Leaders of church plants and churches around Australia are hungry to learn the practical steps they can take to have Great Commission Disciple Making becoming part of their DNA.

It’s been said that preaching (and programs) adds to the church, but that disciple making multiplies.

Preaching and programs bring a lot of benefits including providing gathering points that attract attendees and providing opportunities for spiritual breakthrough in the lives of attendees, vision casting, serving and a sense of belonging.

But sadly, preaching and programs are not effective tools for what many believe to be the core business of the church; making disciples who will obey the commands of Jesus and in turn make other disciples.

Churches in developed countries like Australia in recent decades have retooled their preaching and programs but this hasn’t been able to turn the tide of dropping church attendance. NCLS Research indicate that 69% of Australian churches had declined by 10% or more in the 5 years ending in 2021.

Meanwhile Church Planting Movements in developing countries are exploding and they generally have disciple making at their core. Pray 10/40 state that “churches that were planted as a result of church planting movements has exploded from 1,219 in 1995 to 6,879,000 in 2022!”

Two questions jump to mind:

Firstly, should Australian churches ditch preaching and programs in favour of disciple making?

No! In most cases the answer isn’t either one or the other, but adding one to the other. Churches can add through preaching and programs AND see multiplication happening through disciple making.

Secondly, and here’s the big one … how can a church embark on a journey that leads to disciple making multiplication?

Here are 10 practical tips and questions for reflection that will help you and your team to position your church for disciple making multiplication:

1. Develop a Vision That is Beyond Weekend Attendance

Question for reflection: What vision beyond attendance do you have?

2. Get Clarity About What a Disciple Looks Like

Question for reflection: How would you define what a disciple is?

3. Develop a Language That Helps Describe Where People Are At

Question for reflection: What language do you use to describe where a person is on their spiritual journey?

4. Develop a Disciple Making Pathway

Question for reflection: What do you think a disciple making pathway should look like?

5. Extend the Disciple Making Pathway Into Being a Leadership Pathway

Question for reflection: What would a Leadership Pathway in your church look like?

6. Ascertain Which Disciple Making Practices You Will Use

Question for reflection: What are some of the Disciple Making Practices that you are familiar with?

7. Clarify the Purpose For The Relational Spaces In Your Church

Question for reflection: List the key Relational Spaces in your church and articulate how they can contribute towards disciple making multiplication and which disciple making practices can be introduced in each space.

8. Develop a Disciple Making Culture

Question for reflection: What steps can you take to put in place a disciple making culture in your church?

9. Put In Place a Scorecard By Which You Can Measure Success

Question for reflection: What should the scorecard for your church look like?

10. Introduce Practices That Will Lead To Multiplication Happening

Question for reflection: What Multiplication Practices can you implement and how will you do this?

Implementing The 10 Shifts

So there you have it; 10 Shifts that will birth disciple making multiplication in your church.

In further posts I will be discussing each of the 10 Shifts and helping you to see how they can be implemented in your church or church plant.

None of the shifts are unachievable for most churches or plants. It takes intentionality, accountability sustainability, experimentation and celebration as you work through the shifts. Let’s briefly discuss those five words:

1. Intentionality. Instead of waiting for things to happen, be intentional in planning it out, scheduling in timeframes, and prayerfully making it happen!
2. Accountability. We tend to do what we are held accountable to do. Getting a small cohort together to work through the principles, along with setting smart goals that clearly specify who will do what and by when, and then regularly reviewing progress will be the key.
3. Sustainability. As they say, Rome wasn’t built in a day. Implementing these shifts will involve the long game being played out over a number of years as your church is repositioned.

The shifts that occur may appear small at first, but think about how significant it would be if a plane flying to another city was just a few degrees off the original line. The difference (and consequences) could be massive! Undue hurry will likely kill long term sustainability.

4. Experimentation. You will have early adopters and later adopters in any church, along with a bunch in the middle. The late adopters will want working models, like what they have done in the past. The early adopters and innovators will delight in experimenting, doing new things.

There will be some practices or changes where it is wiser to introduce them to the early adopters (and the young) before they are introduced to the rest of the church. Let’s say you wanted to introduce Discovery Bible Story to the church. You could introduce it first to the early adopters, give them time to experimenting then when there are success stories, tell those stories to the church and slowly introduce Discovery Bible Story to those who were willing to give it a go.

5. Celebration. Tell the stories of success. There’s nothing like testimonials to show what can be done, how it can be done, and the results that can come!

Multiplication is God’s idea after all. In Genesis 1:22 God said: “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds multiply on the earth.”

The first church in Acts exploded through addition as “…the Lord was adding to their number every day those who were being saved.” (Acts 2:47)

But then a dynamic shift occurred as “…the word of God spread and multiplied.” (Acts 12:24)

It’s time for the church in Australia to move towards disciple making multiplication being added to the current practices which so often are focused on addition.

May you be blessed as you seek to see disciple making multiplication become a reality in your church irrespective of whether the church be small or large.

Tim O’Neill
National Leader, Exponential Australia