As I’ve shared in multiple blog posts, we are continuing to pray about how to best leverage everything at our church for the sake of seeing a Disciple Making Movement (DMM). For the last year or so our weekends have centered around prayer, testimony, and training. We’ve had so many powerful & life-changing weekends since we first started using this format & it has given many people the opportunity to use their spiritual gifts and be involved in the gathering.

When you go out among the lost looking for persons of peace to see groups started, your dream is that the group would eventually come to Christ together, get baptized together, and form a church together. It seems like a far-off dream when you first get started because you realize you have to talk to so many people to get groups started & it takes quite a few groups being started to get a church planted. Even still, you begin to pray & dream about the day when you see your first church planted among previously lost people.

Roy, one of my DMM coaches, told me that I had to visit Hermie at Cityteam to see all that God was doing in California. We reached out to Hermie & he invited us to come & visit him in San Jose to see for ourselves what God was doing through their disciple-making efforts. It was an unbelievable experience!

I started the wigtakedmm.com blog in April 2018 to give the backstory behind our church’s journey toward movement. We had thousands of views in that first month and the overwhelming response gave us the idea to put much of this content into a book. After blogging for 4 months, I felt like we had enough content to justify beginning the book publishing process. We hired a great editor named Alee who has worked on several DMM projects for Thomas Nelson in the past and she helped guide us through the process.

I’m excited to announce today the release of my first book, From Megachurch to Multiplication, on Amazon in Paperback, Kindle, and Audible formats. That’s why I haven’t posted a blog entry in a few months. Now that the book project is complete, I will be regularly posting here again.

I love this question. Because I love the answer. I’ll get to that in a minute. I’ve asked this same question before. Usually it comes out of the mouth of someone who’s skeptical about the viability of movements in America. And that’s been me before.

I’m sure after reading all of these blog articles, you’re wondering, “Ok. This all sounds good, but where do I start?” I want to use this article to answer that question. I’m going to address two different groups of people. First, those that are on an American church staff. Second, those that aren’t.

When our church transitioned to DMM after our 10 Year Anniversary, we began to cast vision for ordinary people with normal jobs to begin to see themselves as disciple-makers & church planters. I knew what some people must’ve been thinking as I was casting that vision. Something like, “Easy for you to say. You’re paid by the church. Of course you can plant churches & make disciples. But not me. I have a job. I have to work. There’s no way I could do that.”

Prayer. Testimony. Training. Those are the 3 primary elements in our new weekends that are leveraged for DMM. I’d encourage you to read the Leverage article to understand why we revolve our services around those elements.

The S in PIPSY stands for Sick. Jesus told his disciples in Luke 10/Matthew 10 that when they entered a new area, they were to heal the sick & announce that the Kingdom of Heaven is near.

The second P in PIPSY stands for Prisoner. One of our goals at Experience Life early on was to start 10 campuses in 10 years. We were a multi-site church and wanted to try to add a new campus each year to reach out into a new area.

The I in PIPSY stands for International. About 15 years ago, while I was in college, my family took a class together called Perspectives. I think my Mom signed us up for it. It was me, my sister, my Mom & my Dad that took the class. The class was all about catching God’s heart for the nations. It was transformational for our entire family.

The first P in PIPSY stands for Poor. “Virtually every Church Planting Movement in the world today started among the poor.”

After casting vision to people for DMM & training them, what’s next? You send them out among the lost to places that Jesus has led them to go. What do you do when you get there?

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.