Pastors, if you journey into DMM, you will definitely face doubts & discouragement along the way.

Pastors, chances are, if you lead an American church, DMM is going to be moving in the opposite direction of how you’ve led the church to this point. A focus on disciple-making is going to make an impact in every area of your church. I think it’s a very positive impact & so do many others. But you’ll find that many will disagree.

Pastors, in this series of articles I’m describing some of the costs of pursuing DMM in your church. Start with the Identity Crisis article if you haven’t read it yet. Like I said in that article, the transition to DMM isn’t easy & the costs are high, but we absolutely believe it’s been worth it.

I want to write a few articles for pastors who are thinking about a transition into DMM at their church. Pastors, I need to be honest. DMM is going to cost you. Big time. Just like Jesus encouraged the crowd in Luke 14 to count the cost before deciding to become his disciple, you need to count the cost before engaging in DMM. Jesus went so far as to say, “those of you who do not give up everything you have cannot be my disciple (Luke 14:33).” DMM stands for Disciple-Making Movement. It’s essentially inviting people to not just call themselves disciples of Jesus but actually BE a disciple of Jesus. And Jesus said you can’t be one of his disciples unless you’re willing to give up everything you have.

As I was preparing to plant a church, I was inspired by what I read about Cell Churches around the world. Authors like Ralph Neighbor & Joel Comiskey used Scripture & experience to convince me that “simple” was the way to go. We started out committed to “simple.”

My goal in seminary was to get out as fast as I could – haha! Not that I didn’t love seminary. I just loved ministry so much! I had been a part of a thriving college ministry & putting all of that on hold for a few years to do seminary was tough.

I want to take you back to the very beginning. While it seems like the beginning might’ve been in my first blog post, What is WIGTake?, we all know that there is usually a story behind the story. And that backstory can be just as important as the main story because our backstories often lay the foundation for the main story.

Kristin & her husband Andrew are some of our most effective disciple-makers. They went through the first round of DMM Training in the Spring of 2017 and we commissioned them & sent them out as church planters at our 10 Year Anniversary. Since then, they & their team have started several 1st Generation Discovery Groups & they’ve even seen one 2nd Generation Discovery Group started. And all of this is just in the last 6 months or so. I wanted you to hear Kristin’s story in her own words. It’s very powerful!

The seventh element in “raising the sails” for movement is “Ongoing Coaching.” I’ve already written some on the importance of this element in an article called DMM Coaching. Feel free to check it out if you haven’t already.

The sixth element in “raising the sails” for movement is “Train Believers.” After casting vision to people to be generational disciple-makers & church planters, we need to train them. And what are we training them to do? Go Out Among the Lost & See Groups Start! The same thing we’ve been doing!

The fifth element in “raising the sails” for movement is “Cast Vision.” DMM Researcher & Beyond staff member, Justin Long, tweeted something recently that sums up this element well.

The fourth element in “raising the sails” for movement is “See Groups Start.” You “Go Out Among the Lost” (third element) with the intention of finding the “person of peace” who opens up their “oikos” so a Discovery Group (DG) can get started where a discipleship process begins.

The third element in “raising the sails” for movement is “Go Out Among the Lost.” When people talk about Church Planting Movements (CPM) and the Disciple-Making Movements (DMM) strategy, they’re talking about movements that reach lost people. Movements are all about lost people becoming disciples of Jesus & gathering in churches which make more disciples of Jesus.

The second element in “raising the sails” for movement is “Multiply Extraordinary Prayer.” If you study some of these movements overseas, one thing that will immediately become apparent is that they pray… A LOT!

The first element in “raising the sails” for movement is “Focus on God’s Word.” Most of us hear that & think, “I do that.” But what you may be thinking about is not exactly what people in these movements are thinking about.

If you haven’t read through our 10 Introduction Articles, I’d recommend you start there. That will help this next series of posts make even more sense. I want to spend the next 7 articles sharing about the 7 elements in “raising the sails” for a movement.

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.

I mentioned in the Where’s Chris? article that I’ve been spending a lot of time meeting with mentors from all across the world. This has been going on for several years now. I’ve always been a big fan of coaching. I think everyone needs a coach. Coaches make you better at whatever you do.

Where’s Chris? That’s actually a popular question at our church these days – haha! You see, in the first 8 years or so, I preached almost every weekend at our church. That’s what you’re supposed to do, right? I had started a church. I was the Senior Pastor. Senior Pastors preach pretty much every weekend. Right?!?!