DMM Training

Part 1 – What is WIGTake?
Part 2 – 1,000,000 in 10 Years
Part 3 – The Whiteboard
Part 4 – Millions
Part 5 – What is DMM?
Part 6 – 10 Year Anniversary
Part 7 – Leverage
Part 8 – Where’s Chris
Part 9 – DMM Coaching

Remember the story I told you at the end of the last article about the couple that started 5,000 churches in their first 4 years after implementing the DMM Training? Well, I just got an update. They are 7 years in now and they’ve grown to between 15,000-25,000 churches planted with hundreds of thousands of new believers. Once you get to this size, you have to start giving ranges because no one knows exactly the size because it’s too large to count.

Since the last article, I read a book that this couple wrote called Dear Mom & Dad: An Adventure in Obedience about their journey so far. It’s totally fascinating!

For years they had done traditional compassion ministry overseas but knew something was missing. They felt the missing piece was disciple-making. They were helping many people but not making disciples. That led them to take this same DMM Training that our team went through & it totally changed their lives & the way they thought about ministry & making disciples.

Their focus now is 100% on disciple-making & as you can see, they have made hundreds of thousands of disciples in a relatively short time. It all started with this husband & wife sitting through a DMM Training & inviting a DMM Coach to mentor them through the process.

I’m sure by now you’re thinking, “What in the world is this training & where do I get it?”

Well, unfortunately, there’s no book to buy. It’s much simpler than that.

You’re like, “Huh?!?!”

When my DMM Coach, Stan, said he was going to take us through a 12-week DMM Catalyst Training, I said, “Great! Can you send it to me?”

He said, “Nope.”

I was like, “Why not?”

He made it very clear that this training was not information to be transferred but biblical principles to be obeyed.

Whoa!

It wasn’t just another curriculum.

The focus wouldn’t be on learning, like most Bible studies. Instead, the focus would be on obeying.

In fact, most of the trainings could fit on one sheet of paper & sometimes it wouldn’t even take up the whole sheet. The reason was that most of the training was just lists of Bible passages that Stan would have us re-read with a fresh set of eyes. And you can’t even imagine what re-reading these texts with a fresh set of eyes will do for you.

You come to realize, once again, that the Word of God truly is ALIVE & POWERFUL & that its principles are TIMELESS!

He told me that he’d send me a .pdf of the sheet of paper after he took us through each lesson but he wouldn’t send us all 12 sheets at once.

He didn’t say this out loud, but after going through the training & taking others through it, I knew why he didn’t want to send all the lessons to me.

I come from a knowledge-based discipleship culture.

My tendency would be to read the 12 lessons & think, “Ok, I got this, let’s move on.”

But, again, this wasn’t information he wanted to transfer, these were biblical principles he wanted to coach me to obey!

That means you don’t even need to look at Lesson 2 until you’ve obeyed the passage from Lesson 1. He was going to make sure we weren’t distracted by “learning” from the very beginning. He wanted us focused on obeying.

At the end of each lesson, he’d send us the sheet he used for that lesson & it was remarkably simple. Typically just a few Bible passages, some questions to ask about the passages, and perhaps a few comments.

Definitely not like your typical American Bible study. In fact, it’s so simple, I’m not sure anyone would even “pay” for this Bible study if it was sitting on a shelf in a Christian bookstore. They’d be insulted by the simplicity. They’d probably think, “I already have this Bible study. It’s called THE BIBLE!” 

Haha — exactly!

As we started the training, I was encouraged to toss all of my extra-biblical baggage about how to make disciples & how to do church. I was definitely willing to do that. After all, even though we were probably regarded by many as a “successful church” by American standards, we knew that our American strategy wouldn’t allow us to impact millions. I decided to assume I knew absolutely NOTHING so that I could take a fresh look at the Scriptures without dragging along all of my Western assumptions about the Scriptures. That was liberating.

The strangest thing about this training was that my DMM Coach didn’t talk much. He told us that the Holy Spirit would speak to us as we took a fresh look at these Bible passages & he didn’t want to interfere with what the Holy Spirit wanted us to hear & obey.

I think most of the time he was talking, he was asking us questions about the text we were looking at. I didn’t learn until later that he was doing this on purpose. He didn’t want to be the “answer man” so that we’d be dependent on him. He wanted us to see the DMM principles in Scripture so we’d be dependent on God.

And boy did we!

During those 12 weeks, our world was totally rocked!

And, again, it really wasn’t anything our trainer said. It was looking at some passages of Scripture in a new light & asking the Holy Spirit to speak to us.

Sure, he told us some stories that fired us up. He prayed for us regularly. He would guide our discussion so that we didn’t get off track. But besides that, he just listened to us discover from God’s Word things that had been there all along but that we had never noticed before.

I’m sure by now many of you are wondering, “Can you just email me those 12 Lessons so I can take a look?”

I bet you can guess my answer.

I love you, but no. 

I can offer you something even better.

Me or one of our DMM coaches will gladly lead you through the 12 Lessons over a 12-week period if you’re willing to obey & share whatever the Holy Spirit teaches you regardless of the cost. Re-read that last part. If you take this seriously, I’m almost certain you’ll have to count a cost.

If you’re still interested, shoot me an email at chris@chrisgalanos.com & I’ll let you know when the next training is starting.

One more disclaimer.

If you think you’ve got it all figured out, this training is probably not for you.

But if you’re inspired by what God is doing overseas & you’re open to releasing the way American church was done in the 20th century, this training may be just what you’ve been looking for.

I look forward to hearing from you.