How to Start a Disciple-Making Movement

This is Part 13 of an 18-part series drawn from Kurt Olson's book, The Endgame of God. New posts publish every Wednesday at  GoMultiply.org/blog.

A movement doesn’t begin with a big plan or a big budget. It begins with one ordinary person or group of people who obeys and prays asking Him to send laborers to the Harvest field — and it can begin with you, this week.

We have covered a lot of ground so far — the urgency of the hour, what Jesus really commanded, fishing with a net, the 5 characteristics of a disciple, obedience, and more. The temptation now may be to file it all away as interesting. But Jesus said, now that you know these things you will be blessed if you do them. The Endgame of God (strategy for victory) is not to make more passive spectator Christians; it is to produce more and more obedient disciples that multiply.

So let me tell you how a movement like this begins — because it may be far simpler than you think, and it does not require you to be an extra-ordinary supersaint! Jesus is looking for prayer filled obedience, a heart for the lost, and a willingness to do Jesus’ work, Jesus’ way.

The most common place people struggle is right at the start, and it is usually because they begin in the hardest soil. We tend to assume that the best place to launch a DMM is among long-time church people — but those are usually the very people with the most entrenched habits of hearing the word without obeying what they are hearing.

As you go, you will constantly face decisions about which practices are acceptable and which are not. At Go Multiply, we use one question to keep the whole thing on course: where do you see that practice in the practices of Jesus or the New Testament church? 

I call it the firewall question, because it filters out centuries of traditions the church world has absorbed without even noticing and it helps us continue doing Jesus’ work Jesus’ way. Run everything you do in ministry through it and you will stay on course. 

What follows is so simple it can feel anticlimactic. It begins on your knees, because apart from Him you can do nothing (John 15:5), and a movement is His work before it is ours. From that place of prayer, you make a quiet, personal commitment to obey everything Jesus commands — not to admire His commands, but to obey and apply them in your own life. Then, to start a movement within your own social network, you simply open the Bible with a few friends or family you already know, and study the passage together the simple DBS way, always asking how you will obey it and who you will tell.

As that little group learns to obey, its members should naturally begin sharing what they are learning with the people in their lives. Then, when the Lord leads one of you to someone genuinely hungry for God — a person of peace — you do not pull them out of their world to join yours. You go to their world. That is extractional evangelism and is NOT practiced in the New Testament. Instead, you share the Gospel with their whole social network and start a new group right there among the people they already know and love, leaving them exactly where you found them (which is Paul’s rule for all churches found in 1 Corinthians 7:17, 20, 24) and shepherding them from the outside. That is the biblical pattern. It is not a program you run; it is an obedient way of life that reproduces more obedient disciples.

The church of Jesus is multiplying in living rooms, under trees, in coffee shops, and in workplaces all over the world. The people God is using to reach nations are almost never the ones who felt qualified. They are simply the ones who said yes. 

I have watched people learn this information for years, and I have noticed something: when people wait more than a day or two to act on what God has shown them, they usually end up doing nothing at all. So please don’t file this away for a later day that will probably never come. Do one obedient thing today or tomorrow. Send the message. Invite the friend. Take the prayer walk. Open the Bible and start a DBS with some friends. The first step of obedience is the one the enemy fights the hardest, because he knows that it can lead to running the race for the cause of Christ. 

Picture what the Lord can do with one obedient person. One group becomes two, two become ten, ten become a hundred — and within a generation a whole community, even a nation, is saved and discipled, not because of one superstar, but because ordinary disciples simply did Jesus’ work Jesus’ way and experienced Jesus’ results. This is not a pipe dream. It really is happening right now, in homes and villages and cities around the world, and it can happen through you. Remember, we are not launching a campaign or building anything for ourselves. We are joining Jesus in what He is already doing. And the vision Jesus gave His followers is still the same — every Christian a disciple, and every disciple a disciple-maker — until the whole world has been reached and discipled.

So here is the only question that matters. Not “Did I understand it?” but “Will I do it?” Somewhere in your life there is a person of peace, a patch of fertile soil that will produce a tremendous harvest, and a first obedient step with your name on it. What is it — and when will you take it? Make your commitment and then tell someone. Make it irrevocable. God will bring the increase.