The Two Changes You Need to Spark a Disciple-Making Movement

In this month’s blog series, we are looking at how to develop a Dream Disciple. In addition to these blogs, we are providing a FREE resource for you and your church team.

In the 1920’s it is believed that 2 of every 3 cars on the road was a Ford Model T. Henry Ford changed the automobile industry forever. Not only did his Model T become the most popular vehicle of all-time, he sparked the Industrial Revolution in North America Henry Ford did this by making two simple shifts.

He got a clear picture of success and a clear process for it.

In 1913, he created the famous innovation: the assembly line. Just as important, he stopped making his Model R and Model S vehicles. He made one vehicle— the Model T and he made it in one color: black. He was quoted saying, “You can have a Model T in any color you want, as long as it is black.”

Without this clear picture of success, the assembly line never works. If Henry Ford doesn’t give a clear picture of what his staff was supposed to develop, every staff member would have created their own version. The result would have been a chaotic process, a frustrated staff, and an underwhelming end product.

Unfortunately, churches do this exact thing.

In the last few years, over 80% of churches have said redesigning their church strategy or Discipleship Pathway is the most important thing for the church. Unfortunately, many of these are set up to fail because they don’t have a clear picture of success. They don’t have a Dream Disciple: a compelling and contextual picture for how their life will be different if they follow Jesus and join their church’s mission.

The result is that the staff all have different visions for what is most important, and your people are just being told what you want them to do, but not who you want them to become.

A Discipleship Pathway is crucial for the success of your disciple-making movement, but a Discipleship Pathway without a clear picture of who we are developing will never work.

That is why we help churches create their Dream Disciple first. Once every staff member knows the picture of the disciple we are creating, they can now arrange their ministries to develop that person. And now that our people have a compelling picture of who they will become, the church’s strategy and ministries now are worth investing their time in.

Henry Ford got a clear picture of success and a clear process for it…those two shifts sparked the Industrial Revolution.

If your church can make two similar shifts—a Dream Disciple & Discipleship Pathway— you can spark your disciple-making movement.