another article with tips about hosting, too.

After the initial intro sessions, there will be 7 meetings following a Discovery Bible Study format. Since the Waha app will do all the work for you, simply follow along and encourage the group to talk more than you do. Remember, it’s about them discovering God’s truth for themselves, not you teaching! These 7 meetings are all about implementation so encourage the group to support one another in the various action points they commit to in the weeks between meetings. That will ultimately set you up for the fifth and final step…
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5. Start a Disciple Making Community! Disciple Making is a Biblical lifestyle, not a one-time learning experience, and lifestyle changes happen best in the context of community. Besides, there are no stronger communities that those on mission together. Now that everyone has been trained and begun implementing Disciple Making, form a new small group to have each others’ backs. You’ll find more DBS lesson sets in the Waha App specifically for Disciple Making Communities to go through together after finishing the Disciple Making Course. You may decide to start meeting every week, but many DMCs choose to meet every two weeks, in order to make room in their schedules for the Discovery Bible Studies they have started with their friends who are not yet believers. 

Conclusion

If you’ve successfully followed all the steps to mobilizing your church to make disciples that multiply, then you’re well on your way to seeing major breakthrough in your community. Going about introducing these ideas to your church in a helpful way is so important because Jesus is passionate about unity in his Church. If we can learn to mobilize our churches well, then we can prevent a lot of unnecessary miscommunication and keep our churches growing together and impacting their communities successfully. If you’re ready to get started, just check out the Disciple Making Course and preview it’s contents.