Ten Years of Joining What the Holy Spirit Has Already Begun

In May of 2012, Kurt Olson was doing what he had been doing for nearly two decades — praying about church planting.

He and his wife, Carrie, had felt called to plant a church since as early as 1995. For eighteen years they had been preparing — attending conferences, reading books, taking courses. And on a morning in May 2012, Kurt asked God a direct question: "If you really want me to plant a church, then what are you waiting for?"

What came back was not the answer he expected.

That single moment ended eighteen years of preparation and began something that neither Kurt nor Carrie could have planned.

Kurt prayed a simple response: "Okay, Lord. If you just want me to make disciples, then show me how, where, when, and with whom — and I will do it."

Within weeks, emails began arriving about something called Disciple-Making Movements. The stories sounded like they were pulled directly from the book of Acts. People were being healed. Entire villages were coming to Christ. Entire households. Even entire mosques turning to Jesus as a group.

One of those emails referenced a book called Miraculous Movements by Jerry Trousdale. Kurt read it almost without stopping. He could not believe what he was reading — that God was bringing the body of Christ back to the powerful simplicity with which it began.

The book mentioned a man named Dave Hunt, a missionary who began with just five curious Muslim men in Ethiopia — men who weren't even believers yet. Just 5 guys willing to study the Bible, apply it in their lives, and share it with others. By the time Kurt learned about the movement, more than 275,000 Muslim men and women had become followers of Jesus Christ, spreading from Ethiopia across Africa.

Kurt found the organization Dave Hunt was working with online. He called the number, and asked for Dave Hunt directly. When Dave answered, Kurt introduced himself and asked simply: "Is this all true?"

Dave said, "It's all true — and there's so much more."

Dave Hunt mentioned that a Disciple-Making Movements training was coming up in Minneapolis — just a few hours from where Kurt and Carrie lived. Kurt brought Carrie and a pastor friend, and they went through the full three-day training together.

It was there that all the pieces came together.

Kurt finally understood what it meant to be a true disciple of Jesus. He understood how to make disciples. He understood how to launch fellowships of believers with the ability to multiply. The training program of Jesus — the same pattern that had produced millions of reproducing disciples across India, Africa, and dozens of other nations — suddenly made complete sense.

"The rest, as they say, is history."

The organization that conducted the training could sense Kurt's enthusiasm immediately. They asked him to start helping conduct additional trainings — first for an hour, then two, then four, then a full day, then an entire three-day training on his own. That training went well. Invitations began arriving to conduct trainings overseas — invitations Kurt was not even looking for.

His vision at that point included only his town and the surrounding communities. He had no plans to start a global ministry. God had other plans.

Kurt was traveling to Chicago on business when a contact led him to connect with a man doing outreach to Muslims there. That man had since moved to the East Coast — but he got so excited about disciples making disciples that he invited Kurt to travel with him to a place called Sharjah, next to Dubai.

Kurt's first overseas training experience was on the Arabian Peninsula, in a full Muslim Sharia law state.

The training venue moved every day. When Kurt asked his hosts why, they said: "So they can't find us."

Kurt asked, “So who can't find us?”

"The radical Muslims who would not want us holding these trainings."

To his hosts it was a foregone conclusion. To Kurt, it was a completely new world.

But the fruit from that first overseas training, and the trainings that followed, began to confirm what he had heard and read. Ordinary, obedient disciples who received the training program of Jesus and were released to use it — in homes, in fields, under trees, in communities — were producing what conferences, programs, buildings, and crusades never will … lasting fruit!

In 2015, Kurt and Carrie launched Go Multiply — a ministry built on one conviction that has never changed: we are not running a campaign. We are joining what the Holy Spirit has already begun. No human agenda. Just Jesus. The goal always ends in Him.

The mission is simple: finish the Great Commission by launching Disciple-Making Movements in every nation and among every people group on earth.

Ten years later, what God has done through Go Multiply's global networks is beyond anything Kurt imagined standing in that Minneapolis training room in 2012.

But the story didn’t begin there. It was already being written — in 1987, when a young man in rebellion against God dropped a dusty Bible open to 1 Kings 2 and heard the Lord say, “Live your life My way and you will prosper for the rest of your days.” Kurt crumpled to the floor in a pile of tears and said to God,

“You win. I give up."

Then in 1990, he married Carrie Schwerbel at a Lutheran church in Menasha, Wisconsin.
 
In 2008, their marriage nearly ended — but through godly counsel and the power of God, it didn't. In 2010, when a man named S.R. Manohar stepped into their row at a small church gathering in the woods outside Almond, Wisconsin, and spoke a prophetic word Kurt didn't fully understand at the time: "God has given you the keys to the Kingdom. Doors that were closed will be opened. And doors that were opened will be closed."

Kurt believes that everything is preparation for the next thing.

And now, ten years into the ministry God launched through that moment in May 2012, the doors are open in ways that neither Kurt nor Carrie could have predicted — and the movement is still multiplying.