⛺️ The Civil War Campfire

A document has quietly shaped more of my thinking about how to gather disciples than almost anything else I have read, apart from the New Testament stories.

One of my mentors in apostolic work, Greg Getz, partnered with a handful of other disciple-makers to put words to something that most of us in simple church circles were feeling but couldn’t articulate. It was the most basic question in disciple-making once you have figured out how to scatter into your oikos and start spiritual conversations and build disciple-making communities.

Once the hot coals start gathering, what are they supposed to do?

Download the Document Here

The document Greg and his collaborators wrote was not a program. It wasn’t a curriculum. It wasn’t a three-step guide to building a successful small group. It was a vivid, historically grounded, spiritually alive metaphor that completely reframed the way I understood the purpose of every Jesus-patterned gathering of disciples.

🔥 They called it the Civil War Campfire.

And the first time I read it, I felt it land somewhere deep in my understanding of what the New Testament church was actually doing when they gathered.

🚫 Not a religious service or a performance.
🚫 Not a program to be managed.

Something far more raw, far more necessary, and far more like life.

Before the Fire, There Was the Battle

Imagine you’re standing at the edge of a Civil War campsite with a fire blazing in the center to call the soldiers home. As the sun begins its slow descent in the west, the smoke hasn’t fully cleared yet. There is still the acrid smell of gunpowder hanging in the air. Somewhere off to the east, you see a company of men hobbling toward the camp. Some are holding their shoulder, others are limping terribly, one man is leaning with his arm around his battle buddy as they slowly make their way together, and the rest are barely putting one foot in front of the other out of sheer exhaustion. A corporal is trying to account for every man in his company. Two soldiers are sitting with their backs against a split-rail fence, not saying a word, just breathing.

This is the reality that follows any serious engagement with the enemy. And if you have been doing the work of scatter-phase disciple-making, walking into your oikos, having spiritual conversations with real people, praying over your neighborhood and showing up at your workplace as a sent person, you know what this feels like spiritually.

It is exhilarating AND exhausting.

It is full of both small victories and genuine heartbreak. Some days you come home having watched the Spirit work through a conversation that blew your mind. Other days you come home feeling like you got punched in the gut and the ground didn’t move an inch.

This is the life of a disciple-maker. It is not a passive life. It is a frontline life.

As the evening fell on a Civil War battlefield, those at the camp, the cooks, medics, supply officers, and intelligence gatherers, built large bonfires as beacons. Bright, visible fires that could be seen through the fog of war. Battle-fatigued soldiers who had become disoriented in the chaos of the fight would look up, spot the fire on the horizon, and start walking toward it. Because they were instructed. Because something in them recognized that where the fire was, there was safety, food, rest, and the faces of people who knew what they had been through.

That is exactly what a gathered disciple-making community is supposed to be. It is the beacon fire. It is where the battle-weary come home. It is where wounds are dressed, and stories are told, and the mission gets recalibrated.

So, what does it look like to gather around the safety and resources of the Civil War campfire?

The Twelve Elements of the Campfire Community

Greg’s document identified twelve distinct experiences around a Civil War campfire. These serve a distinct purpose for soldiers returning from battle. I want to walk you through all twelve and show you how they translate into the purpose and practice of your gathered disciple-making communities, whether it’s 3 men in a weekly X-Group or 30 people doing life together in a simple church.

I want you to pay close attention as we go, because this is not a template. This is not an order of service. This is not a checklist you hand to your worship leader. It is a framework for asking the Holy Spirit the right questions so He can design your specific gathering for your specific people.

Every campfire looks different. But every healthy campfire serves the same twelve purposes.

Here is the critical warning before we begin. As you read through these twelve elements, do not default to the models, programs, and patterns of your past. Many of us carry deeply ingrained habits about what a gathering of believers is supposed to look like: small group curricula, worship sets, sermon series, coffee, and donuts.

✔ Some of those things are good.

🚫 None of them is sacred.

Your campfire should look like what your specific soldiers need when they come in from their specific battlefield. Trust the Holy Spirit to show you what that is.

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Part One: Individual Needs -
What Every Soldier Carries in From the Field

1. Security (shepherd function)

The first thing a soldier felt when he stumbled into the light of the campfire was security. Nobody in that circle was shooting at him. And there were soldiers on the perimeter fulfilling security detail with their backs to the camp and their eyes on the tree lines to make sure no enemies entered the camp.

The people who walk into your gathered community on a Tuesday evening or a Sunday afternoon come in carrying spiritual and emotional weight.

They have been navigating workplaces where their values are mocked. They have been trying to have honest spiritual conversations with neighbors who are outright hostile. Some of them have been fighting internal battles that nobody knows about. When they walk into your campfire, they need to know they are safe.

A soldier who doesn’t trust the people around him cannot let his guard down enough to sleep, eat, receive first aid, or hear the battle briefing. If there is no genuine security, no real confidentiality, no culture of grace, no sense that vulnerability will be honored rather than weaponized, your people will stay guarded.

The question you must ask your community is: What does security look like for the specific people God has gathered? What threats, spiritual, emotional, intellectual, relational, do they carry in from their particular battlefield? And what does it look like for this community to create an environment where nobody is shooting at each other? That could be more difficult than you think. Especially in spiritual cultures of comparison, competition, and distrust.

2. Food (teacher function)

After security came food. And everyone was hungry.

One of the most overlooked practices in the New Testament church is that they ate together. Not as a strategy for increasing group attendance. They shared meals because they understood something that the Western church has slowly forgotten. Food is communal, food is incarnational, food slows people down, food removes status distinctions, and food creates the conditions for real conversation.

In your gathered community, food means two things. It means actual, physical food. Something happens around a shared meal that does not happen when people sit in rows facing the same direction. When Acts 2 tells us that the early church broke bread together, it was not exclusively a reference to the Lord’s Supper. They were eating together. Regularly. In homes. Around real tables.

But it also means spiritual food, the equipping, teaching, and truth that your people need to go back into the battle with more understanding and more skill than they came in with. The question is not whether to feed your people spiritually. The question is what they need to be fed, who should do the feeding, and how it should happen. Not every campfire needs a forty-five-minute lecture. Sometimes the most nourishing spiritual food in your community will come from the least expected voice around the fire.

3. First Aid (shepherd and prophet function)

Company surgeons patched wounds. They cleaned infections. They set broken bones. They did not ask whether the soldier deserved to be treated, they treated him, because a wounded soldier in the field is a liability to the whole mission.

Some of the people in your gathered community are not going to show up healthy. They are going to show up bleeding. Maybe from an old wound that never fully healed. Maybe from something fresh that happened this week. Marriage trouble. Depression. Addiction. Grief. Spiritual attack. Disillusionment. The residue of a childhood that left deep damage in places they haven’t even been able to name yet.

Your community is not a hospital. But it should have the equivalent of a field surgeon, somebody who knows how to apply pressure to a wound, recognize when professional help is needed, and create enough safety for people to admit they are hurt at all. The “59 One-Anothers” in the New Testament are a first-aid manual for the community. Bear one another’s burdens. Pray for one another. Restore one another.

You will not be judged. You will be cared for. And you will be expected to eventually get back up and get back in the fight, but not before you are ready, and not before your wound has been dressed.

Part Two: Community Development -
What Happens as the Fire Burns

4. Unwinding (shepherd and evangelist function)

There was a period after the soldiers arrived and sat down around the fire. The adrenaline drained away. The hypervigilance of the battle began to release its grip. Bodies started returning to their natural rhythms. Maybe some laughter about something that happened. Maybe long stretches of silence that didn’t need to be filled.

This is something most of our gathered communities are terrible at. We are addicted to productivity. We fill every moment with content. We treat silence as a problem to be solved and unstructured time as a waste of the meeting. We start exactly on time and end exactly on time because we are efficient, and there is a plan to get through.

And in doing so, we rob our people of the single most important social lubricant in the entire gathering: the chance to be themselves before the meeting officially starts.

Unwinding is not wasted time. If your people don’t have time to shed their public persona and settle into the safety of the campfire, they will carry their armor through the entire gathering. And armored people do not tell stories, cannot receive first aid, and will not honestly engage with accountability.

Build unwinding into your gathering intentionally. This might look like the first twenty minutes over food. It might look like always starting with genuine, unhurried catching up. It might look like a practice of sitting with a question for a few minutes before anyone speaks. However you do it, create the conditions for your people to arrive fully, not just physically, but emotionally and spiritually present, before you move into the deeper work of the gathering.

5. Camaraderie (shepherd, prophet, and evangelist function)

Camaraderie is what happens when unwinding deepens. As the soldiers looked around the fire, they noticed who was there and who wasn’t. They were bound together not by compatibility but by shared suffering. They had been in the same fight. They had seen the same things. And out of that common experience came a bond that was, in many cases, the deepest human connection any of them had ever known.

This is what Paul is describing in Philippians 1 when he talks about his partnership with the church there, a deep bond forged in the shared mission of the gospel. Not a casual social relationship. Not a friendly acquaintance you see once a week. A band of brothers and sisters who have each other’s backs, who celebrate together when there is victory, and who mourn together when there is loss.

The hard truth about camaraderie is that you cannot manufacture it with an icebreaker. It is forged in shared mission. When the people in your gathered community are actually doing the work together, serving in the same neighborhood, and celebrating when someone they have all been praying for comes to faith, camaraderie builds naturally. It is a by-product of commission.

6. Stories of the Day (apostolic and evangelist functions)

This is one of my favorite elements and one of the most distinctively countercultural practices you can build into a gathered disciple-making community.

Around the Civil War campfire, soldiers told the stories of their day. Not sanitized reports. Not polished presentations. Raw stories, tales of courage and cowardice, of moments of grace and moments of failure, of things that happened on the battlefield that they couldn’t fully process alone. These stories served a dual purpose: they knit the community together through shared narrative, and they helped each soldier make sense of his own experience by placing it in the larger context of the mission.

In your gathered community, stories are everything. When someone shares that they had a gospel conversation at work this week that went somewhere unexpected, that story does something in the room that no sermon can replicate. When someone admits that they chickened out of a conversation they knew they should have had, and the room responds not with judgment but with recognition and encouragement, that is formative. When someone shares that the person they have been praying for six months just asked to know more about Jesus, that story becomes the fuel that sends everyone else back out into their oikos the next day with renewed fire.

Make space for stories. Ask for them. Protect them. Celebrate them. And teach your people to recognize that even the hard stories, the conversations that didn’t go well, the weeks when they felt like they were failing at the mission, are stories worth telling, because the Spirit of God is as active in our confusion as in our clarity.

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Part Three: Leadership Influence - The Captain’s Role at the Campfire

7. Reports of the Day (apostle and teacher function)

After the stories wound down, there was a shift. The camp captain began asking questions. Where were you positioned? Did you hold your ground? What happened when the line broke? This was the debrief. It was accountability built into the rhythm of gathering.

I want to push back against the discomfort that many of us feel with accountability in our gathered communities. We have so overcorrected against legalism that we have swung to the opposite extreme, where real accountability is treated as judgmental and personal questions about obedience are considered invasions of privacy. The result is a community that checks in on how people are feeling but never asks whether they are doing what they said they would do.

The Three-Thirds model (find it at disciplemakingcollective.com) is a built-in accountability structure. The first third, Look Back, asks the same question every gathering: Did you do what you said you would do? Not as a guilt trip. Not as a performance evaluation. As a discipleship rhythm. Disciples who know they will be asked next week whether they followed through on their commitment are more likely to do so. Not out of fear. Out of the holy pressure of being genuinely known by people who genuinely care.

The Reports of the Day element of your gathered community is the moment when the leader creates the environment for honest accounting. What did you try? What happened? Where did you see God move? Where did you miss it? What patterns are emerging? What is the Spirit saying through the collective reports of everyone around this fire?

8. Re-Directing (apostle and teacher function)

Based on the reports, the captain re-directed. He told his soldiers which ground would be taken tomorrow. Which direction to move. This was the essential leadership function of translating the larger battle plan into actionable next steps for specific soldiers in a specific position on a specific day.

Re-directing in a gathered disciple-making community is the art of helping your people see what is next for them personally, not generically, but specifically. It answers questions like, based on what you just shared about your conversation with your neighbor, here is what I think you should try next. Or, based on the pattern I’m hearing across multiple people’s stories, I think the Spirit might be highlighting something our whole community needs to pay attention to. Or I’ve noticed that three people in this gathering are in the exact same stuck place. Let’s talk about that together.

Good re-directing requires attentive listening. You cannot re-direct someone if you have not truly heard where they are. This is why shepherds and prophets in a gathered community are so critical, paying attention not just to what is being said, but to what is underneath what is being said. This is a skill. It is developed through practice and through the discipline of asking the Holy Spirit for discernment in every gathering.

9. Re-Arming (teacher, prophet, shepherd, evangelist, and apostle function)

Empty cartridge pouches were refilled. Broken weapons were replaced. Rations were re-supplied. The soldiers did not leave the campfire the next morning with the same depleted resources they brought in. They left equipped. Re-armed. Ready for the next engagement.

This is the teaching, equipping, and tool-deployment function of the gathered community. And I want to be very specific about what re-arming is not: it is not passive information transfer. It is not sitting through a lesson and hoping something sticks. Re-arming means leaving with something you can use tomorrow.

The Disciple-Making Collective has built a toolbox for exactly this purpose, B.L.E.S.S., the Prayer Map, the Three-Minute Story, the 21-Day Disciple Challenge, the SOAPS devotional method, the Gospel icons (all found at disciplemakingcollective.com). Re-arming in your gathered community means identifying which tools your people need for their specific mission contexts and making sure they leave the gathering knowing how to use them.

The intelligence officers in the Civil War rear echelon did not just hand out ammunition randomly. They analyzed what had happened in the battle and resupplied accordingly. In the same way, the best equipping in a gathered disciple-making community is not a pre-determined curriculum that marches through the same content regardless of where the people are. It is responsive (just-in-time vs. just-in-case). It is earned by listening to the Reports of the Day and asking, “What do these soldiers need to fight better tomorrow?”

Part Four: Individual Responsibility -
What Each Soldier Owes the Mission

10. Rest (disciple’s responsibility)

The soldier who stayed up all night carousing was not ready for battle the next morning. Getting adequate rest was his personal responsibility. The campfire provided the conditions, but the choice to sleep was his.

There is a Sabbath theology embedded in this element that the Western church has almost entirely lost. We have confused busyness with faithfulness and productivity with fruitfulness. We have built disciple-making cultures that burn people out and then wonder why they disengage. The truth is that the most fruitful disciple-makers I know are the ones who have learned to rest, who understand that their effectiveness in the mission is directly tied to their ability to disengage from it regularly and trust God to keep working when they stop.

In your gathered community, this might look like celebrating Sabbath together. It might look like asking each other: How are you sleeping? How is your margin? Where is your rest coming from? Have you done your half-day of prayer this month? It might look like having an honest conversation in your community about the difference between missional urgency and burnout and creating permission that allows people to pull back when they are depleted.

A soldier who refuses to rest is a liability. So is a disciple-maker who never stops.

11. Return to Battle (disciple’s responsibility)

Any soldiers still lingering around the campfire late the next morning were out of place. It was not the sergeant’s job to drag them back to the front lines. It was their own responsibility to return to battle.

This is one of the most important and most neglected implications of the campfire metaphor. The gathered community is not the destination. It is the launching pad. The fire is not where the mission happens. The fire is where you get ready for the mission to happen everywhere else, in your oikos, in your neighborhood, in your workplace, in your city.

One of the great failures of institutional church culture is that we have made the gathered meeting feel like the main event. Show up on Sunday. Sit in a row. Consume some content. Leave. The mission is what the professionals do. The rest of us are audience members.

In a campfire community, every person knows they are a soldier, and that soldiers go back to the front. The gathering exists to improve the scattering. The fire exists to heat the coals, so they burn hotter in the field. And healthy gathered communities hold each other accountable not just to gathering well, but to scattering intentionally.

Some of the most important conversations you will ever have in your gathered community are not about spiritual content. They are about this: Who are you going back to? What are you doing tomorrow in your oikos? What is the specific next step you are taking this week in the mission? Name it here, in front of these people, because these people are going to ask you about it next time we gather.

12. Flexible Expectations (everyone’s responsibility)

The final element of the campfire is perhaps the most underrated. The battle lines were never in the same place twice. The ground that was held today might be lost tomorrow. The enemy moved. The situation changed. And soldiers who returned to the exact same position, expecting to fight the exact same battle, were in danger of fighting an engagement that no longer existed.

Disciple-making communities that become rigid, having found what works and refusing to adapt, are fighting yesterday’s battle. The spiritual landscape of your mission field is not static. The needs of your people change. The neighborhood shifts. The cultural moment evolves. New people arrive at the campfire who need things that your current gathering doesn’t yet provide. Old soldiers go out and start new fires.

Flexible expectations mean holding your format loosely. It means being willing to ask, regularly, whether the way you are gathering is still serving the mission or whether it has become the mission itself. It means being a community that follows the Holy Spirit rather than a community that manages a program. And it means building into your gathered culture enough theological and relational flexibility to change when change is needed, without losing the core purpose of the campfire, which never changes.

The Wineskin Question

Jesus said that new wine requires new wineskins. He was not condemning old wineskins. He was warning against the mistake of pouring the living, dynamic movement of the Spirit into containers designed for a different season and context.

Your X-Group, Discipling Community, or simple church may not last forever! Remember Sacred Vibez? It had a season and a life cycle. This is a very hard reality for our traditional church culture to accept. Not even one of those churches in the New Testament still exists today! But the Kingdom of God still advances aggressively. Be at peace when your group’s life cycle may be coming to an end, but disperse strategically, multiplying disciples as you go.

The twelve elements of the Civil War Campfire are the wine. The gathered form of your specific community is the wineskin. And the critical thing about a wineskin is that it must be flexible enough to expand when the wine is fermenting, or it will burst. It must know when it can no longer hold the new wine, or it will become useless.

Greg Getz and his collaborators were trying to do something both simple and profound when they put this document together. They were trying to answer the question that every disciple-maker eventually has to face, if we’re not trying to build what traditional church has built, what are we building? What is the gathered community supposed to look like?

What is it supposed to do? And how do we know if it’s working?

The campfire metaphor is one answer. And it has become mine. A healthy gathered community looks like a Civil War campfire. It is the place where battle-weary soldiers find security and food and first aid. It is the place where the bonds of camaraderie are forged through shared suffering and shared story. It is the place where leadership does the work of honest accountability, re-direction, and re-arming. And it is the place where every individual is reminded that they are a soldier, that the campfire is not home, that the battle is the point, and that they carry the responsibility to return to it.

Acts 2:42 is not a model to be replicated. It is a clue to be unpacked. The apostles’ teaching, that is, the food and the re-arming. The fellowship, that is, the camaraderie and the unwinding. The breaking of bread, that is both the physical food and the security of the shared table. The prayer, that is the ongoing posture of dependence on the One whose campfire this is.

But Acts 2 leaves most of the practical details intentionally unresolved. Because those details vary for each gathering. They are the domain of the Holy Spirit, working through the specific people, in the specific place, for the specific mission He has authored.

A Practical Exercise Before You Move On

The campfire document includes a strategic exercise for you, whether you are currently leading a gathered community or simply dreaming about what one might look like in your future.

Take a piece of paper and draw a line down the middle. On the left side, write out all twelve campfire elements with a brief definition of each. On the right side, write the honest answer to this question: What would this look like for the specific people God has put in my life?

What does security look like for a gathering of young professionals in an urban neighborhood who are suspicious of religious institutions? What does food look like for a community of blue-collar families who don’t have a lot of patience for formal teaching structures? What does re-arming look like for a group of first-generation believers who don’t yet have a strong foundation in Scripture?

Do this exercise as a spiritual practice, not just a planning exercise. Bring the Holy Spirit into it. Ask Him to show you things about your people that you might be missing. When you are finished, you will have something far more valuable than a program. You will have a Spirit-led portrait of the gathered community God is inviting you to build.

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Today’s Article is an EXCERPT from Chapter 1 of My New Book “Hand to the Plow: The Field Guide for Everyday Disciple-Makers”

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The Habit of Integration: Making Disciple-Making Part of Things You Already Do

Disciple-making is not something you add to your life. It is something you integrate into the life you are already living.

I know that sounds simple. Maybe even too simple. But stay with me, because the implications of that statement are revolutionary when you follow them all the way through.

✔ You already eat meals. What if one meal a week was with someone in your oikos who needs to see what a life surrendered to Jesus looks like? * DISCIPLE-MAKING *

✔ You already go to your kid’s sports games. What if you positioned yourself not just as a sports parent but as a Kingdom presence on that sideline, aware, available, building authentic relationships with the other parents who are showing up week after week right beside you? * DISCIPLE-MAKING *

✔ You already have a job. What if your workplace was not just your source of income but your mission field, the exact geography God assigned to you for this specific chapter of your life (Acts 17:26-27)? *DISCIPLE-MAKING *

Every one of those moments is already happening.

What changes when you begin to see them through a disciple-making lens?

💥 Everything changes 💥

The great disciple-makers of the New Testament did not have a separate ministry life compartmentalized from their regular life. Paul made tents. And he made disciples. He did both at the same time, in the same workspace, with the same people. He said, “Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ” (1 Corinthians 11:1, NIV). That is not an invitation to come to a program. It is an invitation to emulate a life being lived.

🚫 But that is not what Jesus commissioned. “As you are going.” The call is not to leave your life and go do ministry. The call is to take ministry with you INTO your life.

So, what does it look like to build the habit of integration? Let me give you some handles.

First, identify your mission field. In the Disciple-Making Collective, we talk about the places where you 🏠 live, 👩🏻‍🎓learn, ✂️ work, and ⚽️ play.

• Your neighborhood.

• Your workplace.

• Your gym.

• Your kids’ school.

• Your coffee shop.

Those are not incidental locations in your week. They are God-ordained mission fields. Acts 17:26 tells us that God “determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live”, not just so they would exist there, but “so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him.”

Second, name the people in those spaces. Who are the two, three, or five people in each of those spaces who you encounter regularly? Who are you already in proximity with? Who have you been walking past without truly seeing? Disciple-making starts with paying attention to who God has already placed in your path.

Third, pray for them by name. Use the Prayer Walking Tool that we use in the Disciple-Making Collective. This prayer is not just intercession. It is a discipline that changes how you see people. You cannot consistently pray for someone and then continue to treat them as a background character. ❤️Prayer produces love. And love produces the kind of intentional presence that disciple-making requires.

Fourth, look for ⏰ moments, not 📆 appointments. Most of Jesus’ disciple-making did not happen in formal teaching sessions. As I mentioned earlier, as far as we know, He only preached about eight long-form sermons. It happened on the road, at the table, in the boat, at the wedding, and at the funeral. He was present in the moments of life, and He used them. You can schedule time with the people you are discipling, and you should, but don’t miss the organic moments that show up in the middle of ordinary life. The hallway conversations. The text that arrives at the right time. The cup of coffee that turns into a two-hour conversation about what life means.

Fifth, use the tools. The Disciple-Making Collective has adopted a set of practical tools, the Three-Thirds model, the Four Fields map, the prayer walk, the Three-Minute Story, precisely so that the practices of disciple-making are accessible, repeatable, and simple enough that anyone can do them. Not just professional ministers. Not just the seminary-trained. Anyone. These tools exist to lower the barrier and raise the fruit.

The disciple-making life is not a new life. It is your current life, seen through a new set of eyes.

• It is Monday morning at the office with Kingdom awareness.

• It is Friday night with your neighbors with missional intentionality.

• It is Sunday with your kids with the next generation in mind.

The habit of integration does not require a time slot. It requires a transformation of perspective.

The Chapter in a Single Sentence

Disciple-making is not a program you attend or a ministry you perform, it is a lifestyle you embrace, woven into the ordinary moments of your already-existing life, multiplied through deep investment in the few, measured by Kingdom fruit rather than institutional metrics.

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Well, a few years later, I can confidently say that I am so incredibly thankful that Julie and I decided to make that trek to Hebron, Kentucky, and spend that weekend with those people, because ever since then I’ve never been able to read my Bible the same.

At the bottom of this article, I give you a full chapter of my new book. The one on the strengths and weaknesses of the spiritual leadership gifts in Ephesians 4:11, and how the Body of Christ is struggling while operating at 40% leadership capacity.

I hope you enjoy it!

💥237💥 of you have taken the online Ephesians 4:11 APEST Assessment at thegreatteam.org!

💥237💥 of you have a better idea of how God knit you together in your mother’s womb (Psalm 139) in order to fulfill the good works God prepared for you to do (Ephesians 2:10).

Version 1.0 was a useful tool to help you step more deeply into your disciple-making style and approach. My favorite thing about the assessment is that it doesn’t just slot you into one of five categories, like you are locked into a box with 20% of the body of Christ stuck in a world of vanilla and chocolate. But it takes your dominant gift to determine WHAT you do best in the Great Commission, and combines it with the HOW you most comfortably operate with your second-highest gift.

This gives you a clear view of your strengths and weaknesses, plus a disciple-making approach that best fits your GIFT MIX. Kinda like a recipe: a cup of teacher and a tablespoon of shepherd 🍪.

WELL!

I’m excited to announce that my friend, , and I just launched version 2.0 of the assessment. One constraint in version 1.0 was that the scoring rubric didn't allow much room between the gift scores. So the five scores for each gift were too close to give a good read on the order of gifts.

WE FIXED THAT!

👉And now we’d love for you to take the assessment again for a couple of reasons.

1. Better results for you to more clearly identify your spiritual leadership function.

2. Help us improve the assessment even more with comparison results from your two tests.

So, if you are interested in a better version of the assessment, hop on over to thegreatteam.org and take it again.

OR if it’s your first go of it, you’ll learn so much about your disciple-making giftings.

Take the New Assessment HERE!

NOW! Here is Chapter 6 of my new book, Hand to the Plow: The Guidebook for Everyday Disciple-Makers.

Click Here for the Print Copy

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Hand to the Plow: Chapter 6 - Disciple-Making is a Team Effort - A “Great Team”

If I had to put one thing at the top of the list of skills I’ve learned in twenty years’ experience to be more effective in making disciples on specific mission fields across the United States, it would be this principle.

We must operate in the model of Ephesians 4:11 and activate the “GREAT TEAM” to be on mission together.

This is what we are going to focus on in chapters 6 and 7. We’ll talk about the dynamics of working with a disciple-making team. We’ll explore how to build one and work together as you do more in partnership than any of you could do alone.

As we begin, let me tell you about a community soccer game. Not the World Cup. Just a scrimmage between two groups of neighborhood kids. One team had players who were fast, aggressive, and could all shoot. Great athletes, but every one of them sprinted toward the ball the moment it was kicked, leaving the entire rest of the field wide open. Nobody held position. Nobody set up plays. Just eleven kids chasing the same ball.

👎 They lost 7–1.

The other team? They had one kid who hung back and held the defensive line. One who orchestrated passes from the middle. One whose only job was to see the field and communicate. One natural scorer who got the ball in the right moment every time, because the right people put it there.

🎉 They won. And it wasn’t even close.

The difference wasn’t talent. It was team.

That image lives in my head every single time I sit with a group of well-meaning, passionate disciple-makers who are all running toward the same ball and burning out in the process. In Western culture, we have been taught to value individual spiritual gifting, personal devotion, and solo ministry

And that’s okay, as long as we recognize that we have done it at the expense of what it means to function as a unified, differentiated, healthy team. And as long as we are okay with bottlenecks to multiplication of disciples, we can continue to operate like that.

The Apostle Paul had something profound to say about this. And he said it in the fourth chapter of his letter to the church at Ephesus. I want to walk you through it slowly, because if you miss what Paul is doing here, you will miss one of the most important frameworks in the entire New Testament for understanding both the church AND your personal calling inside it.

The Church of God Is Made Up of Transformed Communities - Ephesians 4:12–18

Let’s start at the finish line. Before we talk about how the church gets healthy, let’s talk about what a healthy church looks like when it gets there. As you read this passage, imagine being part of this church. I always say that if I were to find this church, I’d jump in headfirst and never turn back. However, one of my early mentors, Earl Ballard would say, if you find it, don’t join it, you’ll mess it up!

Paul paints the picture vividly in Ephesians 4:12–16:

Read that slowly. Then read it again.

Paul is describing a church that is:

• Equipped for works of service - not just attending service, but actively doing it.

• Built up and unified - moving toward oneness in the faith, not fragmentation and division.

• Mature - not tossed around by every new theological trend or cultural pressure.

• Speaking the truth in love - courageous enough to be honest, humble enough to be kind.

• Connected in function - “every supporting ligament” doing its work, each part contributing to the whole.

Does this describe your current disciple-making community?

For most of us, if we are being brutally honest, the answer is no. Not because the people around us don’t love Jesus. Not because the desire isn’t there. But because we have been missing something critical. Something Paul identifies in the verses that precede this picture of maturity and health.

Greg Getz reminds us, you can’t get to Ephesians 4:12–16 without the framework and team of Ephesians 4:11.

You Can’t Get There from Here - Verse 11

Here’s the handle that opens the door to living life in that kind of rich faith community. Before every part can function in unity and strength, Paul says Christ gave five specific kinds of people to lead the church.

Apostles. Prophets. Evangelists. Shepherds. Teachers.

We call this the APEST team. And here is what I want you to understand before we unpack each one: this is not a spiritual gifts inventory. This is not a personality profile. This is not a checklist to see which one feels most like you so you can specialize in it and ignore the others.

APEST is ministry architecture for church leadership. It’s God’s GREAT TEAM for equipping the whole Body for the whole mission.

Greg Getz says that in the Bible we have all these short little pithy “greats” that all pack a ferocious punch.

• The Great Commission (Matt 28:19-20)

• The Great Commandment (Matt 22:37-40)

• The Great (Golden) Rule (Matt 7:12)

• The Great Target (Acts 1:8)

The GREAT TEAM is another one of those powerful “GREATS.”

This is God’s strategy to utilize the Body of Christ to take beachheads, baptize believers, teach them the commands of Christ, and advance His message at a velocity that changed the entire known world within a couple of hundred years. AND to sustain that movement so that now, 2000 years later, we can still experience the fullness of what it means to be ambassadors of the Kingdom of God led by the King of the Kingdom living in Kingdom embassies.

And here’s the part that should disturb you if you’ve been sitting in most of Western Christianity for the past few generations. We have functionally operated with only about 40% efficiency at best, with only two of these five leadership functions being embraced and raised up.

Think about what most churches celebrate, hire, and build their entire infrastructure around. Pastors (Shepherds) and Teachers. The Sunday sermon. The pastoral care structure. The Bible study curriculum. The small group discipleship models. All rooted in the shepherding and teaching functions.

None of that is bad. I want to say that clearly. The shepherd nurtures and the teacher grounds. And the Body needs both. But when you run your entire disciple-making ecosystem on two of five cylinders, you are going to miss something. You’re going to miss three things. And those three things might be the very functions the church needs most desperately in the culture we live in right now to see disciple multiplication.

The Unbiblical Model of Parachurch

❓Quick Question.

Where in Scripture do you read about a church and parachurch paradigm sending out missionaries and evangelists to independently operate and build quasi-church organizations to fulfill a gap that the “real church” is ill-equipped or unwilling to fulfill? Seriously, show me the chapter and verse.

Now, of course, we find the church laying hands upon and sending out missionaries and evangelists, but those operate blessed by and alongside the church as they plant new churches, oftentimes starting in homes or among oikos or family groups.

We have invented an entire system that is not supported by a biblical model. And certainly not found in the Jesus or Pauline model. Let’s restore the original plan for the gathered and scattered church to live in harmony and partnership with one another as these functions fulfill their God-given ministries.

So, What Do These Team Members Do?

Great question! In short, here is an overview. The apostle expands. The prophet discerns. The evangelist reaches. And without those three functions actively working alongside the shepherd and the teacher, the church turns inward, loses its missional edge, and eventually becomes a really excellent resource center for the already convinced.

That is not the church Paul is describing.

The picture Paul paints in verses 12–16 results from all five functions working together. It is a church that effectively fulfills both roles of maturing and multiplying, sustaining and advancing, nurturing and confronting. It is the GREAT TEAM in action. And that is exactly what we need to build in order to see the Kingdom advance.

The Gathered and the Scattered Church

Before we go further, I need to establish a framework that will make everything that comes next make much more sense. I want to simplify this seemingly complex 5-fold model into a bi-fold functioning whole, kind of like two sides of the same coin. It is the distinction between the gathered church and the scattered church.

The gathered church is what most of us picture when we hear the word

“church.” People coming together. Sunday services. Worship. Proclamation. Communion. Passionate Prayer. It is the assembly. The ecclesia. It is real, it is beautiful, and it matters.

But the scattered church is what happens when those same people leave the building on Sunday morning and re-enter the world. It is the disciple-maker at the water cooler. It is the mom in the carpool line. It is the young professional who goes back to Monday with his faith intact and his mission in view. It is the church operating as salt and light in the very places where salt and light are needed most.

The gathered church is where we are equipped. The scattered church is where we are sent.

Here’s the problem we have developed in the West. We have built an entire ecosystem that is very good at gathering. We have invested billions of dollars in buildings, sound systems, parking lots, children’s wings, and production quality that make the gathered experience more and more compelling. And in doing so, we have unintentionally trained the people of God to think of church as THE place where spiritual things happen. But the church was never designed to be the destination. It was designed to be the launch pad.

When Paul writes about the GREAT TEAM in Ephesians 4, he is not writing about roles that only function inside the Sunday gathering. He is describing a team of equippers who prepare the entire Body to live on mission in every corner of the city.

➠ Apostles pioneering new territory.

➠ Prophets hearing the voice of God for the community.

➠ Evangelists modeling and multiplying gospel conversations.

➠ Shepherds nurturing the relational health of the community.

➠ Teachers grounding the whole enterprise in the Word of God.

The APEST functions best when the church is on the move, both gathered AND scattered.

When you understand the gathered and the scattered together, the APEST begins to make perfect sense. Because every one of those five functions has a powerful role to play in both spaces. The question is whether we are developing all five, or just the two that make our Sunday mornings run more smoothly.

Let’s meet the team!

An Overview: God’s Great Strategy

There are two ways to read Ephesians 4:11, and the one you choose will determine whether APEST is a fascinating theological footnote or a transformational framework for how you build your disciple-making team.

You can read it as a list of job titles. Apostle, Prophet, Evangelist, Shepherd, Teacher. Box checked. Moving on.

Or you can read it as a mission architecture. Five distinct, irreplaceable functions that together produce the full picture of the beautiful community we read about in Ephesians 4:12–16.

The APEST is not describing five types of professional ministers. They are not roles to be filled. Verse 11 describes five kinds of Kingdom DNA that exist in every healthy disciple-making community. The community best reflects the Kingdom of God when all five are present and active.

Each of these functions asks and answers a fundamentally different question about the mission. In other words, these are functions that are fulfilled by gifts that God gives to leaders in the Body of Christ to multiply healthy disciples and disciple-making communities.

Think of it this way. A body needs more than one organ to function. A body with only lungs would not last long. A heart-only body would not get far. The body works because every system is present, connected, and doing its part. The APEST is the organic, Spirit-given ministry anatomy of the leadership in communities of disciples.

Here is what each function brings to the table. And here is what the team looks like when it is missing any one of them.

The Apostle — The Pioneer

The word apostle comes from the Greek apostolos, meaning “one who is sent”. And the sent-ness is the whole point. The apostle is the boundary pusher. The pioneer. The person who is wired to look beyond what already exists and ask, “What is God doing over there, and how do we get there?” They are missional visionaries by nature, drawn toward unreached people groups, uncomfortable with the status quo, compelled to expand the Kingdom into spaces where it does not yet exist.

The question the apostle answers is “Where is the Kingdom not yet, and what do we need to do to take it there?”

Strengths of the Apostle:

Apostles see what is possible before anyone else does, and they have the courage and catalytic energy to go first. They are church-planting, movement-launching, mission field-crossing people who raise the vision of a community and keep it from shrinking into itself. They are entrepreneurial in the best Kingdom sense of the word. They see forests, not trees (how do we reach this CITY?). They think in movements, not in maintenance.

Apostles also have a God-given ability to connect different parts of the Body with each other. Paul was not just planting churches; he was building a network of churches that served and strengthened one another. Apostolic people are networkers, not just pioneers.

Blind Spots of the Apostle:

The same drive that makes apostles extraordinary pioneers can make them difficult teammates. They are frequently frustrated with anything that feels like it is slowing the mission down, which, in their view, is almost everything. They can leave a trail of unfinished things behind them in their rush toward the next frontier. They can undervalue the shepherding and teaching functions that keep the people they launch connected and maturing.

Apostles can also be perceived as disruptive or threatening in environments that value stability. A healthy institutional church culture can sometimes unconsciously suppress apostolic gifting because it keeps asking questions that make everyone else uncomfortable. When that happens, apostolically wired people often leave and build something new. Sometimes that is God’s design. Sometimes it is a loss that could have been avoided.

The value the apostle brings to the team:

Without the apostle, a team turns inward. The mission shrinks. The community becomes focused on serving itself rather than expanding the Kingdom. The apostle is the function that keeps reminding everyone, there are people in this city who have not yet joined the Kingdom, and we are responsible for going to them.

In a disciple-making team, the apostle is the one who keeps asking, “Who are we not yet reaching? What new mission field is God calling us into? Who in our network is ready to be sent?”

The Prophet — The Discerner

The prophet is perhaps the most misunderstood member of the team. Mention the word “prophet” in most church contexts and you will get one of two reactions: either enthusiastic charismatic excitement or cautious and protective discomfort. I want to offer you a third option.

The prophet is the person on the team who is most attuned to what God is saying in the present moment. Not necessarily a person who gives ecstatic utterances (though that is not ruled out). Rather, a person whose dominant question is: “What is God saying to us right now, and what does faithfulness to that word require?” The prophet holds the community accountable to the moral and spiritual integrity of the mission. The prophet has an extreme sensitivity to the Word and Will of God and will die on the mountain of keeping the movement aligned to those two voices.

The question the prophet answers: “What is God saying, and are we listening, and living, accordingly?”

Strengths of the Prophet:

Prophets have a remarkable ability to see what others miss. They notice spiritual drift before it becomes a crisis. They feel the disconnect between what a community is saying and what it is actually doing. They have an internal compass that points toward God’s heart with unusual accuracy, and they carry a holy urgency that calls communities to deeper faithfulness, greater integrity, and more courageous obedience.

In a disciple-making context, prophetic people are the ones who notice when a team is drifting from its mission, when a relationship is being neglected, when prayer is becoming perfunctory rather than passionate, when the Holy Spirit is being politely scheduled rather than genuinely sought. Or when injustice is present in the mission field. They are often the spiritual barometer of a community.

Blind Spots of the Prophet:

Prophets can be hard to be around. They are not naturally gifted at diplomatic delivery, especially when un-discipled. The same sensitivity that makes them extraordinary discerners can make them blunt, intense, and occasionally exhausting. They feel things deeply and can carry a burden of righteous frustration that, if not held in community, becomes cynicism or harshness.

Prophets are also easy to dismiss. The person who keeps saying “I feel like God is calling us to more” or “I sense we’re missing something” can be perceived as a constant dissatisfied presence rather than a genuine voice of discernment. Healthy teams learn to receive the prophetic voice without being destabilized by it.

The value the prophet brings to the team:

Without the prophet, a team loses its spiritual compass. Drift becomes the norm. The gap between the vision and the actual lived reality of the community grows without anyone naming it. The prophet is the function that says, “Let’s stop, get honest, and listen to what God is actually saying before we take another step forward.”

In a disciple-making community, the prophet is the one who calls the team to prayer, who exposes the spiritual condition of the mission field, who asks hard questions about integrity and obedience, and who keeps the community tethered to the voice of God rather than just the momentum of activity.

SIDE NOTE ON APOSTLE AND PROPHET TEAMS

First off, these are the two most controversial functions in the team as they carry similar names to biblical roles and authority figures. I want to note that we are not talking about capital “A” apostles and capital “P” prophets.

Those were biblical authority figures in the scriptures. There were 12

Apostles who walked with Christ and a limited number of biblical Prophets.

However, it is important to note that many other figures in the New Testament, after the death and resurrection of Christ, were referred to as apostles and prophets. The lowercase version represents spiritual giftings and functions given by the Holy Spirit to serve the advancement of the Kingdom of God and the communities of God’s people on planet Earth.

The early church wasn’t using “apostle” as a brand label. It was a mission word. A sending word. It wasn’t using “prophet” as the actual voice of God, but a signpost pointing to God’s will and way. And that’s important for how we think about the office versus the function today.

Also, I wanted to take a brief time out in the middle of this 5-fold fly-by to share that the apostle-prophet combination is the most powerful and effective pairing of the APEST team when it comes to advancing the message of Christ. It is why the apostle Paul wrote to the Ephesian church in Ephesians 2:20 that the church is “Built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone.” Why, you ask. Good question.

Because the role of this 2-person team is to establish beachheads among unreached people groups in the name of the Most High God. The apostle will do that at any cost, including questionable practices and mild heresy. The prophet can’t stomach those, so he/she keeps the apostle aligned with the Word and Will of God. That requires tremendous love and partnership between these two people. The apostle and prophet, and all the other functions for that matter, must walk in love for each other and honor one another before themselves to make this work. They must be on a co-mission to advance the best news that has ever been.

THAT IS INCREDIBLY DIFFICULT AND REQUIRES EXTREME LOVE AND UNITY!

When it’s done well and with godliness and humility, it is a sight to behold! It’s worth the effort, and we owe it to Jesus to figure this out!

The Evangelist — The Recruiter

This one should be more familiar to you. But I want to challenge the picture you probably have in your head. When most of us hear “evangelist,” we picture a big tent, a microphone, an altar call, a bullhorn, a street corner, and a crowd. And while that is one expression of the evangelistic function, it is far from the only one and often not the most effective one.

The evangelist is the person who is wired, breathes, and can’t stop thinking about people who are far from God. Not in a manipulative, agenda-driven way. In a genuine, relational, life-sharing way. Evangelists are the people who find that spiritual conversations come naturally to them, who light up when they meet someone new, who are always thinking about the bridge between someone’s everyday story and the story of Jesus. They are masters at gathering and attracting a crowd.

The question the evangelist answers: “How does the Good News become accessible to the people in front of us?”

Strengths of the Evangelist:

Evangelists are extraordinary at building bridges. They have a gift for finding common ground, for making people feel seen and valued, and for transitioning conversations from surface-level to spiritually significant without making people feel ambushed. They carry a contagious joy about the Gospel that makes the message feel like an invitation rather than a transaction.

In a disciple-making team, the evangelist is the one who constantly models what it looks like to live on mission in everyday life. They are who you want someone to shadow when they are learning to have spiritual conversations. They make the mission feel possible and even joyful.

Blind Spots of the Evangelist:

Evangelists can sometimes be more excited about making converts than making disciples. The joy of the first conversation, the moment of spiritual breakthrough, the new believer’s prayer, these moments energize them. But the slower, more demanding work of walking someone through the long journey of discipleship can feel like someone else’s job.

Evangelists can also overestimate how naturally this comes to everyone around them. Because gospel conversations feel natural and easy to them, they can accidentally guilt-trip or pressure the rest of the team into feeling like failures because they don’t share the same fluency. Healthy discipled evangelists learn to model and invite rather than compare and condemn.

The value the evangelist brings to the team:

Without the evangelist, a team becomes insular. The focus drifts from the mission field to the already-gathered community. The language, the culture, and the priorities of the team begin to orbit the internal world rather than the external one. The evangelist is the function that keeps the front door open, that keeps the community’s eyes on the people who are not yet in the room.

In a disciple-making community, the evangelist is the one who models spiritual conversations, who identifies persons of peace, who generates the relational momentum that leads to new disciples. They are often the first ones across the bridge, and they pull everyone else along with them.

The Shepherd (Pastor) — The Nurturer

Now we come to the two functions that most Western churches highly value and are very, very good at. Let’s start with the shepherd, which most of us know as the pastor.

The shepherd is the relational backbone of the community. They are attuned to the emotional and spiritual health of the people around them. They know who is struggling. They notice who has gone quiet. They show up when things are hard, not because they are performing a pastoral duty, but because they genuinely cannot NOT show up. The needs of people are not burdens to the shepherd; they are the mission.

The question the shepherd answers: “Is every member of this community genuinely cared for, known, and walking in health?”

Strengths of the Shepherd:

Shepherds create the kind of safety and belonging that makes a disciple-making community sustainable over the long haul. People stay in communities where they feel genuinely known, seen, and loved. Shepherds build that culture. They are the ones who remember the names, the stories, the prayer requests. They hold the relational fabric of a team together in ways that are often invisible but essential.

Shepherds also play a critical disciple-SHIP role. They are often the ones who notice when someone is stuck, when a disciple needs a different kind of investment, when the pace of someone’s journey needs to slow down. Their sensitivity to people makes them extraordinarily effective one-on-one disciple-makers.

Blind Spots of the Shepherd:

The shepherd’s greatest weakness is also their greatest strength. Their fierce loyalty to the people they are caring for can make them resistant to the kind of sending and releasing that multiplication requires. The apostle says, “It’s time to send them.” The shepherd says, “But are they really ready? What if they need more support?”

Shepherds can also struggle with the tensions of maintaining relational health in a growing, multiplying community. They are most effective in smaller, more intimate contexts. As the community expands, they need to learn to build shepherding capacity in others rather than trying to carry the whole relational weight themselves.

Shepherds can also unconsciously create dependency. Their care is so genuine and so consistent that people can grow to rely on them rather than developing their own relational and spiritual health. Healthy shepherds learn to care in ways that develop maturity rather than fostering neediness.

The value the shepherd brings to the team:

Without the shepherd, a disciple-making team becomes a movement without a home. People can get so focused on the mission that they neglect the health of the community doing the mission. Burnout, relational fractures, unprocessed grief and trauma, these are what happen in movements that have no shepherd voice calling the team to slow down and care for one another.

The shepherd is the one who makes sure that nobody falls through the cracks. They are the voice that says, “Before we talk about the mission report, I need us to check in with each other.” That voice is not slowing the mission down. It is keeping the team healthy enough to sustain it.

The Teacher — The Grounding Voice

The teacher is the last member of the APEST team, and in most of the ministries and communities that I have served and been a part of, the teacher and the shepherd have together been treated as if they are the entire team.

The teacher is the person who is driven by the question of truth. Not just what we believe, but why we believe it, how it connects, and how it should change us. Teachers have an extraordinary ability to take complex biblical truth and make it accessible, and applicable. They give a community its theological stability and depth.

The question the teacher answers: “What is true, why does it matter, and how do we build our lives on it?”

Strengths of the Teacher:

In a world of theological trends, cultural pressures, and the constant noise of competing narratives about who Jesus is and what the Gospel means, the teacher is the voice that says, “Let’s go back to the text. Let’s root ourselves in what is actually true.” They protect the community from the doctrinal drift that Paul is describing in Ephesians 4:14, “being tossed back and forth by every wind of teaching.”

Teachers also raise the quality of every other function. An apostle with a strong theological foundation is a much more sustainable pioneer than one who is flying on vision alone. A prophet grounded in Scripture is far more discerning than one whose impressions are unaccountable to the Word. A teacher adds balance to the whole team.

Blind Spots of the Teacher:

Teachers can mistake information for transformation. The ability to explain a passage is not the same as the ability to lead people to obey it. Teachers can develop a culture that values knowledge over discipleship, producing communities that are educated but not particularly fruitful in mission.

Teachers’ deep respect for the text and the tradition can make them cautious about new ministry models, new approaches, or new missional strategies. This caution is sometimes exactly what a fast-moving apostolic team needs. But it can also calcify into a reflexive resistance to anything that feels unfamiliar.

The value the teacher brings to the team:

Without the teacher, a disciple-making community becomes vulnerable to theological instability, personality-driven leadership, and the kind of shallow “movement energy” that eventually burns out or goes off the rails. The teacher is the function that says, “Let’s make sure what we are building is built on the right foundation.”

In a disciple-making team, the teacher is the one who ensures that the disciples being made are actually being shaped by Scripture, not just by the personality of the disciple-maker. They equip every member of the team to handle the Word with accuracy and confidence, so that the Gospel being reproduced is the real one.

How to Function as THE GREAT TEAM

Now that we have met all five members of the team, I need to be honest with you about something. Knowing about the APEST is not enough. Identifying your primary function and then retreating into your lane is not the goal. In fact, that misses the point entirely.

The goal is not to identify which one you are and then operate exclusively out of that function while tolerating the others. The goal is to learn to function as a team, a genuine, collaborative, mutually submitting, kingdom oriented GREAT TEAM, where every voice is heard, every gift is deployed, and the result is the mature, unified, equipped Body that Paul describes in Ephesians 4:12–16.

Here’s the hard truth: most disciple-making teams are not functioning as “Great Teams” yet. They are functioning as collections of gifted individuals who have not yet learned how to value the functions that are different from their own.

The apostle is frustrated with the shepherd for slowing things down. The shepherd is anxious about the apostle moving too fast and leaving people behind. The prophet is waiting for everyone to stop and pray, while the evangelist is already out the door meeting the next person. The teacher is concerned that no one is reading deeply enough, while the apostle is wondering if the teacher is overthinking what should be a simple yes or no.

Sound familiar?

Every one of those tensions is real. And every one of them is a gift, not a problem, IF we know how to steward and disciple them to maturity.

The Chapter in a Single Sentence

The Kingdom does not advance through lone rangers and spiritual superstars, but through a unified Great Team, apostles pioneering, prophets discerning, evangelists reaching, shepherds nurturing, and teachers grounding, all five functions working together the way Christ designed them in Ephesians 4:11, so that the whole Body is equipped for the whole mission.

It’s Your Move, Again!

Every person reading this book is wired primarily toward one or two of the APEST functions. Identifying your primary function is not optional; it is the foundation of healthy team contribution. You cannot give what you do not know you have. And you cannot develop what you cannot name.

Take time to honestly assess which of the five functions you are most naturally drawn toward. Which question energizes you? Which function, when you are operating in it, makes you feel most fully alive in your Kingdom assignment? That is your primary lane.

That’s why I built the simple and accurate assessment tool at thegreateam.org. Hop over there and give it a run. It is especially effective at identifying your top two functions and creating a disciple-making style report nuanced by the function of your top gift and the style or DNA of your second gift.

Find the Entire Book at All Online Bookstores and the Audiobook at your favorite audiobook distributor. Bulk discounts at myhandtotheplow.com

They won’t.

💥 Not because they’re not broken, but because you’re asking the wrong questions.

When my last article, “A Third of Men Belong to Nothing. And It’s Killing Us,” dropped, the comments told me more than the article did.

Nobody argued with the conclusion of the article. Men are isolated. Everybody knows that. What they wrestled with was the cure. One reader said it plain: most men don’t trust anyone enough to open up.1 Another pointed out that this isn’t new news, it’s an old strategy, and the fix isn’t a better program, it’s men engaging in genuine community.2 A third named the actual structural problem: we’ve built discipleship as a mentor-to-mentee ladder when it was supposed to be lateral, side by side, like men sharing a table.3

Others agreed with the fact that just adding another program is NOT the answer.4

So let’s poke around at the question the last article asked but didn’t fully answer.

Why won’t men open up?

And what do we do about it?

Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko

The Diagnosis Isn’t Cowardice

Nearly two-thirds of men say they’d hesitate to get professional help for stress, anxiety, or depression.5 That’s not “some men.” It’s MOST men. And it’s not because the problem isn’t real. Men die by suicide at roughly three to four times the rate of women, and of the men who are struggling with depression or anxiety right now, fewer than half will ever get treated for it.6

That’s not a generation of men who don’t care. That’s a generation of men who were taught, starting young, that weakness gets you mocked, and strength gets you accepted. That being a man means doing it yourself. And that survival of the fittest means the ones who can look toughest on the outside are still standing in the end.

Jesus Didn’t Build a Program. He Built a Table.

Look at how Jesus actually formed men. He didn’t put twelve guys in rows and preach vulnerability at them. He walked dusty roads with them, ate at their tables, let them see Him weep at Lazarus’s tomb (John 11:35), watched Peter fail in front of everybody, and restored him one-on-one over breakfast (John 21:15-17).

🚫 That’s not a men’s ministry curriculum.

🟢 That’s proximity over time, doing the everyday things of life and giving his men permission to fail.

David and Jonathan cut a covenant, not a curriculum.

Jonathan stripped off his own robe and armor and gave them to David (1 Samuel 18:3-4). That’s what real trust costs: giving something of your own with nothing guaranteed in return.

Paul told Timothy he remembered his tears (2 Timothy 1:4). Paul. The apostle who got shipwrecked, beaten, and imprisoned without a word of complaint, told his spiritual son he 💧remembered him crying. That’s the New Testament model, and it’s the opposite of what most men’s ministry looks like on a Saturday morning.

Why Your Men’s Ministry Isn’t Working

If your structure has one speaker and forty chairs, you’ve built an audience, not a brotherhood.

Audiences applaud. They don’t confess.

If your structure is one older guy “pouring into” one younger guy, you’ve built a hierarchy. Hierarchies protect image. The younger guy secretly manages what the older guy sees.

What actually gets men to open up is small, consistent, and side-by-side. Three or four men showing up with the same faces and same rhythm. Nobody performing for anyone else. Showing up to a place where nobody is above anybody and everyone brings their own naked walk with Jesus to the table. And the accountability flows in both directions.

Helpful? Tip Me a Coffee.

Give Them a Low-Stakes Door In

Vulnerability doesn’t start at the deep end. It starts when people are given a place to belong, maybe even before they believe! A place where they have zero fear of being rejected. Where men are not surprised by other men’s failures.

Never Cringe When Another Man Confesses

Then you build the rhythm using the 59 One-Anothers, confess to one another, bear one another’s burdens, spur one another on. Not as nice aspirational values. But as weekly practices with the same three men.

Then you widen it to his oikos, the men he already lives, learns, works, and plays alongside, because the goal was never a healthier men’s ministry. It’s a healthier mission field.

The Application

This week, pick one man. Not the whole men’s group.

🏃🏃‍♂️ One man. And run with him!

Don’t ask him “how are you really doing.” He’s had thirty years of practice deflecting that exact question. Instead, tell him something true about your own week that cost you something.

Go first.

Every time!

Without exception, somebody has to go first, and it should be you.

Then invite him into something with a rhythm, not a one-time coffee. A standing invitation to walk together on the journey of faith-based manhood. At Disciple-Making Collective, we call this an X-group

Hit hard. Hold accountable. Stay biblical. Utilize the tools.

Name that man in the comments, first name only, and tell us what you’re going to say to him this week.

Let’s hold each other to it.

Want the full framework for building lateral, trust-first disciple-making relationships like this one? That’s exactly what we walk through inside the Premium Cohort, alongside the tools from Hand to the Plow.

Kevin uses the picture of a longtime prisoner struggling to adjust after release to illustrate a spiritual reality: sometimes freedom feels harder than captivity. He connects this to Israel after leaving Egypt. Although miraculously delivered, they repeatedly romanticized their former bondage when freedom became difficult. True freedom requires responsibility, discipline, stewardship, and perseverance.

He distinguishes between captives, who experience bondage because of what happened to them, and prisoners, whose own choices contributed to their bondage. The good news is that Jesus offers freedom to both.

Kevin concludes that freedom is often a journey of baby steps—choosing truth over lies, repenting, exposing secrets, forgiving, and continuing forward even when returning to the familiar seems easier. Ultimately, we are set free not merely for ourselves, but so we can help others find freedom and advance God’s Kingdom.

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A few years ago, I was invited to a weekend event that radically changed how I read the Bible and understand God's overarching story.

Julie and I attended a weekend walk through the Bible with the Schmoyers, good friends of ours from near Cincinnati. After that weekend, I haven’t read the Bible the same way since. It was second only to my personal journey to Israel in helping me understand the Bible's overarching story.

After processing the experience and recognizing how it changed my paradigm of the Bible, I was trained and certified in facilitating the 11-session Midrash experience. Midrash is an ancient rabbinical form of teaching in which a group reads the story, engages in a discovery process, and walks it out in community.

On October 2-4, 2026, we are going to get together in Hohenwald, TN, on a beautiful property and take this journey from Genesis 1 to Revelation 22 together. And I’d love to see you there!

Below is a flier with the details of the weekend. Plus, you can find out more about Story Formed Life by clicking 👉 HERE 👈🏻.

The cost is $125 per person, which covers your room and food for the weekend (2.5 days and 2 nights). No other cost other than you gas/airfare to get there.

❗️Limited to 12 participants, so Register Now❗️

Click Here to Register!

I’m not building up to that. I’m starting there, because most men already know it and almost none of us will say it out loud.

• ✂️ Work turned cutthroat, so we stopped trusting.

• 📆 Calendars got full, so nobody sets aside Thursday night for poker.

• 💪 Individualism trained us to handle it ourselves.

• ⚠️ Life got safe enough that we honestly don’t need each other to survive.

Then we wonder why the drive home from work feels so long.

This isn’t a hunch, and it isn’t just me. The Survey Center on American Life studied three decades of American friendship and put it plainly: “the role of friends in American social life is experiencing a pronounced decline.” 1

But I want to show you a different set of numbers, because the ones everybody quotes are answering a different set of questions.

What Men Actually Said

In 2024, researchers stopped asking men whether they felt lonely and started asking about their actual place in the world. Here’s what came back. Not stats for women. Just men. 2

• 36% are not meaningfully part of any group or community.

• 34% don’t share their true self with others.

• 30% say their place in the world doesn’t feel relevant.

• 29% don’t have enough friends or family they’re close to.

• 26% have no person for emotional support.

Read that list again. Then do the math on your own life.

Let’s extrapolate.

👉 More than one in three men belongs to nothing.
👉 More than one in three is walking around as a version of himself nobody gets to know.
👉 One in four has no one.

🤯 No one 🤯

Now, before somebody in the comments accuses me of playing the victim card for men, let me get out ahead of it.

Men are not lonelier than women.

Men did score higher on all eight measures in the study, but usually by four or five points. And when you look at plain loneliness, it’s a dead heat. Five separate national surveys from 2024 and 2025 put men and women within a point or two of each other every time. On one of them, women reported more loneliness than men, 18% to 13%.3

So I’m not here to tell you men are in a uniquely terrible crisis.

I’m telling you something worse.

💥 A third of us are drowning, and it isn’t even a gender gap. It’s just normal now.

But we’re not talking about everyone. We’re talking about MEN!

“No One Really Knows Me Well”

Equimundo put that exact sentence in front of thousands of American men and asked them to agree or disagree.

65% of men aged 18 to 23 agreed. So did 59% of men in their thirties. 4

These are not shut-ins. They have

• ✔️ jobs,

• ✔️ group chats,

• ✔️ coworkers,

• ✔️ families.

And two out of three young men believe not one person on earth actually knows who they are. The same study found roughly one in three of them had spent no in-person time with anyone outside their own household in the previous week.

Not one hour. With one person. In seven days.

Loneliness Is the Feeling. Isolation Is the Structure.

Loneliness and Isolation. We use these words like they’re the same, and they aren’t.

Clinically, social isolation is lacking support, relationships, or contact with people. Loneliness is the feeling of being disconnected.5 You can have one without the other. A man can feel fine and have nobody. A man can be surrounded and feel hollow.

Plenty of us have both and only ever put a name to the second one.

Which is why the people who study this don’t measure isolation by asking how sad you are. They measure it structurally. One widely used approach asks whether a person:6

• has a spouse or partner

• has a religious or cultural community

• regularly engages with a club or group that meets

• has close friends or relatives

Notice what isn’t on that list.

❤️‍🩹 Feelings.

Not one question about whether you’re happy. It’s an inventory of whether anybody engages with you or you with them.

Go ahead and answer it. Four questions. Be honest, and don’t count the group you technically belong to but haven’t attended since spring.

There’s a third layer underneath, and it’s the one that makes a big difference. Emotional isolation is when you can’t share your feelings with anyone.7 Earlier in the article we saw that a third of men don’t share their true self with another human being.

🚫 That isn’t a personality type.

🤯 That is a PROBLEM.

And a man can be married, employed, and sitting in a pew every Sunday while every one of these is true of him.

One Honest Word Before We Keep Going

Everything in this article suggests you’re a man who drifted into isolation and needs to go relationally connect. For most of us, that’s exactly right. But for some men reading this, what’s going on is heavier than a missing group. Prolonged isolation is linked to anxiety and depression, and it can take a man to some genuinely dark places.8 In that same Equimundo survey, 40% of the men screened positive for depressive symptoms.9

That’s not a rare exception. That’s a lot of the guys reading this article.

Safety Is Plural

Proverbs 11:14 – Where there is no guidance, a people falls, but in an abundance of counselors there is safety.

Read it again.

Safety is plural. God didn’t put safety in your independence. He put it in a room full of counselors.

There’s a crushing expectation that a man has it together. That pressure teaches us to keep everything in a locked box. We don’t lean on anybody to think something through, because asking for help isn’t manly.

So we stew.

We get more and more emotionally tangled in the exact decisions that require clear heads. That’s not wisdom. That’s a man arguing with himself and winning every time.

And now the number that ought to stop every married man reading this.

When people were asked who they turn to first with a personal problem, 85% of married men said their wife. For married women it was 72%.10 Researchers say men lean harder on romantic relationships

• for affection,

• for personal support,

• and even for making friends in the first place.

Which means when a man is single, or when a marriage goes through fire, he often has no bench at all.11

Brother, your wife or girlfriend is a gift. But she is not an abundance of counselors.

Loving her well does not mean loading the entire weight of your soul onto her and calling it marriage. She was never designed to be

• your only counselor,

• your accountability partner,

• your pastor,

• and your therapist all at once.

Now, that’s an unfair job description.

Fifty-Nine Commands You Cannot Obey Alone

Galatians 6:2 – Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the Law of Christ.

Ecclesiastes 4:9-10 – Two are better than one... For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up.

Fifty-nine times in the New Testament, the Spirit tells us how to treat “one another.” Love one another. Bear one another’s burdens. Confess to one another. Pray for one another. Encourage, serve, forgive, restore.

Fifty-nine. Not fifty-nine suggestions. Fifty-nine commands.

Click Here to See Them All

You cannot obey a single one of these alone.

And you can’t obey them in a crowd either. You can sit in a sanctuary with four hundred people, sing every word, shake seventeen hands on the way out, and drive home having practiced exactly zero of the fifty-nine.

💥 Attendance is not one-anothering. Raising your hands while the worship band rocks is not community.

The one-anothers only work in a room small enough that people know what burden you’re carrying, what sin you’re fighting, what wound needs prayer this week.

❗️So the real question was never “do I go to church?”

The question is: who has permission to know what’s actually going on in me?

If you can’t name them, you’re isolated. And isolation is where the enemy does his best work, because he only has to beat one man at a time.

Confession Is Where the Healing Lives

James 5:16 – Confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed.

James doesn’t say confess to God and go take a nap. He gives a horizontal command with a vertical result. Healing shows up when a brother hears the truth and prays over it.

Now put that verse next to the 34% we saw earlier who do not share their true self.

You cannot obey James 5:16 as a man nobody actually knows. The command requires a person on the other end who has met the real you.

🚫 No such person, no obedience.

🚫 No obedience, no healing.

Confessing that you’re “a sinner” is easy. It costs you nothing. Confessing the actual thing is what breaks its grip.

Yes, it’s terrifying. Every group handles it differently, and the depth of what gets shared will vary. But there’s one non-negotiable rule: when a man confesses, we do not judge. We encourage, and we pray. The moment a group flinches at somebody’s honesty, that group is finished as a place of healing. Guard it like a man’s life depends on it, because sometimes it does.

I’ll go first, since I’m asking you to.

A while back I walked through a massive business failure and a string of decisions I’d love to have back. I could have healed slowly and privately, which is a polite way of saying I could have stayed wounded. Instead, I took the risk and told a few men the truth. They didn’t fix me. They reminded me who I was while the enemy stood there screaming accusations at me.

The more I told them, the easier it got. Confession ➡ repentance ➡ counsel in a room of men 🟰 one of the most valuable things I own.

Nobody Stays Undiscipled

A man with no group, no confessor, and nobody who knows him does not stay a blank page. He gets discipled anyway. Somebody is always willing to tell a lonely man who he is, what’s wrong with the world, and who to blame for it. That voice is free. It’s available at 2 a.m. It never asks him to repent of anything. And it is very, very good at what it does.

The vacuum always gets filled.

Always.

The only question on the table is who fills it.

So when I say the church needs to stop running events and start making disciples, I’m not being clever about ministry strategy. There is a discipleship war going on for the men on your street, and most of us aren’t showing up to it.

We scheduled a pancake breakfast. The enemy has a robust and merciless scheme.

Stop Looking for Friends. Start Building a Community.

Another men’s breakfast will not fix this. Another sermon series on biblical manhood will not fix this. You don’t need more content. You need three to five men who meet consistently, ask hard questions, and won’t let you disappear.

In the Disciple-Making Collective, we call that an X-Group.

Same gender. Meeting intentionally, regularly, with high accountability. Every gathering grows UP, IN, OUT:

• UP together in the Lord and His Word

• IN together by carrying each other

• OUT together on a shared mission

The size is not arbitrary. It’s theological. Jesus poured His deepest investment into three men, and Peter, James, and John saw things the other nine never did.

• Jairus’ daughter raised from the dead.

• The transfiguration on the mountain.

• The agony in the Garden of Gethsemane.

You can’t hide in a group of four. You can’t perform for a group of four. That’s the whole point.

We run those meetings on the Three-Thirds model: look back (accountability and care), look up (Scripture), look forward (mission and commitment). A full third of the time is spent asking each other how you did with what you said you’d do last week.

Most men have never had that once in their entire life, and it changes everything.

The Divide Nobody Talks About

One more number, and this one changes who you go looking for.

Researchers tracked adults with no close friends from 1990 to 2024 and split the men by education. Watch what happens.12

Men with a bachelor’s degree: 4% had no close friends in 1990. Today, 11%.
Men without a bachelor’s degree: 5% in 1990. Today, 21%.

Same starting line. One point apart in 1990. Thirty-four years later they’re ten points apart, and the man without the degree is twice as isolated.

The most isolated man in America is not the man our programs were built for.

He didn’t go to college. He works with his hands. He is not joining a men’s ministry with a curriculum, a workbook, and a sign-up table in the lobby. He’s not coming to a leadership breakfast. Almost every version of “community” the modern church offers him was designed by and for people who are comfortable in a classroom.

And here’s why I’m telling you this, in the middle of an article about your own isolation.

The man you need is probably also the man who needs you.

You’ve been reading this thinking about your own empty bench.

Fine.

Now flip it.

Somewhere in your oikos, the people with whom you live, learn, work, and play, there’s a man who’s got nobody. He would never darken the door of a church program. But he’d absolutely

• 🛻 sit in a truck,

• 🍔 at a lunch table,

• 🏠 in a garage

with three other guys who are honest.

That’s an X-Group.

No building ⛪︎. No budget 💰. No degree 👨🏻‍🎓. No professional 👨🏻‍💼.

That’s the entire point. The model Jesus handed us works fine in a shop break room, which is a mercy, because that’s where the wandering souls are.

Go find him. You’ll both get rescued.

Five Things You Can Actually Do

1. Name three men today. Write them down. Not “guys I like.” Men you’d let see the ugly parts. If you can’t reach three, that’s your answer about where you are.

2. Ask one of them this week. Say it plainly: “We should hang out and get to know each other. Wanna get coffee?” Put your pride down and open your mouth.

3. Go first with confession. Whoever bleeds first sets the ceiling for the group. Set it high.

4. Put it on the calendar and defend it. If your group is negotiable, it will be negotiated away. Show up when it’s inconvenient. That’s most of the battle.

5. Ask the hard question out loud. “How are you really doing?” And then don’t accept “fine.” Sharpen the iron. That’s what it’s for.

Your Move

Two out of three young men say nobody really knows them. A third of men belong to nothing. And every one of them is being discipled by somebody.

Nobody is coming to rescue you from your isolation. But there are men within arm’s reach right now who are just as isolated and just as unwilling to say it first.

Be the one who says it first.

✏️ In the comments: Give me the first name of one man you’re going to reach out to this week. Just the first name. We’ll pray for that conversation together. 👇

Come on. LET’S GO!

Want the full pathway from a first spiritual conversation to a simple church, including how to launch and lead an X-Group? That’s what I wrote Hand to the Plow: The Field Guide for Everyday Disciple-Makers for. Grab it at myhandtotheplow.com.

The 59 One-Anothers, sorted into 14 categories, are free at disciplemakingcollective.com.

Notes

Enjoy!

Jesus used two tools to launch a spiritual movement that changed the world forever: discipleship questions and stories. Almost every recorded conversation we have between Jesus and another person started or ended with a question or a story.

💥 Questions and stories prompt us to step outside our presumptions, think more clearly, and better understand what we truly believe. This deeper level of communication becomes a harvest field for spiritual conversations.

🔑 The key to moving a conversation from casual to crucial, and from surface to spiritual, is asking the right questions. It doesn’t mean that there are specific questions that are “right,” but that you are asking the “right” type of question. Jesus crafted questions that were tightly targeted to the person he was speaking to.

Helpful? Tip Me With a Coffee!

What Type of Discipleship Questions Start Spiritual Conversations?

Understanding the categories of questions and their characteristics will help you choose the right question to peel back the next layer in a conversation.

Two broad categories of questions are open-ended and closed-ended questions. Each type of question serves a purpose.

Open-ended Questions vs. Closed-ended Questions

Closed-ended questions are helpful to quickly understand where someone stands on a specific issue or idea. They can be answered with a simple “yes,” “no,” or some other one-word answer. However, once you know where someone stands and are ready to understand WHY they hold certain beliefs, it’s time to move to open-ended questions.

Characteristics of Open-ended Discipleship Questions

Here are a few characteristics of an open-ended question:

Open-ended questions

• require an answer of more than a couple of words

• allow someone to give a free-from answer

• lead to more open-ended questions

• allow you to find out more than you hoped for

• uncover motivations and reasons for beliefs

• allow you to engage in deeper-level discussions

• often start with “how,” “why,” or “what.”

  ---

What Type of Questions Dive Deeper than Surface Opinions?

You can ask open-ended questions that elicit either emotion or thought. Both types of questions can take a conversation to the next level. Emotional, open-ended questions often prompt people to want to engage and delve deeper. Thoughtful, open-ended questions often prompt people to reason with the other person.

It is difficult for people to be emotional and logical at the same time. Therefore, if you want someone to reason with you, questions that evoke emotion are not necessarily the best route to take. When people are experiencing emotions, they tend not to be willing to challenge their logic about an issue.

On the other hand, if you want to evoke emotion to draw someone into a deeper conversation, steer clear of thinking questions.

Each Open-ended Question is a Stepping Stone to the Deep Waters

Remember trying to make your way across a creek as a kid: you would take one step on a rock emerging from the water's surface, then look for the next one. That’s similar to navigating through a conversation to explore deeper waters.

As you progress through the talk, try to craft your next question in a way that will go just one baby step deeper. If you do this well, it will only take a few questions to get to the things that really make a difference. The twenty questions below follow that progression, allowing you to get a feel for taking baby steps.

20 Discipleship Questions to Take a Conversation to the Next Level

With all that in mind, here are 20 general questions to help you move a conversation from surface to spiritual or casual to crucial. Remember, these are just sample questions. To be most effective, practice crafting questions that are relevant to the conversation at hand.

1. How did that make you feel?

2. What do you think about ___________?

3. How do you feel about that idea?

4. Did you experience that when you were younger?

5. Are you familiar with the history behind that?

6. Who influenced you most on that idea?

7. Where do you think that idea comes from?

8. How does that change your perspective?

9. How does that line up with your values?

10. What values do you have that drove that decision?

11. Where does that lead if nothing changes?

12. Do you think there is a purpose for that?

13. How can that tragedy be used for good in your life?

14. What will life look like down the road if that problem is not solved?

15. What’s God up to in all this?

16. Does that line up with how God designed things to work?

17. How does God factor into that experience?

18. Does faith impact how you feel about _______________?

19. Does your faith change how you will move forward with this?

20. Where do you see God moving in all of this?

    ---

Some Helpful Resources for Making Disciples

Excellent online resources are available to sharpen your discipling skills and help you ask discipleship-related questions. In fact, some of this content was inspired by teachings from Dan Grider and the Ignite Discipleship Network. Also, make sure to check out Dan Grider’s book on Crucial Spiritual Conversations (click here).

If you want further training and support, contact me here.

They just do. It takes tremendous effort to engage with people who disagree with us or see life through a different lens or set of values. And we often aren't willing to put in the effort to bridge the gap.

It’s too…

• 😫 painful

• 😖 frustrating

• ☹️ difficult

• 🥱 time-consuming

• 🤨 inconvenient

• etc.

These emotions quietly become the reason we never obey the last command Jesus gave before He ascended to the Father.

💥 HOT TAKE: I do not have to rebel against the Great Commission to disobey it. I just have to keep choosing people who look like me, vote like me, spend like me, and believe like me. And when I make the choice to stay in my lane, obedience to that commandment dies slowly, albeit politely.

My wife loves this painting that hangs in our home. A family member painted it, and she's hung it in every home we’ve lived in for 20 years. Honestly, I never got much out of it. But I think it speaks to her of the innocence of children before prejudice ever sinks its claws into our hearts and minds.

So let me ask you the question I have to ask myself often.

Who is not in your disciple-making circle simply because you do not like them or agree with them or vote with them or understand them?

⏲️ Contemplate that before you move on.

Jesus Said “GO” Because He Loves Every Person

The last words Jesus left His disciples were not a suggestion. They were a command to GO. Go and make disciples. Where you live. The next town over. All the way to the other side of the earth. (Acts 1:8, NKV. New Kevin Version. HA!)

A disciple is a follower of the teachings of Jesus. And Jesus said EVERYONE is a potential disciple.

That means…

• The person who votes differently.

• The person who talks differently.

• The person who worships differently.

Lots of those people are wildly different from you.

God commanded you to go anyway.

Read Acts 17:26-27 again with fresh eyes. God decided beforehand when the nations would rise and fall, and He set the boundaries of their dwelling places, so they would seek Him, perhaps feel their way toward Him, and find Him.

He determined the boundaries.

Which means the neighbor you avoid is not just a neighborhood dark spot. The coworker who drives you crazy in the next cubicle is not simply a nuisance. God assembled your oikos while you were not even paying attention, and He did it on purpose. Your mission field is already built into the architecture of your ordinary life, in the places where you live, learn, work, and play.

🚫 You do not get to hand-pick your mission field.

🟢 But you do have the responsibility to steward it.

Jesus Broke Down the Wall So He Would Get the Glory

Paul writes to the Ephesians about a literal wall. In the temple, there was a barrier that Gentiles were not permitted to cross. Cross it, and you could die for it. That wall was architecture, but it was also theology, ethnicity, class, and centuries of accumulated contempt. It stood between the outer Court of the Gentiles and the sacred inner courts. Paul calls it the “dividing wall of hostility” in Ephesians 2:14. And he said Jesus came, died, and rose again that it could be torn down until nothing was left between the Jews and Gentiles other than whether they follow Jesus or not.

Here is the accountability moment. If Jesus demolished the wall between Jew and Gentile, what exactly are we doing rebuilding smaller ones? Political walls. Socio-economic walls. Denominational walls. Lifestyle walls. Musical preference walls.

Jesus is in the demolition business. Why do we keep building new walls and widening the gap of the things that divide us?

Inscription found by archaeologists that marked the Wall of Hostility that Paul speaks of in Ephesians 2:14. The inscription reads: “No foreigner may enter within the barricade which surrounds the sanctuary and enclosure. Anyone who is caught doing so will have himself to blame for his ensuing death.”

How Do I Connect with People Who Are Different from Me?

Great question. This is where we stop nodding and start working.

Here are three things that came out of a conversation I had with Keith Matthews, a Christian healthcare worker at an AIDS clinic in Alabama. Keith lives this. He does not theorize about it. Keith, a devout follower of Jesus, spends every day with people who are VERY different from him. Here is what he says it takes to bring them the Kingdom.

1. Find the Common Ground

Common ground is the doorway to the heart.

Racial, socio-economic, lifestyle, theological, it does not matter. There is always something. A belief. A sports team. A shared frustration with the price of groceries.

It may even be a television show.

Keith found common ground with an atheist boss over The Office. That was the door. That was the on-ramp to conversations that went somewhere. Keith also said it was just fun to laugh with her.

This is Step One of the pathway, and most of us skip it because it feels too small to count. It counts. The average person has about 85 casual conversations a week. Dan Grider challenges us to push that toward 200. Casual becomes crucial. Crucial becomes spiritual. Stepping stone, then wait, then the next stone.

You do not build a bridge by jumping. You build it by asking one more question that leads to one more question.

2. See Them as a Product of Their Past, Not as Your Enemy

Anytime I approach someone through the lens of how they are against me, against what I believe, or against how I live, my defenses go up before they even open their mouths. I am no longer a disciple-maker at that point.

I am a combatant.

But when I discipline myself to see a person through the filter of the brokenness and wounds in their story, something shifts. Compassion becomes possible. Love becomes possible. And that stays true even when I strongly disagree with their theology or their values or their politics.

Notice the word I used. Discipline. This is not a feeling that naturally bubbles up. It is a practice you choose.

Try this one. Pray the B.L.E.S.S. model over the person you like least in your oikos.

• 🤕 Body needs.

• 📎 Labor needs.

• 😥 Emotional needs.

• 👫 Social needs.

• ✟ Spiritual needs.

Pray it for thirty days and see if your heart does not move.

❤️‍🔥 It is very hard to stay angry at someone you are actively begging God to heal.

3. Ask Jesus to Let You See Them Through His Eyes

I know. It sounds like a bumper sticker. It is also true.

🙏 It is hard to dislike the people you pray for by name. Especially when you start asking God to show you the hurt or the deception underneath the behavior.

And on the theological stuff? Nobody has the market cornered on 100 percent of truth. Not you. Not me. Not your favorite preacher guy. Approach people with humility and patience.

Look at what Jesus prayed in John 17:20-21. He is hours from the cross. He can pray for anything. And He prays for us, believers who were not even alive yet, that we would be ONE the way He and the Father are ONE.

Read that again. His standard for our unity is the unity of the Trinity❗️

Then He gives the reason. So that the world may believe the Father sent Him. Our division is not just an internal family problem. It is an evangelism problem. Every wall we maintain is a counter-argument to the gospel we claim to believe.

Put It to Work Today

Reading this and feeling convicted does nothing. Obedience happens after we read the article.

Pick one.

• Pull out your prayer map. Add the name of one person you have been avoiding. Not the easy name. The one that made your stomach drop while you were reading this.

• Pray B.L.E.S.S. over them for the next seven days. Body, Labor, Emotions, Social, Spiritual.

• Have one casual conversation this week with someone you would normally walk past. Find the common ground. That is it. That is the whole assignment.

• Ask one crucial question. How are YOU doing with all of that?

Your faith is not permission to avoid people who are unlike you. It is a mandate to move toward them.

There is tremendous richness on the other side of that discomfort. Some of the deepest Kingdom relationships of my life started with people I had already written off in my head.

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Who is the name?

✏️ Drop their first name in the comments and let’s pray together. I’ll pray specifically for that person by name, and I know you will too.

If you are ready to stop reading about disciple-making and start doing it with people who will hold you to it, join the Premium Cohort. That is where we work the tools, work the pathway, and check on each other’s obedience.

Upgrade here and let’s get to work.

Come on. LET’S do this together. GO!

SO, I WENT TO WORK.

This means that my book, Hand to the Plow, can now follow you wherever you go.

• 🚗 In the truck on the way to the job site

• 🏋️ On the treadmill at 5:30 in the morning

• 🥾 On the Hiking Trail on a Sunday afternoon in the woods

• 🏠 And especially on the walk through your own neighborhood

That last one is not an accident.

If you listen to the chapter about your oikos, your relational and geographic network of relationships, while you are literally walking past the houses in your neighborhood, something clicks that does not make as much sense in a recliner munching on that bag of Cheetos.

Those are some of the reasons I read the book to you in my own voice.

🎧 Find the Audiobook on Your Favorite Audiobook App!
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Yes, That’s My Voice

When the paperback and Kindle versions were released, the number one request I got wasn't for a study guide or a workbook.

It was my voice reading my book.

People did not just want the book read to them. They wanted it read in my voice, with my inflections, and with the fire that was in my belly when I put pen to paper six months ago.

I get it. This material was not born in a classroom. It came out of twenty-plus years of prayer walks, awkward first conversations, cafe tables, campfires, failures I would rather not talk about, and a whole lot of ordinary people who said “YES” to the mission of Jesus in the places where they live, learn, work, and play.

So I sat down and narrated all of it myself.

• Every chapter.

• Every story.

• Every “It’s Your Move” challenge at the end of each chapter.

  ---

A few fun facts for you:

🎙️ 7 hours and 12 minutes of finished audio
⏱️ About 40 minutes per chapter, which is one commute, one workout, or one long walk around the neighborhood
🏠 Over 40 hours of recording in my home office to get those 7 hours right

Do the math on that, and you will figure out pretty quickly that I am not professional voice talent. 🤣😂🤣 HAHA!

But here is what I can promise you. It is from the heart, and it is sincere. You will hear where I get fired up. You will hear where I slow down. You will hear a guy who actually believes this stuff because he has lived it.

🚫 I would not trust anyone else to do that.

What You’re Actually Getting

Here is the promise of the book, in plain language.

By the time you finish, you will have a clear, simple, reproducible pathway for making disciples that works in real life. Not in a church program or a structured ministry environment. But in the ordinary geography of your everyday life.

What we walk through it together:

✔︎ Being a disciple before making one. You cannot reproduce what you have not become.
✔︎ The behaviors and mindsets that close the gap between thinking about disciple-making and actually doing it.
✔︎ Who can make a disciple (spoiler: you’re already qualify).
✔︎ The Prayer Map, and why naming the people around you changes them and changes you.
✔︎ Disciple-Making Teams, because Jesus never sent anybody out alone.
✔︎ The Jesus-Pattern Pathway, from a spiritual conversation to a Seeker Group to an X-Group to a simple church that multiplies.
✔︎ The Campfire, and what a gathering of disciples is actually for.

I need to make this clear, because it is the whole reason the book exists.

I did not write this for professional ministers.

I did not write it for the seminary-trained, the platform builders, or the people with a title in front of their name.

I wrote it for the business owner whose conversations with coworkers feel like more than small talk. For the stay-at-home mom whose neighborhood feels like a mission field she does not know how to engage. For the young adult who is done with a Christianity that asks them to come to church but never trains them to BE the church. For that 72-year-old woman in the book who has everything she needs and does not know it yet.

❤️‍🔥 If you are a follower of Jesus who simply wants your life to matter for the Kingdom of God, this book is for you.

The pathway is not mine. Jesus walked it with twelve ordinary, unimpressive, unqualified men, and it worked so well that within a few generations it transformed the entire known world.

And it still works.

✔ Go Get It

🎧 Open your favorite listening app. Search Hand to the Plow Kevin E Beasley. Hit play on your next drive.

Then do two things for me.

1️⃣ Leave a rating and a review on the platform where you listen. That is how ordinary disciple-makers find it.
2️⃣ Tell me in the comments which platform you’re listening on, and who you’re going to hand it to next.

✏️ Give me their first name so I can pray for them by name this week. I promise you, I will lift them up to the Lord!

🧑🏻‍🌾 Now, put your Hand To The Plow and Don’t Look Back!

About a year ago, I released Part 1 of this series without expecting an avalanche of responses. Boy, was I naive! That first article was about resources required for the traditional Sunday attractional model of church versus the non-traditional model of simple churches in homes, cafes, coffee shops, and other gathering spaces.

That article took off and created a ton of great discussion and contemplation.

THE SKINNY ON THAT ARTICLE❓

Conservatively, it requires an annual budget of about $3.5 million to run one megachurch of 2,500. That’s about $1,400 per person. Newer studies put it closer to $4.5- $7 million annually.

This is a general breakdown of where that money goes. 1

• Staff Salaries and Benefits: 45% to 55% ($1.1M – $1.9M) for pastoral, administrative, and ministry staff.

• Facilities and Operations: 20% to 30% ($500K – $1.05M) for mortgages, maintenance, insurance, and utilities.

• Ministries and Local Outreach: 10% to 15% ($250K – $525K) for internal programs, youth groups, and community events.

• Missions and Charitable Giving: 10% to 15% ($250K – $525K) for external and global missionary support.

• Savings and Debt Repayment: 5% to 10% ($125K – $350K) for emergency reserves and capital debt.

  ---

🪙 On the other side of the coin, the simple church requires around $40 a person to run a hundred simple churches of around 25 people each. Same reach, richer relationships, simplified model, a fraction of the cost.

• Facilities ($0): You use existing living rooms, backyards, or basements. Utilities may bump up slightly, but host families usually absorb this cost.

• Food & Fellowship ($20 – $100+ per meeting): This is usually the largest ongoing expense. Many house churches offset this by running potluck-style meals where everyone contributes.

• Media & Tech ($0 – $50 per month): You do not need expensive sound systems. Costs may include a Spotify/Apple Music subscription for worship playlists or a streaming license (like CCLI) if you project lyrics.

• Curriculum & Bibles ($0 – $100 upfront): Many group studies, reading plans, and discipleship materials are free online. You may occasionally buy physical books or study guides.

• Legal & Administration ($0 – $500 upfront): If you choose to formalize as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit for tax-deductible donations, expect state filing fees and accounting software costs (like QuickBooks). Many house churches operate informally without this.

• Childcare ($0 – $80 per meeting): Adults often take turns watching children for free. If the space is tight, hiring a local teenager or babysitter is a small collective expense.

When I was researching the two models, Gemini created this fun table.

⚖️ Traditional vs. Simple Church Costs

Dozens of you wrote back.

🎉 Some of you cheered.
⚠️ Some of you pushed back.
❓And a handful of you asked a question that inspired the second and third installments.

Some honest questions deserved thoughtful answers.

That’s How One Article Became a Series of Conversations!

Click Here to Read Part 1 | Click Here to Read Part 2

Part 2 was about RELATIONSHIPS.

Why twenty-five people multiply faster than twenty-five hundred, and why the 59 one-anothers of Scripture can’t survive in a crowd. Again, popular article with some excellent responses and questions!

Now, it’s time to tackle another honest question.

“If this really is the better way, why does almost nobody do it?”

Fair. Let’s answer it.

I don’t think the answer is money, and I don’t think it’s strategy.

Last week I posted a survey on my platform that asked my readers:

33% of respondents said the reason people aren't making disciples is that they are…

📆 TOO BUSY TO INVEST!

Although that question is a little different from the one we are exploring today, I would bet the farm it would be the same answer. I’m not trying to win an argument today. I’m trying to help you see something hiding in the bushes of the modern attractional church.

Who Actually Got Jesus’ Investment?

Here’s a question worth slowing down for: how many people did Jesus actually spend His life with?

• ⛪︎ Not preach to.

• ❤️‍🩹 Not heal.

• 🍕 Not feed.

Spend His life with.

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When you read the Gospels looking for that, a strange pattern surfaces. Jesus could preach to thousands, and He did. He could have built the first megachurch in human history with a single afternoon of 🥖 loaves and 🐟 fish.

But that is not where He put His hours.

Look at the groups of people Jesus invested in and the amount of his margin they got.

• 🎯 The three (Peter, James, and John) got ALL of Jesus.

  • They saw Him transfigured (Matthew 17:1).

  • They were in the room when He raised Jairus’ daughter (Mark 5:37).

  • They were with Him in the Garden of Gethsemane on the worst night of His life (Matthew 26:37).

• 👉 The nine got a lot of Jesus.

  • Traveling and eating.

  • Questioning and being questioned.

  • Trained in the ordinary, unglamorous rhythm of just following Him around.

• 👉 The seventy-two got some of Jesus.

  • Occasional teachings

  • Sent out (Luke 10)

  • Hard sayings

• 👉 The crowds got a little of Jesus.

  • Healing.

  • Deliverance.

  • Some bread and fish.

  • And, as far as we can tell, only about eight long-form sermons.

🤔 Consider this 🤔

If Jesus is our model, and the crowds got the least of His time, why have we built almost our entire church economy around serving the crowd?

I’m not asking that to make you feel guilty.

I’m asking because I built my own ministry life around the crowd for years and never once thought to question it.

❓Have you❓

And notice what Jesus was not limited by. He wasn’t short on resources. He wasn’t short on charisma. He could out-preach and out-heal anyone who ever lived.

He chose the small circle on purpose❗️

So the question isn’t whether we can gather a crowd. Plenty of people can. The question is whether we’re brave enough to do what Jesus did with His busy calendar and limited resources.

The Mantra that Keeps Me Awake

There’s a sentence in my book, Hand to the Plow, that reorganized how I think about all of this. The phrase was introduced to me by Dan Grider of Ignite Disciple-Making Network, and it changed most of how I view ministry, particularly disciple-making and church planting.

💥 More time with fewer people produces greater results

Read it again slowly, because it runs against nearly everything the last few decades of church culture trained us to believe.

We were taught to broadcast to the masses. Reach as many people as possible with the best message. Scale the platform. Grow the audience. Invest in systems that can handle exponential growth.

And to be clear, that instinct is not all bad. Jesus preached to thousands. Hebrews tells us not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together (Hebrews 10:25). Gathering matters!

But ask yourself an honest question: did the crowds change the world?

The five thousand ate the fish and went home.

The twelve were incredibly broken,

• One betrayed Him

• One denied Him

• Most of them scattered when it got hard

But they turned the known world upside down inside a couple of generations.

So which one did Jesus bet on?

Think about the math for a second. If you invest deeply in two people this year, and they each invest in two next year, and that pattern holds, by year ten you have touched over a thousand people.

Not “touched” like a Sunday handshake.

• Trained.

• Equipped.

• Multiplying.

Every one of them reproducing the same pattern in someone else.

That’s not a program. That’s a movement.

Now compare that to standing in front of a thousand people every single Sunday and preaching the most Christ-exalting sermon ever delivered. If those thousand people never reproduce a single disciple in their everyday lives, what do you actually have?

You have attendance, but not necessarily multiplication.

Which raises the real question of this whole series.

🎯 How Are We Keeping Score of Our Fruitfulness 🎯

The Obstacle We Have To Wrestle to the Ground

I want to be VERY CLEAR, because I love the local church in all its forms, and I am not throwing rocks at the form. Some of the most faithful people I have ever known are carrying loads inside big churches that I could not carry.

🚫 This is not an anti-church argument. It never has been.

But I have to ask an honest question.

What happens to a leader’s time when the church becomes a business?

Think about what it actually takes to run a 2,500-member organization. A multi-million-dollar building that has to be heated, cooled, insured, and paid down. A staff that has to be hired, managed, reviewed, and paid every two weeks. A weekend production that has to be planned, rehearsed, and pulled off at a high level fifty-two times a year.

• 💰Budgets.

• 👨🏻‍💼Boards.

• 📽️ Slide Decks.

• 📝 Liability.

None of that is sin. All of these are real-life issues.

And all of it quietly eats the one resource disciple-making needs most:

❤️‍🔥 More Time with Fewer People ❤️‍🔥

Here’s the trap that I’ve watched good men and women walk into with the best intentions. The bigger the container gets, the more of the leader’s life the container consumes, until the very people called to make disciples no longer have the margin to spend all of themselves on three, a lot of themselves on nine others, and some of themselves on seventy-two.

So we do the reasonable thing.

We delegate the depth. We professionalize the one-anothers. We build small groups inside the big group and hope the real thing happens somewhere down in there.

And I just want to gently ask: if the deep work has to happen in the small group anyway, what is all the machinery around it actually for?

Here’s the part that lands closest to home for most of us reading this, because most of us are not the pastor. We’re the everyday disciple with a job, a family, and a calendar that’s already full.

⛪️ What does the crowd model quietly ask of you?

It asks you to show up.

• Attend.

• Serve.

• Volunteer.

• Fill a slot.

And those aren’t bad things.

But be honest about what they cost. Every hour the machine asks of your limited margin is an hour you did not spend going deep with the two or three people in your own oikos, your relational web of neighbors, coworkers, family, and friends where you

🏠 live,
👩🏻‍🎓 learn,
📎 work,
⚽️ and play.

Ephesians 4 says the gathered church exists to equip the saints for the work of ministry. That’s a church sending people ➡ OUT into disciple-making, not just receiving people 🔄 IN for consumption. So here’s the question that haunts me for the ordinary believer:

That’s not an accusation.

It’s a question I had to answer for my own life. What’s your honest answer?

You Can’t Get Jesus’ Results From a Not-Jesus Behavior

If we want the results of Jesus, we have to practice the principles of Jesus, walk in the behaviors of Jesus, and embrace the values of Jesus.

We love the results Jesus got. A movement that outlived Him, outran His calendar, and eventually crossed every border on earth. But those results came out of a method. More of Himself to fewer people, on purpose, for three years, with 🚫 no building, 🚫 no budget, and 🚫 no platform to protect.

So here’s the question underneath all my other questions:

Do we want His results badly enough to actually try His method?

I don’t think the answer is automatic, because His method costs something.

• It’s slower.

• It’s smaller.

• It doesn’t photograph well.

There’s no stage, no lights, and nobody claps when you spend a Tuesday night pouring your life into three ordinary people who may never know your name is on a book.

But it multiplies.

And the crowd, for all its energy, mostly just stays a crowd.

You Can’t Score a Baseball Game on a Football Scoreboard

Can you imagine a baseball game being scored on a football scoreboard? Seven points is a completely different story depending on which game you’re watching. A touchdown means nothing on a diamond.

One is a 😬 NAIL-BITER, and the other is a 🤩 BLOWOUT!

That is why we feel like such failures when we try to measure a simple church with a megachurch scoreboard.

For decades, the primary metrics of church health have been the same three numbers: attendance, giving, and program participation.

• Butts in seats.

• Dollars in the plate.

• Volunteers on the roster.

And those numbers are not worthless. They tell you something. A growing church often has real spiritual vitality. Generosity is a discipleship issue. Volunteerism reflects engagement.

But there’s a problem with making them your scorecard: you can hit every single one of those numbers and still have zero multiplication of actual disciples of Jesus Christ❗️

• You can have a full parking lot and empty hearts.

• You can have a packed weekend service and a generation of young adults walking out the back door for good.

• You can have a growing budget and a shrinking Kingdom footprint.

I’ve watched it happen in churches I have loved. The scoreboard looks great on the surface while underneath it a movement has stalled. Jesus’ Great Commission was not “Go and fill auditoriums.” It was “Go and make disciples.”

So what would actually happen if we kept score of that?

Try measuring these instead:

• ✔ How many spiritual conversations did we have this week with people who aren’t yet following Jesus?

• ✔ Is each of us currently investing deeply in two or three people who are on a disciple-making journey?

• ✔ Have the people we’re investing in begun to invest in others?

• ✔ Are we praying, specifically and by name, for the people in our oikos who are far from God?

• ✔ Is anyone in our lives moving closer to Jesus because of our intentional presence?

Feel how different those questions are from “Did I attend enough this month?” They should feel different. They are scoring an entirely different game.

And here’s the quiet miracle of it: changing your scoreboard changes what you see. Start counting Kingdom multiplication instead of congregational participation, and you start noticing things you used to walk right past. The coworker who asks the unexpected question about faith. The neighbor going through a divorce who just needs someone to sit with her. The everyday moments God set up as your mission field all along.

❤️‍🔥 Change what you measure, and you change what you look for. Change what you look for, and you change how you live.

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So Let Me Leave You With Questions, Not a Verdict

I told you at the top I wasn’t here to win an argument. I meant it. I would rather you come to your own conclusions in the quiet than take mine on loan.

So deeply consider these for a minute:

• Who got all of you last week? Your calendar already answered that one. Was it a few people, a crowd, or a machine?

• What scoreboard have you been checking to feel like your spiritual life is “winning”? And where did you get that scoreboard in the first place?

• If you genuinely wanted the results of Jesus, what would you have to stop doing to make room for His method?

  ---

You don’t have to blow anything up to answer these. You don’t have to quit your church this week. You just have to be honest about the game you’re actually playing, and the game Jesus played.

More time with fewer people produces greater results.

• He gave everything to three.

• A lot to nine others.

• Some to seventy-two.

• A little to the crowds.

And the crowd is the part we kept.

What would change if you flipped it?

✏️ In the comments, tell me: who are the two or three people you could start giving more of yourself to this week? First names only. Let’s pray for them together. 👇

If you want to learn more about Simple Church, prayer mapping, and the tools that make relational multiplication actually work, DM me or go to disciplemakingcollective.com!

From the Samaritan woman at the well to the Good Samaritan in the New Testament, the Bible uses stories of this people group to instruct us how to live our lives to honor God. What is a Samaritan? And who are these people whom the nation of Israel has looked down upon for over 3,000 years?

It’s easy to think of the people groups in the Bible as virtually fictional. But history proves that the cultures of the Old and New Testament are real, live humans having real-life experiences.

🤯 Get this 🤯

As of 2024, there are around 900 Samaritans, split between Israel (some 460 in Holon) and the West Bank (some 380 in Kiryat Luza) on Mount Gerizim near Nablus. (see Wikipedia) That means that around half of them live on the same mountain that they occupied 3,000 years ago.

That makes them one of the world’s smallest surviving ethnoreligious groups. To put the fragility in perspective, their numbers reached a record low of around 100 people during the early modern period and have slowly climbed back since.

💥 These Samaritans are the same people represented by the woman at the well, as told in John 4!

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Let that sink in!

Over nine hundred living Samaritans in Palestine today! It’s hard to imagine in our post-biblical mindset that a group of people has lived in the same exact spot on the globe for over 3,000 years!

Who Are the Samaritans?

The History of Samaria

It’s hard to settle 100% on the origins of the modern-day Samaritans. However, we can find the birth of the city called Samaria quite easily.

Almost 1,000 years before Christ was born, Solomon was completing his reign over the Jews. Following his death, his son, Rehoboam, inherited the throne of Israel. Immediately, a leader named Jeroboam, who had served in his father’s Kingdom, surfaced with a challenging mandate. For all Israel to embrace Rehoboam as King, he must lighten the load of taxation and oppression (some things NEVER change 😂🤣😂).

King Solomon had placed Jeroboam in charge of forced labor in the previous Kingdom. He saw firsthand how much damage excessive taxation and oppression dealt to the people of Israel.

“Your father made our yoke hard; now therefore lighten the hard service of your father and his heavy yoke which he put on us, and we will serve you.”

Jeroboam (1 Kings 12:4)

Rehoboam ignored wise counselors pleading to lighten the load. He denied Jeroboam the relief he asked for. As a result, the Kingdom split into two as 10 of the 12 tribes of Israel pledged loyalty to Jeroboam.

Jeroboam traveled north to establish a new capital and retained the name Israel. Rehoboam stayed in Jerusalem to build Judah, the southern Kingdom.

A few generations after Jeroboam died, Omri, the King of the Northern Kingdom, took over. Omri purchased a hill from a fellow named Shemer, and that hill became known as Samaria. Israel had a new capital to replace the temple city in Jerusalem. The town sat beside the coveted Mt Gerizim.

Samaria was born.

Jews setting up house in the new city of Samaria took on Gentile wives from the area. Israel viewed the resulting generation as a half-breed, unclean, rebellious people.

So, What’s Wrong with Samaritans?

It doesn’t get much worse than half-breed in the Jewish culture. After all, the Messiah was coming through the line of the Jews. He must. So it was imperative to keep the bloodline pure. God was serious about that.

But if there was anything more vile than a half-breed, it was a half-breed who demanded independence from the people God has called out to be His representatives – his nation.

Samaritans also set up their own “temple” on Mt. Gerizim, where we find this people group today. Losing access to Jerusalem meant they needed a new place to worship. And if that wasn’t egregious enough for the people of the Southern Kingdom, they claimed their place was the proper place of worship. To this day, they claim that they are the protector of the true law of God.

Mt. Gerizim became the central place of worship for these half-breed traitors who left to form their own Kingdom.

What’s so Special about Mt. Gerizim?

Mt. Gerizim is a 2,600-foot-tall mountain just south of the important city of Shechem. Just after Joshua defeated the city of Ai and before entering the Promised Land, God proclaimed that Mt. Gerizim was the place of blessing while Mt. Ebal was the place of curse. Therefore, the Samaritans believe that before Jerusalem was blessed, there was their mountain.

When the Lord your God has brought you into the land you are entering to possess, you are to proclaim on Mount Gerizim the blessings, and on Mount Ebal the curses.

Deuteronomy 11:29

You see this fact in the story of the woman at the well. It was a point of major conflict between the northern and southern kingdoms of Israel for a thousand years prior to this conversation at the well.

¹⁹ “Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. ²⁰ Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”

John 4:19

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The Samaritans are a people group who are half-breed, rebellious people who worshipped at an illegitimate temple. Maybe we’re starting to get the picture.

People of the Southern Kingdom, inhabitants of Jerusalem, the very city of David, wanted nothing to do with this vile group of people lest they be contaminated by the darkness that prevailed over them.

These people weren’t just different; they were defiant!

Who would deny temple worship? Who would dare contaminate the bloodline and risk compromising the lineage of the Messiah, the Savior of Israel – the next conquering King of the Jews?

Enter Jesus,

• the rabbi who could have chosen anyone to be his follower, but instead chose the Hebrew school flunkies who had to return home and work their parents’ businesses.

• the teacher who tapped as his student the scum who lined his pockets with silver he skimmed off the top of oppressive Roman taxes he collected from his very own people.

• the leader who invited into his circle the zealot who had probably sliced the throat of some innocent Roman soldier who had simply done what he was commanded to do by his commander.

Into town walked the long-awaited Messiah. He stopped to take a break at the well, most likely not stopping for a drink, but for a radical encounter. He could have played it safe and found a religious male Samaritan and still made His point. But that was not enough.

She jerked back, startled that a man would be standing at the well in the middle of the day. She came late because she couldn’t stand to see the others and feel so guilty, so lowly – not one more time.

He saw her, not as a woman who couldn’t keep a husband and took whatever she could get just to avoid the desperation of loneliness she felt when she went to bed alone at night without a man to give her life meaning.

He chose her because she was helpless, unable to fix herself and unable to change the opinion of others in town. Jesus engaged with her because she was the enemy of His lineage. The Messiah initiated a conversation with her because she was a representative of the people who worshipped on another mountain. He chose her because he looked past her DNA and beyond her failures and looked into her heart.

It was the same reason a rebellious half-breed, spiritually illegitimate Samaritan became the hero of the parable He would later tell when He looked an expert of the law in the eye who was trying to test Him.

He proclaimed through action – not just words – that neither race, religion, failure, gender, history, appearance, status, doubt, reputation, illegitimacy, relationships, worship style, nor anything else you could possibly imagine on this planet defines you. What He says about you and how you respond to His proclamation is your true identity. And His final mandate to his followers as He was departing was to baptize ALL people, teaching them to obey his commands!

Why Does It Matter?

900 Samaritans have been worshipping on that same mountain for over 3,000 long years! That lady at the well pointed to that very mountain in our story of Jesus.

They are still stuck between two cultures – even today! In the daytime among the public, they speak Arabic to keep the peace with those around them. But, when they return home, they speak the ancient language of God’s people. They still sacrifice on their holy mountain. Samaritans still celebrate the holy days of the Jews. They even claim to be the protectors of the original law of Moses.

The community was almost wiped off the face of the Earth in the early 20th century. Their community dipped below 150 people! But they are still here. Still holding fast to their identity.

Although still clinging to the Pentateuch and waiting for their Messiah, they stand as a reminder. Jesus stood beside a water well two millennia ago and proclaimed that anyone could come to Him. He would fill their otherwise unquenchable thirst for life!

Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.

Jesus

Why do Samaritans Matter?

They matter because Jesus made a Samaritan the hero of a very important story to teach us about his Grace. Because a woman who was hopeless and spiritually thirsty found what she needed so that we would have a signpost to find what we need.

And because WE ARE ALL scarred. We are all lonely. We are all half-breed rebels in some way or another. It matters because HER story is OUR story. THEIR grace is OUR grace. It matters because no matter where you or I find ourselves, He is a spring of water welling up to eternal life.

DRINK DEEPLY!

Check out his Substack, platform, The Christian Historian, HERE.

Article by Jeremiah Kharkovits

You likely heard the following statement or at least something of the sort: “science and faith are enemies.” This is, of course, not true, but why? And if it’s not true, why does it even matter?

In this article, I plan to unpack that, while also showing that many of the scientists that we know believed in God.

Where It Came From

Before I get to the real juice of the article, it is important to mention when the myth of science and faith being enemies really began. The myth comes largely from two 19th-century books — John William Draper’s History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science (1874) and Andrew Dickson White’s A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (1896). Both volumes paint science as the hero and faith as the villain.

And that thinking is just false.

What The Men That Built Modern Science Believed

In addition to pushing the myth, many secularist individuals make it seem like many of the scientists who shaped modern science agree with their view. Now, this is very simply debunked.

• Nicolaus Copernicus was a Catholic canon who dedicated his heliocentric model to the Pope.

• Johannes Kepler described his work on planetary motion as “thinking God’s thoughts after him.”

• Isaac Newton wrote more about theology than he ever did about physics, or science for that matter.

• Robert Boyle, the father of modern chemistry, funded lectures defending Christianity against atheism and left money in his will to keep them going after he died.

• Gregor Mendel, the monk who founded modern genetics, ran his pea-plant experiments in a monastery garden. Sounds like they didn’t believe the myth, “science and faith are enemies and cannot coexist,” after all.

Furthermore, other instrumental scientists like Michael Faraday, James Clerk Maxwell, John Ray, Francis Bacon, Lord Kelvin, Blaise Pascal, and others were firm believers in God, while being scientists. Their work built the foundations of modern science.

Then Why Does The Myth Still Exist?

Many people deny the truth and the facts because it either doesn’t fit their worldview, feels uncomfortable, or contradicts what they previously thought. Additionally, men such as Richard Dawkins have promoted the myth to oblivion, which has influenced thousands, if not millions, of people worldwide.

Lastly, when people turn away from God, their understanding and thinking have to fit that, which then leads to the fabrication of myths like, ”science and faith are enemies.”

Why The Truth Matters

Firstly, it matters because a myth is destroyed and a truth is restored.

Secondly, it reframes the relationship from combat to origin.

The conflict myth assumes science happened despite religion. The real history shows science emerged largely because of a Christian view of the world.

Lastly, if the myth is true, then a person cannot have faith and work in science; thus, they have to choose one or the other. Dismantling the myth restores the reality that both can coexist peacefully.

Now, this article isn’t meant to say that all major scientists were Christians or that they all believed in a Creator, but rather that without the work of scientists who were Christians, we would not have modern science.

That’s the story I wanted to tell at length in my new book, The Greatest Christian Scientists, which is the first volume in The Greatest Christians Series.

It walks through the lives of believers like Newton, Boyle, and others who believed in God and so saw no conflict between Christianity and science.

If you’ve ever been told you have to choose between believing in God and thinking seriously about science, I’d encourage you to look at the actual lives of the people who built the scientific method in the first place.

Their lives are more compelling than any argument I could make for them.

Somewhere along the way, we started believing disciple-making belonged to the professionals, the pastors, the seminary grads, the ones with titles and microphones. But the Great Commission wasn’t a job opportunity for the qualified. It was a command handed to ordinary, plain-clothes, willing people.

• 🚣🏻 Unclean Fisherman

• 💰Tax-Collecting Traitors

• ⚔️ Violent Zealots

Here are eleven principles from my new book, Hand to the Plow: The Field Guide for Everyday Disciple-Makers. There is one thought from each chapter that proves that disciple-making is for you.

Note: These 11 principles come straight from my new book, “Hand to the Plow.”
Each principle represents a chapter in the book.

Want to dig deeper?

Get the book at the link below and use SUBSTACK as a discount code to receive 20% Off (US ORDERS ONLY).

Get 20% Off Hand to the Plow!

Chapter #1. The Great Commission was a command to common followers of Jesus, not a job description for professionals.

You were sent the day you said yes. Stop waiting for

• 🫅🏻 a title

• 👩🏻‍🎓 a degree

• 🚦a green light

Start seeing the people already in front of you as your assignment.

Chapter #2. Disciple-making is a lifestyle woven into the life you already live, not a program you add to your calendar.

Don’t block out “ministry time.” Bring Jesus into the commute, the carpool line, and the lunch break. Leverage the rhythms already on your schedule.

Chapter #3. The gap between believers who multiply and those who don’t isn’t more intellectual information; it’s intentionality.

You probably already know enough.

Pick one behavior this week

• prayer rhythms

• intentional questions

• your story as a testimony

And actually do it instead of thinking about it, polishing it, or studying it.

Chapter #4. Anyone who has said yes to Jesus can be a disciple, and anyone walking with Jesus can make one.

No seminary, platform, or perfect theology required. If you know God loves people, and that Jesus is the only way to the Father, you have enough to share what you already have.

Chapter #5. Your oikos, the people where you live, learn, work, and play, is your God-given mission field.

Write the names down. Put yours in the center, draw lines to five or ten people, and pray for them by name, regularly! Prayer mapping makes the invisible field visible.

Chapter #6. Disciple-making was never meant to be a solo sport, it’s a team effort. 🏃‍♂️+🏃🏻‍♀️+🏃+🏃🏻‍♀️+🏃‍♂️

You don’t have to carry the weight of every leadership gift. Find a few others, let each play their part, and stop trying to be the whole body by yourself.

Chapter #7. A healthy team is built by honestly discerning who Gets it, Wants it, and is willing to create Capacity, then coaching the gap.

Assess honestly as you build a GREAT TEAM.

• Equip the willing

• Encourage the unsure

• Empower for the overloaded

The native culture of Disciple-Making is family and team.

Chapter #8. The goal isn’t to make disciples; it’s to make disciple-makers who make disciple-makers who make disciples.

Chapter #9. There’s a simple, reproducible pathway from a first conversation all the way to a self-identified simple church.

Start with one casual conversation. Let curiosity grow into a Seeker Group, commitment into an X-Group, and community into a church. Drop one stone after another until they become a church community.

Chapter #10. The best gatherings have no spectators, everyone participates, no one just performs.

Build your meetings around looking back, up, and forward. Let everyone share, discover Scripture, and leave with Spirit-prompted action goals.

Chapter #11. The movement doesn’t start in a strategy document, it starts in your next conversation.

Just one person. Just one question. Just this week. Pray for a name today, and ask God for one good question to carry into your next encounter.

None of this requires you to become someone else. It just requires you to see the life God already gave you as the ministry it always was.

• You have the mission field (Acts 17:24-27)

• You have the Spirit (Acts 1:8)

• You have the commission (Matt 28:18-20)

The only thing missing was a pathway, and now you have that too.

🚦So go.

🚫 Not someday.

🟢 Now.

If you want to get serious about developing disciple-making skills and engage with coaching and training, become a member of our Premium Cohort.

Click HERE for the Cohort

FIND THIS TOOL IN A DOWNLOADABLE PDF HERE. (Recommended for groups of 3-25)

Overview of the Three-Thirds Model

Three-Thirds simply means to divide your disciple-making group time into thirds and always treat each leg of the three-legged stool equally. Look Back → Look Up → Look Forward. If you are meeting for 1 ½ hours, each segment represents 30 minutes. If you are meeting for an hour, each segment lasts 20 minutes. This allows the group to give equal attention to each leg of the stool.

Think of the Three-Thirds process as a cycle repeating from meeting to meeting, not as a linear process that ends at the end of the meeting. Each “Look Back” section of the next meeting always points back to the previous “Look Forward” from the last meeting. This provides a robust rhythm of connection and accountability: we hear from God, commit to obeying what God guides, and then, at the next meeting, circle back to that connection and accountability.

In this diagram, each segment of the meeting is dependent and relevant to the preceding and following segments. When we focus on looking back since the last meeting, we are looking at it through the eyes of how God is working in us, therefore we are looking up.

When we look up in the second third, we are also asking God how he wants us to respond to Him in the third section. When we look back on the first third, we are reviewing how obedient we were to God’s leading in our previous meeting. And so forth. The meeting works like a cycle, and each segment should relate to the other two segments.

The Three-Thirds process is not a model, but a principle-based tool, so there is no set-in-stone way to lead the group. However, here are some sound principles that might help accomplish the goal of each segment.

Segment 1 - Look Back

Goal: The primary purpose of the “Look Back” Segment is to discuss how each person has progressed in their discipleship process since the group last met. It serves the purposes of accountability, encouragement, and edification. It never misses an opportunity to share spiritual conversations had in the places where the members live, work, and play since the last meeting!

Note: Depending on the length of each third and the volume of engagement with each group, you may need to adjust the following suggestions to ensure all three thirds receive significant attention within a manageable time frame.

Care

Before the group gets into the meat of the night, it is important to set the stage well. Depending on the group size and culture, it can be helpful to take a couple of rounds around the room and do some group pastoral care. Sometimes I’ll take one lap around and let each person share their highlight since we last met. Then we’ll take a second lap and ask what their greatest struggle has been since the last meeting. I’ll often ask each person to pray for the person to their left or right after each struggle is shared. This creates unity and care, but it can take time. Again, be conscious of giving each segment equal time.

For larger groups, you can divide them into groups of 2 or 3 to share their victories and battles since we last met, and let them follow the same process together in small groups. This is much more time-efficient and allows everyone to share more than they could in a large group.

You might also have an ice-breaker question that each person could answer in the larger group or in a small group. Be flexible and creative with this section. If you do the same thing over and over again, meeting after meeting, it will become stale and lose momentum.

Check-Up

The check-up segment is the most important part of the Look Back time! It is an opportunity for accountability and encouragement. Here are some questions that can drive the check-up time.

• How have you obeyed what the Holy Spirit spoke to you the last time we met?

• Who were you able to share with someone what you’ve learned since we last met?

• With whom were you able to share your story or God’s story since we last met?
  
  Again, keep this segment fresh and relevant so it doesn’t become a duty for people to share. If someone is uncomfortable sharing, just move on and give them grace.

Coaching Conversations (NEVER SKIP)

The most critical activity we engage in at Our Best Story is sharing spiritual conversations with the people in the places where we live, work, and play. There is a leadership principle called the Pareto principle, named after the guy who authored it, that says that 80% of any results come from 20% of the causes. In other words, 20% of the activity in any process produces 80% of the progress. Spiritual conversations is a 20 % factor in any disciple-making effort. If you have to skip anything, do not skip this section!

These are some questions you can use to coach spiritual conversations.

Have you had any spiritual conversations since we last met?

• What was the result?

• What questions did you ask?

• What milk vs. meat stories did you tell?

• What is your follow-up plan?

  ---

Segment 2 – Look Up

This segment of the three-thirds group is designed to explore the Story of God together. It is not intended to foster a teacher-pupil culture, but rather a group discovery process. Again, the three-thirds group is a principle-based tool, so don’t feel pressured to complete every step or ask every single question.

Follow the leading of the Holy Spirit.

The facilitator of the group should have a passage or a story selected to engage with the group. The most compelling story would emerge from a question or tension expressed in a previous meeting. “Just-in-Case” information is when we share a story just in case there’s someone who needs to hear it. Nine out of ten times, this is an ineffective method for discovering scripture together. “Just-in-Time” discovery addresses a relevant need in the lives of the disciples, and they will absorb the information and apply it to their situation.

A Three-Thirds Passage should be:

• Relatively Short

• Story-based in most cases

• Relevant to questions being asked by the group

• Can be chosen in a series of meetings, such as the “7 I-Ams of Jesus” or the “7 Miracles in the Book of John”

Some examples of great three-thirds passages can be found at the end of this document.

First Read Through

At the beginning of segment two, the facilitator asks who would be willing to read the passage aloud to the group. I recommend that no one else actually read their Bibles, but just set them aside and listen to the story. After the story is read, the facilitator asks the following two questions.

• Is there anything in this passage that you don’t like or that creates tension in you?

• What do you like most about this passage?

Tension

In OBS, we say, “There is no attention without tension.” That is the purpose of this first question. If members of the group are honest and vulnerable, this question will surface the internal conflict needed to find discipline-able conversations in the group setting. The group will do a good job discussing these tensions if trust and vulnerability are present in the group. It’s very important for the facilitator to set the culture by modeling an appropriate answer to the question, especially early on.

Likes

This question will surface what the Holy Spirit is trying to communicate to the member or the group from the passage being read. Make sure to press into “WHY” they like the principle and “WHAT” they like about it. What deeper message does it speak to them?

Second Read Through

At this point in the segment, have another person read through the same passage a second time. Make sure they have a different version of the Bible. Often, I’ll lean into a more palatable version, such as the Message or New Living Translation. This always surfaces new thoughts and feelings.

Then ask this set of questions.

• What does this teach us about the nature or heart of God or Jesus?

• What does this teach us about the nature or heart of people?

• * Where are you in this story?

• Who are you going to share this story with before we meet again?

This *third question is, by far, the most important one. This is the transition into segment three – the accountability leg of the stool, which is most often overlooked in group settings.

Segment 3 – Look Forward

In this segment, the goal is for each person to leave with 1-3 ACTION POINTS that they will accomplish before the group meets again. The facilitator takes notes so that in Segment One of the next meeting, they can follow up on these commitments.

The key to effective action points is that they don’t come from the facilitator, guilt, other members, or a sharp mind. They must come from the Holy Spirit.

So, how do we discern what the Holy Spirit is communicating to us?

WE ASK HIM!

This practice is the jet fuel for this segment of the group. If you miss this part, you’ll miss the power of the Three Third Process!

The Prayer

Pull out a timer on your phone or assign someone else to time the prayer. Tell the group that you are going to take 3 minutes to pray and ask God how He would like you to respond to this discussion –

What Does He Want You To Do About It?

This process began in the previous segment, but will be clarified here.

Sit in silence for three minutes to ask God what response He would like from YOU!

Each person asks themselves the question.

The Action Point Step

After the three minutes are up, let the group go around the room and share their accountability action point. Encourage everyone to share, but do so without being forceful. Make sure to write down the commitments so you’ll have them available in Segment One of the next group meeting. You will ask how things went with these action points next time!

Close the Group

After you have completed this step, you can have a prayer time to close the group. Make your prayers specific and powerful. God gives big answers to big asks. Believe together as a faith family. Don’t overdo it, but don’t take this act for granted or minimize it

The Following examples are series that you can do with your Three-Thirds Group, which have been time-tested and found to produce good fruit in disciple-making communities.

Disciple-Making Series

HOPE SERIES (FOR SEEKERS)

Use the following passages for the “LOOK UP” portion of your group. Your group may need more than one meeting for some of the passages.

1. Hope for the sinner: Luke 18:9-14

2. Hope for the poor: Luke 12:13-34

3. Hope for the runaway: Luke 15:11-32

4. Hope for the lost: Luke 19:1-10

5. Hope for the grieving: John 11:1-44

6. Hope for the seeker: John 3:1-21

SIGNS OF JOHN (FOR SEEKERS)

Use the following passages for the “LOOK UP” portion of your group. Your group may need more than one meeting for some of the passages.

1. Turning of water into wine: John 2:1-12

2. Healing of the royal official’s son: John 4:46-54

3. Healing of the paralytic: John 5:1-17

4. Feeding of the five thousand: John 6:1-14

5. Walking on water: John 6:15-25

6. Healing of the man born blind: John 9:1-41

7. Raising Lazarus from the dead: John 11:1-46

DISCOVER SERIES (FOR GROUPS THAT NEED BIBLE BACKGROUND & FAMILIARITY)

Use the following passages for the “LOOK UP” portion of your group. Your group may need more than one meeting for some of the passages.

Discover God- who is God and what He is like

1. Creation- Genesis 1

2. Creation of People- Genesis 2

3. Disobedience of People- Genesis 3

4. Noah and the Flood- Genesis 6:5-8:14

5. God’s Promise with Noah- Genesis 8:15 - 9:17

6. God Speaks to Abraham- Genesis 12:1-7; 15:1-6

7. David becomes King of Abraham’s Descendants 1 Samuel 16:1-13; 2 Samuel 7:1-28

8. King David and Bathsheba- 2 Samuel 11: 1-27

9. Nathan’s Story- 2 Samuel 12:1-25

10. God Promises Savior will come- Isaiah 53

Discover Jesus - who is Jesus and why did He come

1. Savior born- Matthew 1:18-25

2. Jesus’ Baptism- Matthew 3:7-9, 13-15

3. Crazy Man Healed- Mark 5:1-20

4. Jesus never Loses Sheep- John 10:1-30

5. Jesus Heals the Blind- Luke 18:31-42

6. Jesus and Zacchaeus- Luke 19:1-9

7. Jesus and Matthew- Matthew 9:9-13

8. Jesus is the Only Way- John 14:1-15

9. Holy Spirit Coming- John 16:5-15

10. Last Dinner- Luke 22:14-20

11. Arrest and Trial- Luke 22:47-53; 23:13-24

12. Execution- Luke 23:33-56

13. Jesus is Alive- Luke 24:1-7, 36-47; Acts 1:1-11 14. Believing and Doing- Philippians 3:3-9

For about the past year, my Premium Disciple-Making Cohort has included some fun and super helpful tools I’ve built for no extra cost. My favorite, by far, is the Simple Bible Notes App.

This tool goes a LONG WAY toward simplifying your Bible Study and Prayer Life.

AND THIS WEEK I DROPPED A MAJOR UPGRADE!

I just included the MY PRAYER PATHWAY tool to track and steward prayer life.

• Enter New Prayer Requests

• Determine How Often You Want to Pray for It

• Walk Through a Prayer Session with All Your Requests

• Mark and Report When It Has Been Answered

• Keep Notes as You Are Praying Through Them

• View Your Dashboard of Prayer History

  ---

  

  ---

You know how I’m wired—I’ve always got a Bible open, a notebook half full, and about eight tabs on my laptop of “something I mean to study later.” For years, I tried to capture what God was teaching me in a way that actually sticks. I’ve filled journals, used fancy Bible software, tried Evernote, Logos, Google Drive, you name it. Each one worked for a while… until it didn’t. I’ve lost more notes than I can count, remember, or ever hope to re-create.

What I really wanted was one safe and retrievable place to hold it all -

• My Bible Teaching Notes

• Personal Insights

• SOAPS studies

• Favorite Quotes

• AND My Prayer Life

✚ Plus, I wanted to do all of that without feeling like I was operating a nuclear submarine!

AND I needed it searchable and organized with categories and tags.

But the biggest problem was that I couldn’t find a solution that printed a batch of stuff based on a specific topic, keyword, or category!

ARGGHHH! 😖😫😣‼️

So last year, I finally FOUND THE PERFECT SOLUTION.

💥 I built it myself - REALLY! 💥

It’s called Simple Bible Notes, and it feels like the study tool I’ve always needed. It’s where I gather EVERYTHING the Lord’s shown me, those connections between verses (you can cross-reference), journal moments during prayer, ideas for future teachings, even half-baked sermon outlines that might grow into something more.

AND NOW I’ve Added a Prayer Request Tracking System!

Click HERE to Check It Out

It’s not flashy. There’s no noise or clutter. Just a simple space where I can

• Write or import Bible lessons I’ve taught or am preparing

• Keep sermon notes, both the ones I’ve preached and the ones I’ve listened to

• Store quotes, reflections, and favorite passages

• Use the SOAPS method (Scripture, Observation, Application, Prayer, Share) in the App as a fillable form

• Cross-reference verses and trace themes through Scripture

• Search everything later when I can’t remember which notebook I wrote it in

• Participate in Structured Bible Reading Plans

• AND NOW! Track my daily, weekly, and monthly prayers and which ones have been answered and still ongoing.

  ---

The longer I use it, the more I like it! I’m glad I spent the time on it. I can scroll through my notes and literally see how God’s been shaping me, how certain passages kept showing up in different seasons, how prayers evolved into stories, and how lessons from years ago still echo today.

It has become part of my rhythm, like sitting down with coffee, opening my Bible, and knowing every note I write actually has a home. And reminding me on a daily basis to pray for those I love and hope for.

I decided to make it available for others who study and teach like I do. It’s $5 a month or $50 a year, but if you’re part of my Premium Cohort on Substack, it’s already included, a little “thank you” for being part of this community that’s chasing disciple-making and spiritual depth together.

When you UPGRADE to PREMIUM, find the discount code in your welcome email.

CLICK THE BUTTON TO UPGRADE 👇 at 25% Off! (a discount code for Simple Bible Notes will be in your welcome email)

Click HERE To Get Discount!

PLUS, to get us rolling together, use this link 👆to become a premium disciple-making cohort member for $45 for the first year. There’s a ton of other stuff there and more coming, too.

If you’ve ever felt like your spiritual insights are scattered or hard to find later, I think this might be a quiet blessing to you, just as it has been to me.

You can check it out here: simplebiblenotes.com ‼️

Here’s to staying rooted, reflective, and organized as we walk this journey with Jesus—one note, one conversation, one Scripture at a time.

Click HERE to Join the Premium Cohort!

Part 1 of this series broke down the math. $3.5 million or $1,400 per person per year to run a megachurch of 2,500. $40 a person to run 100 simple churches of 25. The response was overwhelming. Dozens of you restacked it, argued with it, and asked the same question in the comments over and over:

“Okay, but HOW?”

Click Here to Read Part 1

How does a guy with no seminary degree and a full-time job actually multiply a church? Fair question. So let’s answer it.

Here’s what most church growth books don’t tell you: multiplication isn’t a strategy problem. It’s a relational problem. And relational problems have relational solutions.

🎯 Simple churches don’t multiply because they’re clever. They multiply because they’re small enough to truly experience the 59 one-anothers of scripture. And to share that with others who join their community.

Let’s talk about why.

The Relational Ceiling Nobody Talks About

In Part 1, we mentioned the Dunbar Number, the idea that human beings have a hard biological ceiling on the number of meaningful relationships they can maintain. But we didn’t talk about what happens when a church tries to grow past it without ever addressing it.

Here’s what happens: the church doesn’t actually get bigger. It gets more crowded.

A 2,500-member congregation isn’t 2,500 relationships. It’s maybe 150 relationships surrounded by 2,350 strangers who happen to park in the same lot on Sunday. The size grows. The oikos doesn’t.

Compare that to Jesus’ own math. He had access to crowds of thousands (Matthew 14:21). He could have built the first megachurch in human history with a single afternoon of miracles.

Instead:

• 👉 He had dozens, and maybe hundreds, of followers.

• 👉 He chose twelve.

• 👉 He poured into three (Peter, James, John) more than the twelve.

Jesus wasn’t limited by a lack of resources. He was following a relational law of the universe: depth requires proximity, and proximity has a ceiling.

Every megachurch pastor knows this instinctively, which is why they build small groups inside the big group. But that’s the thing. If the real spiritual growth happens in the small group anyway, why do we keep building (and funding, and staffing, and insuring) the big container around it?

The One-Anothers Can’t Happen in a Crowd

Here’s a phrase we use constantly in the Disciple-Making Collective: the 59 “one-anothers.”

Click Here for the One-Anothers

Fifty-nine times the New Testament tells believers to do something to and for one another, love one another, bear one another’s burdens, confess sins to one another, encourage one another, stir up one another to love and good works, forgive one another, serve one another.

Try to obey those commands with 2,500 people.

You can’t.

You physically, relationally, and logistically cannot. So what happens instead? The one-anothers get delegated.

• Confessing sin becomes a pastoral counseling appointment.

• Bearing burdens becomes a benevolence fund.

• Encouragement becomes a greeting-time handshake.

The commands don’t disappear. They just get professionalized, and something is lost every time obedience gets outsourced to a staff member.

✔ In a simple church of 12-25, the one-anothers aren’t a program.

🔥 They’re Tuesday night simple church.

Multiplication Is Easy When the Unit Is Small

This should genuinely excite you.

• Small isn’t just more relational.

• It’s more reproducible.

Think about it like cell biology. A single cell doesn’t grow to the size of a building and then explode into a thousand new organisms. It reaches a healthy, sustainable size, and then it divides. Growth by multiplication, not by mass.

The church in Acts operated the same way. Nobody in Antioch was trying to build the biggest gathering in Syria. Paul and Barnabas planted, appointed elders “in each church” (Acts 14:23), and moved to the next city.

The Discipling-Making Collective pathway follows that same biological logic:

♻️ Seeker Group → X-Group → Discipling Community → Simple Church → Seeker Group → Etc.

Click Here for the Disciple-Making Pathway

Each stage is small enough that everyone in it can be known, and small enough that everyone in it can lead. And then it replicates.

That second part matters more than people realize:

✔️ A megachurch trains leaders for years before handing them responsibility, because the stakes of a platform mistake are enormous.

✔️ A simple church can hand a Three-Thirds meeting to someone who trusted Christ six months ago, because leadership here isn’t about performing for a crowd; it’s about faithfully facilitating a conversation among people who already know and trust you.

Low relational stakes = low leadership barrier = fast multiplication.

That’s not a compromise on quality.

That’s the apostolic design.

Your Oikos Is Already Sized for Multiplication

Let’s stop being theoretical and start being personal.

You already have a relational network sized exactly for this kind of multiplication. It’s called your oikos, the Greek word for the people connected to where you Live, Learn, Work, and Play. Most people, when they actually sit down and list it out (try the List of 100), discover they have 80-150 people they have real relational access to.

That’s not a coincidence. That’s Acts 17:26-27, God has “determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place” so that people “should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him.” He didn’t just place nations strategically. He placed you strategically, in the middle of a web of relationships sized perfectly for one person to steward well.

A prayer map (or oikos map) takes that invisible network and makes it visible: your name in the center, 5-10 names branching out, and then, if you’re praying and paying attention, their names branching out from them. Green for the ones making disciples. Yellow for the believers not yet living like missionaries. Red for the ones still far from Jesus.

That map is your simple church before it exists. It’s the relational soil the whole multiplication pathway grows out of.

The Persecution Test

One more relational advantage simple churches have that megachurches structurally cannot: antifragility.

When persecution hit the church in Jerusalem in Acts 8, the believers scattered. A megachurch model would call that a catastrophe: the building’s gone, the staff is displaced, the “ministry” is over.

But look at what actually happened: “Those who had been scattered preached the word wherever they went” (Acts 8:4). Scattering didn’t kill the movement. It multiplied it because the “church” was never the building or the brand; it was the relationships and the disciples carrying the mission in their own bodies.

A network of 100 simple churches can absorb a hit that would flatten a single 2,500-member institution. Not because simple churches are more resilient people, but because the mission was never centralized in one fragile container to begin with.

Helpful? Click the Button and Buy Me a Coffee.

So What Do You Actually Do Monday Morning?

Not “go plant a church.” Start smaller than that.

• Pull out a piece of paper and build your prayer map. Name 5-10 people in your oikos.

• Color-code them honestly—green, yellow, red.

• Pick one red or yellow name and pray the BLESS prayer over them this week (Body, Labor, Emotions, Social, Spiritual).

• Have one spiritual conversation before Friday.

That’s it. That’s the whole “strategy.” Because the multiplication math from Part 1, 100 churches planting one new church every two years, reaching 80,000 people in a decade, doesn’t start with a building fund or a five-year plan.

It starts with twelve people.

It starts with one name on a piece of paper.

It starts with you.

If you want to learn more about Simple Church, prayer mapping, and the tools that make relational multiplication actually work, DM me or go to disciplemakingcollective.com!

And stumbling out of the tree line, a company of soldiers is making their way back toward camp. Some are holding their shoulders. Some are limping. One man has his arm draped around his buddy just to keep upright. The others are moving on nothing but willpower and a desire to find some measure of relief.

🚫 They’re not looking for a meeting.
🤕 They are hungry and bleeding.
🔥 They’re looking for a fire.
❤️‍🩹 They are looking for support.

🚶‍♀️🚶🚶🏽‍♂️They need each other.

Somewhere in the distance, a large bonfire burns on the horizon, visible through the smoke and the confusion. Leading them to rest. And battle-weary soldiers who have lost their bearings know exactly what it means: that’s where safety is. That’s where food is. That’s where the people who know what I’ve been through are waiting.

They walk slowly but urgently toward it ready for support and healing.

That image is one of the most clarifying pictures of what the gathered church is actually supposed to be.

Not a performance, or a program to be managed, or a service to be attended.

🔥 A fire. A beacon. A place where the weary come home so they can go back to the front line tomorrow armed, healed, rested, and ready for the MISSION.

Dig Deeper In My Latest Book - Click HERE.

You’ve Been to Battle. Did Anyone Ask?

If you’ve been doing the real work of disciple-making, walking into your oikos, having spiritual conversations with your neighbors, praying over your workplace, and showing up as a sent one (missionary), you know what the soldiers coming out of that tree line feel like.

· It’s exhilarating.

· AND it’s exhausting.

Some days, the Spirit moves in a conversation that rips a discipling relationship wide open. Other days you come home feeling like you got punched in the gut, and the ground didn’t move an inch. This is the frontline life of a disciple of Jesus. It is not a passive life. It’s a life on the grounds of a raging battle in the heavenlies.

So when you finally make it to the gathering , the Tuesday night simple church, the Friday afternoon small group, the Sunday morning gathering, the question is: does it actually feel like the safety and security of the campfire? Or does it feel like another meeting to sit through just to say you did? This is not a judgment statement, but an exploration that may lead to a Great Adventure!

🔥 IT WAS MORE LIKE CIVIL WAR CAMPFIRE! Where safety, healing, rest, and security were found by the weary soldiers lingering in from the front lines.

The Twelve Things Every Campfire Does

Greg Getz and a handful of disciple-makers put words to something most of us in simple church circles were feeling but couldn’t articulate almost 15 years ago. They identified twelve distinct experiences that happened around a Civil War campfire, and every single one of them has a direct parallel in a healthy gathered disciple-making community that is sending missionaries back into the front lines.

Here’s what your campfire is supposed to do.

1. Security.
The first thing a soldier felt when he stumbled into the firelight was this: nobody here is shooting at me. The people in your gathered community need to feel the same thing. They have been navigating workplaces where their faith is mocked, neighborhoods where spiritual conversations get awkward fast, and internal battles nobody else knows about. Before they can receive anything, they need to know they are safe. No judgment. No gossip. No weaponizing vulnerability. Build that culture or nothing else on this list will work.

2. Food.
Soldiers were hungry. So is your community, physically and spiritually. The early church ate together constantly, and it wasn’t just strategy. Food slows people down. It removes status. It creates the conditions for real conversation. Don’t skip the physical table.

But food also means spiritual equipping, truth your people can carry back into the battle. The best spiritual food in your community might not come from the loudest voice. Paul said it plainly in 1 Corinthians 14:26: when you gather, each one has something. Make room for it in your gathered community.

3. First Aid.
Company surgeons didn’t ask whether a soldier deserved treatment. They treated him. Some of the people walking into your gathering this week are bleeding.

• Marriage trouble.

• Anxiety and depression.

• Grief.

• Old wounds that never fully healed.

Your community is not a hospital, but it should have the equivalent of a field surgeon. Someone who knows how to apply pressure to a wound, recognize when professional help is needed, and create enough safety that people can admit they’re hurt at all. The 59 one-anothers in the New Testament are a first-aid manual for exactly this.

4. Unwinding.
There was always a period after the soldiers arrived when the adrenaline drained away. The hypervigilance of the battlefield began to release. Maybe some laughter. Maybe long stretches of silence that didn’t need to be filled. Most of our gatherings struggle with this. We are addicted to productivity. We fill every moment with content and treat silence like a problem. And in doing so, we rob our people of the single most important social lubricant in the entire gathering: the chance to be themselves before things get started. If people don’t have space to unwind, they’ll carry their armor through the whole evening. And armored people don’t tell real stories.

5. Camaraderie.
This is what unwinding becomes when it goes deep. The soldiers around that fire weren’t bonded by compatible personalities. They were bonded by shared suffering, liminal experiences, and they had been in the same fight, seen the same things, survived the same chaos. Real camaraderie in your gathered community isn’t manufactured by icebreakers. It is forged in shared mission.

When your people are actually doing the work together, serving the same neighborhood, praying for the same lost friends, celebrating together when someone finally comes to faith, the bond builds itself.

6. Stories of the Day.
Around the Civil War campfire, soldiers told the raw, unfiltered stories of what happened out there. Moments of courage and cowardice. Things they couldn’t process alone. Make room for this in your gathering.

When someone shares a gospel conversation that went somewhere unexpected, that story does something in the room no sermon can replicate. When someone admits they chickened out of a conversation they knew they should have had, and the room responds not with judgment but with recognition, that is formation happening in real time.

Protect the stories. Ask for them.

💥 The Spirit of God is as active in our confusion as in our clarity.

7. Reports of the Day.
After the stories, the camp captain asked questions.

• Where were you?

• Did you hold the line?

• What happened when things broke?

This is accountability built into the rhythm of gathering. We have so overcorrected against legalism that we’ve swung to the opposite extreme, where asking whether someone followed through on what they said they’d do feels invasive.

It isn’t.

Disciples who know they will be asked next week whether they acted on their commitment are more likely to act. Not out of fear. Out of the holy pressure of being genuinely known.

8. Re-Directing.
Based on the reports, the captain re-directed, told his soldiers which ground to take tomorrow. In your gathered community, re-directing is the art of helping people see what their specific next step is. Not generic advice. Specific, responsive, earned by actually listening to where people are. Based on what you just shared about your neighbor, here’s what I think you should try next. This is why attentive leadership matters. You cannot re-direct someone you haven’t truly heard.

9. Re-Arming.
Soldiers didn’t leave the campfire with the same depleted resources they carried in. Cartridge pouches were refilled. Broken weapons replaced. Rations re-supplied. Re-arming in your gathered community means your people leave with something they can actually use tomorrow.

🎤 Not information they heard passively.
🧰 Tools they can deploy.

BLESS. The Prayer Map. The 3-Minute Story. Whatever the battle in your specific mission field requires. Responsive, just-in-time equipping that answers the question: what do these soldiers need to fight better in the next seven days?

10. Rest.
The soldier who stayed up all night wasn’t ready for battle the next morning. Getting adequate rest was his own personal responsibility. There is a Sabbath theology buried in this that the Western church has nearly forgotten. We have confused busyness with faithfulness. The most effective disciple-makers aren’t the busiest ones. They’re the ones who’ve learned to stop, trust God to keep working, and come back to the mission refreshed. A soldier who refuses to rest becomes a liability.

So does a disciple-maker who never stops.

11. Return to Battle.
Any soldiers still lingering around the campfire the next morning were out of place. Nobody dragged them back to the front lines. It was their own responsibility to return. This is one of the most neglected implications of the entire campfire metaphor. The gathering is not the destination. It is the launching pad 🚀. The fire is not where the mission happens. The fire is where you get ready for the mission to happen everywhere else, in your oikos, in your neighborhood, in your city.

The most important question you can ask in your gathered community isn’t always about spiritual content. Sometimes it’s questions like this:

❓ Who are you going back to?

❓ What are you doing in your oikos tomorrow?

❓ Name it here and these people are going to ask you about it next time.

12. Flexible Expectations.
The battle lines were never in the same place twice. Soldiers who returned to the exact same position expecting the exact same fight were in danger of fighting an engagement that no longer existed. Disciple-making communities or gathered Sunday events that become rigid, having found what works and refusing to adapt, are fighting yesterday’s battle.

Your format is the wineskin.

The twelve elements are the wine.

Hold your form loosely. Build enough flexibility to follow the Spirit rather than manage a program.

This Is What the Church Was Always Supposed to Be

Acts 2 is not a model to replicate. It is a gift to unwrap.

The apostles’ teaching - that’s the food and the re-arming. The fellowship - that’s the camaraderie and the unwinding. The breaking of bread - that’s the security of the shared table. The prayer - that’s the posture of dependence on the One whose campfire this actually is.

The details vary. They always have.

The Holy Spirit hasn’t stopped designing gatherings for specific people in specific places on specific missions. Your campfire doesn’t have to look like anyone else’s. But it needs to look like something, and what it needs to look like is a fire that battle-weary people can spot on the horizon and walk toward, knowing that when they arrive, they will be safe, fed, healed, heard, held accountable, re-equipped, and then sent back out.

Because the campfire is not home.

⚔️ The battle is the MISSION.

🔥 Rest at the campfire.

🏃‍♂️ And then get back to the field.

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When you picture a disciple-maker, the kind of person who walks with others toward Jesus, who builds into people’s spiritual lives, who actually multiplies the Kingdom in the places where they live, learn, work, and play, what do they look like?

How do you know if, and when, someone is qualified to be a disciple-maker?

Now, I remind you that I am not talking about someone walking in their own internal disciple-SHIP pathway; I’m talking about one who is fully committed to walking with someone else on their journey toward Jesus.

• Does the disciple-maker have a seminary degree?

• Do they know Greek?

• Do they preach well?

• Are they the kind of person who has a gift for public speaking and a way with words that makes a room go quiet?

• Have they been in ministry for twenty years?

• Do they have a title in front of their name or letters behind it?

If you checked any of those proverbial boxes and the person you imagined looks more like a pastor than a plumber, more like a theologian than a middle school teacher, more like a professional than an ordinary person living an ordinary life, then let’s talk. Because the assumptions we carry about who qualifies to make disciples are quietly slowing down the Jesus movement. And those assumptions are not coming from Scripture.

They are coming from a system we built.

🧱 And it is time to dismantle them, brick by brick 🧱

The Qualification Problem

Here is what most of us were taught, either explicitly in a class or implicitly by watching how things work in most legacy churches: ministry belongs to the professionals.

• The pastor makes disciples.

• The youth leader makes disciples.

• The one who grew up in church and has read the whole Bible more than once makes disciples.

The person with the platform, the microphone, the title, and the theological training, that’s the disciple-maker. Everyone else is the audience and plays supportive roles, and invites the crowd to worship services, and takes up offerings, or parks cars.

When you internalize that long enough, a particular kind of paralysis sets in. You start to genuinely, sincerely believe that you are not qualified. That you haven’t arrived yet. That you need one more class, one more year of spiritual growth, one more confirmation from a leader you respect before you can step into the Great Commission.

I have watched this happen over and over again. Men and women who are deeply in love with Jesus, who carry a genuine burden for the people in their oikos, who feel the tug of the Holy Spirit toward missional living, and who are sitting still. Waiting for a green light that is never coming. Because they’ve been told, in a hundred different subtle ways, that someone more qualified is supposed to do this.

Let me say this as clearly as I can. That is not what Jesus taught. That is not what Jesus modeled. And that is not who Jesus chose to do the significant work of launching the movement He founded two thousand years ago.

The Least Likely Led the Charge

When Jesus launched the most impactful and world-wide transformational movement in human history, He had options. He had a lot of them. Historians estimate that at the height of His ministry, Jesus had access to somewhere around six to eight million Jews in the Roman Empire.

Conservatively, six million people who shared His heritage, His Scripture. And from those millions, He could have hand-selected the finest theological minds of His generation. He could have recruited the graduates of the best rabbinical schools in Jerusalem. He could have gone straight to the scholars and the Pharisees, who already knew the text inside and out, and to the priests who held positions of religious authority. He could have even picked from the 70-ish most qualified religious leaders of his time from the Sanhedrin.

💥 He Didn’t 💥

Read that slowly.

He. Did. Not.

🐠 He walked to the water’s edge, where rough-handed fishermen were doing the less-than-glamorous work of sorting fish and mending nets, and He called them to follow Him. The unclean fisherman who touched dead fish every day and couldn’t show up at temple without cleansing rituals.

💰 He showed up at a tax collector’s booth, the desk of a man most respectable Jewish society considered a traitor and a thief, and He said, “Come with me.” And then He threw a party with all his friends!

⚔️ He recruited Zealots with violent political agendas. He called Simon Peter, who would later, at a campfire on the worst night of his life, swear up and down that he never knew the man.

Most of these guys had probably been rejected from advanced rabbinical study. In the Jewish education system of the first century, young boys who demonstrated exceptional promise were invited to continue in the study of Torah under a rabbi. Those who didn’t make the cut, even as young teenagers, went home and helped with their family business or learned a trade. They became fishermen, tax collectors, and craftsmen. They went back to ordinary life.

❤️‍🔥 And Jesus walked right past the elite and chose the rejects.

The movement that would turn the known world upside down within a couple of generations did not launch from the most credentialed, respected, and powerful people in the room. It launched from unclean fishermen and social outcasts. It launched with flawed, impulsive, sometimes cowardly human beings who had one thing in common: they said “YES!” to following Jesus.

👉 So, when you sit quietly in those pews and think you’re not qualified enough, not educated enough, not spiritually mature enough to make disciples, I want you to hear this clearly: Jesus is not asking for your résumé. He is asking for your obedience.

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The Rabbi and the Talmidim: What “Follow Me” Actually Meant

To understand who can be a disciple and who can make one, you need to understand something about how discipleship actually worked in the world Jesus lived in.

In first-century Jewish culture, the rabbi was the advanced-level teacher. The talmidim were his students. But the relationship was not primarily academic. It was not a lecture or a test. It was not a curriculum completed in a classroom. The talmidim FOLLOWED their rabbi, literally and everywhere.

• They watched how he prayed.

• They observed how he treated people.

• They saw him when he was tired.

• They heard how he handled conflict, navigated difficult conversations, and responded when things went sideways.

The goal of a talmid was not to master the rabbi’s content. The goal was to become LIKE the rabbi. They “walked in His dust,” as one of my favorite teachers, Ray Vander Laan says. This is a phrase taken from ancient Jewish instruction, which said a student should walk so closely behind his rabbi that the dust the teacher’s sandals kicked up would settle on the student’s own clothes. That was the aspiration. Get close enough to be marked by the life of your teacher.

And then, the rabbi’s ultimate act of investment was to look at his students and say, “I believe you can do what I do.” The greatest affirmation a rabbi could give was to release a talmid with the authority and the responsibility to go and make their own disciples.

🚶🚶‍♀️🚶🏽‍♂️“Come, follow me,” Jesus said. 🚶🏽‍♂️🚶‍♀️🚶

Three words.

But they were not an invitation to a class. They were an invitation into a life. They were a declaration. Walk with me, watch me, do what I do, and eventually lead others to do the same. “Follow Me!”

✔ That is the model.

And notice what is not in the model. You will not find a degree, a platform, a building, or a budget. What is in the model is proximity, obedience, and the willingness to be shaped by the life of the one walking ahead of you.

Now, here is the question that matters to you and me.

❓If that is what Jesus meant by “follow me,” then who can step into that call❓

Every single one of us.

🚫 Not someday.

🟢 Now.

Discipleship and Disciple-Making Are Not Sequential

Here is one of the most liberating truths in this entire book: you do not graduate from being a disciple into making disciples. You grow in both at the same time. Read that again, because I know some of you are already building a case against it.

I am not saying that brand-new followers of Jesus should immediately attempt to teach a theology class or lead a missional community. What I am saying is this: the moment you begin following Jesus, you are equipped to invite someone else to start the same journey alongside you. You don’t need a complete map to be a guide. You just need to be a few steps further down the trail.

Jesus himself illustrated this when He sent the twelve on mission in Luke 9, and then the seventy-two in Luke 10, before they fully understood who He was and before they had witnessed the resurrection.

He sent them in the middle of their own growth journey. He sent them incomplete and in process and still making mistakes.

And they went.

And things happened.

And they came back having seen the Kingdom move.

Once again, Paul put it plainly to his young disciple Timothy:

As I said early in the book, this is four generations of disciple-making embedded in a single sentence, and it was written by a man who simultaneously had a thorn in the flesh, relational conflict with Barnabas, and a long list of personal struggles he was working through in real time.

Paul was not finished growing when he wrote that. He never finished growing. And neither will you. That is not the standard Jesus set. The standard is faithfulness, not perfection.

🛑 So, stop waiting 🛑

The green light Jesus gave at the utterance of the Great Commission has not expired. The moment you surrender your life to Jesus is the moment you are called into the work of helping others do the same!

So Let’s Go!

Let’s put our Hand To The Plow and not look back!