11 Principles for Multiplying Disciples Without Adding Programs to Your Calendar
Jesus Pattern Disciple-Making on the Go
Who Can Make a Disciple?
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.
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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.
Entrust what you’ve learned to reliable people who will teach others (2 Timothy 2:2). Keep asking: could they reproduce this without me?
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.
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Kevin has distilled so much truth here. It's concentrated, but you can chug it all in one sitting! Chug it!
Only when someone led me to do these things, 26 years ago, did my Christian life really begin. This is life changing in the most positive way. But you cannot understand it by reading it only, you have to get up, get out of the building, and do it! Go go go!
Someone out there, right now, needs you to lead them into the Kingdom.