28 Apr House Church Doubles in Two Weeks!

When I first went to Africa I was invited by a group who called themselves simple house churches that multiply. They had been using the building-based church system but realized that it wasn’t actually making disciples. For the most part, people remained “infants” and didn’t become what Jesus commanded, which is obedient, reproducing disciples. They noticed from the New Testament that people met in their homes, so they stopped working and meeting in religious buildings and started meeting in homes. But it was still a struggle and they weren’t growing. It was a struggle because they were trying to recreate the “big” church gathering in smaller environments. They had changed the location, but they hadn’t changed the format or the emphasis. 

Then they invited us there to conduct the Disciple-Making Movement (DMM) training and they learned what a disciple and the purpose of the church really is. They clearly understood the training program of Jesus to make disciples that make more disciples until all nations are discipled. 

One of the house fellowships they had started had about 20 people attending weekly before the training. They were still doing the same things they had been taught to do in the larger venue of the church building—invite people to church. They were doing that even though that practice isn’t found anywhere in the New Testament. No one ever invited another person to church in the Bible. But that’s what they were doing and they were stuck at about 20 people.

After the training they took a risk. They told their entire group of 20 not to come to church the following week. Instead, they said, “go out into the streets. Go out and talk to people about God.” They told them to come back the following week and report on how it went. So people did that. The following Sunday they did not attend their church gathering in a home but instead went out to the markets, into the streets, and talked to people about Jesus. Then, on the Sunday after that, they came together again, but instead of 20 people coming to the meeting, the 20 came back and 20 more came with them! All-in-all 40 people came together for the church meeting that day! Isn’t that amazing? If nothing else, it shows us that people are intrigued when the followers of God are willing to take a risk for God. 

Can you imagine doing the same thing at your church? What if your pastor told everybody, don’t come to church next week but instead, go out and share the gospel with someone? Then come back the following week and report on how it went.

That network has now fully embraced the training program of Jesus to equip people to disciple nations. They have multiplied to hundreds of thousands of obedient disciples of Jesus Christ and have established multiplying networks of disciples in more than eight countries in East Africa. Many of these leaders now have invitations to go around the world and train people in DMM so that those people can multiply disciples and see the results that they are seeing in East Africa.

If you want to learn how to make disciples that make disciples according to the training program of Jesus, then reach out to us and we will schedule a time to get you trained!