Maybe, however, you haven’t figured out how to consistently implement this practice in your leadership or build this practice into the culture you’re leading. In this chapter, I want to not only challenge you with the imperative of being a disciple multiplier but also show you how to do it (see Figure 7.1). Every leader who wants to multiply leaders needs to understand how to become a disciple multiplier and equip those around them to be disciple multipliers. You may lead a small group, a prayer ministry, a location of a multisite church, a megachurch, or even a network of churches, but to become a hero maker, you need to prioritize disciple multiplying. This practice represents a way of sharing what you learn by mentoring other leaders.
FIGURE 7.1
Jesus-Style Apprenticeship Is Something Anyone Can Do
In John 3:22, the Bible makes an easily overlooked, seemingly mundane statement: “Jesus and his disciples went out into the Judean countryside, where he spent some time with them.”
What Jesus did is really quite simple. He selected just a few people—he focused on twelve—and they hung out with him and did ministry alongside him. Yet when Jesus spent some time with these twelve apprentices, something big happened. The word for “spend time” in Greek is pronounced “dia-tree-bo” (and transliterated diatribo). Dia means “against,” and tribo means “to rub.” So diatribo literally means “to rub against” or “to rub off.” It literally means “to spend time together rubbing off on each other.”
You and I can do that today. When we spend enough time with others, we begin to rub off on them, and they rub off on us. You start talking like each other. You pick up similar interests. You care about the same stuff. Maybe you know some couples who have been married like fifty years, and they have even started to look like each other! They’ve rubbed off on each other.
What Jesus did was not just about hours and minutes. It was diatribo: some of him was rubbing off on them. One of the main ways Jesus transformed his followers into people who would impact the world was through apprenticeship, by simply spending time with them. It was through diatribo, the Bible says, that Jesus’ followers “turned the world upside down” (Acts 17:6 ESV). Even the Son of God, God in the flesh, didn’t try to change the world on his own. Jesus diatribo’ed others.
Apprenticeship and Disciple Multiplying
To truly have exponential impact, all of us need to be mentoring, developing, and multiplying leaders. Another place where we see Jesus diatribo’ing, or rubbing off on, his twelve leadership residents is in the gospel of Mark: “Jesus went up on a mountainside and called to him those he wanted, and they came to him. He appointed twelve that they might be with him and that he might send them out to preach and to have authority to drive out demons” (Mark 3:13–15). There is so much for us to learn from these verses, but let’s pull out four practical insights from how Jesus mentored the Twelve to form these future hero makers.
1. Disciple multipliers start with the few, not the many (Mark 3:13–14). In the verses that immediately precede this section of Scripture, we see that the crowds swelled to large numbers. They all wanted a piece of Jesus. They wanted to hear him talk; they wanted to get close to him. But these verses say Jesus “called to him those he wanted.” I like to think that he picked twelve people “he wanted” to hang out with and with whom “he wanted” to be friends. Jesus was establishing an apprenticeship based on relationship. Equally important to note is that he didn’t give in to the attention and the clamoring of the crowd; instead he started with and focused on the few. Jesus was a hero maker to the few and in so doing changed the world.
Hero maker next step: Select a few people, maybe just two or three, or maybe as many as twelve, whom you will focus on. Invest in them and do everything you can to be their hero maker.
2. Disciple multipliers prioritize relationships, not curriculum (Mark 3:14). A phrase in verse 14 reveals the first reason why Jesus selected the Twelve; it was so that “they might be with him.” It is clear that Jesus was prioritizing the relationship with the Twelve. This was truly an apprenticeship that prioritized spending time together, in which the Twelve could observe, learn, and do what Jesus was doing. Apprenticeship is true to the intent and expression of how Jesus did discipleship. Much of our discipleship efforts today focus on content and curriculum, but our hero maker, Jesus, prioritized the relationship.
Hero maker next step: Now that you have selected a few people to whom you will be a hero maker, determine your relational rhythms. How often will you meet, and what will the format be? Will you meet weekly or monthly? Will you meet face-to-face over coffee or through cell phones or the internet? To “be with” someone, you need to schedule your relational rhythms.
3. Disciple multipliers focus on sending capacity over seating capacity (Mark 3:14–15). The goal of this apprenticeship with Jesus was not for the Twelve to go through a set of curriculum, and then double that number to twenty-four who would go through the class, and then eventually have forty-eight, and then ninety-six, and keep growing the crowd who sat at Jesus’ feet. No!
The goal of the apprenticeship was that “he might send them out” and they would do with others what he had done with them. Jesus wanted his apprentices to get to the place where they could do what he was doing. Once they could “preach and . . . have authority to drive out demons,” the apprenticeship was complete. Our hero-making approach should involve the same kind of apprenticeship.
Hero maker next step: Once you have selected your few people and established a set of relational rhythms, it’s important to be clear about your expectations. You don’t want the people you are mentoring to continue to serve as an assistant or even as a coleader. You want them to grow to their full capacity. If you are developing them to lead a group or lead a band or start a church, vocalize that expectation. Make it very clear, and get their agreement.
When is the apprenticeship complete? That’s simple: when both you and your apprentice think they are ready to bring on their own apprentices. At that point, commission them and send them out with your blessing.
4. Disciple multipliers hand off authority rather than hold on to it (Mark 3:15). Not only did Jesus send out his apprentices; he also gave them authority, often substantial enough to “drive out demons.” Don’t overlook or underestimate spelling out the authority you’re giving people. With authority, they’ll feel fully empowered, commissioned to minister, and blessed to go even farther than you did.
Hero maker next step: Ask those you’re mentoring to state back to you the authority you’ve given them: “Please tell me what you think I’ve authorized you to do.” You will then know how they interpreted your words of empowerment and commissioning. You’ll know whether they’re still acting as merely your assistant or ready to lead.
Apprenticeship Made All the Difference for Our Core Group
We started Community Christian Church with just a handful of friends from college. We had no people, no buildings, no money—and many said no sense! But we did have a passion to help people find their way back to God through Christ.
We lived in Chicago, a city of eight million people. We knew that 80% to 90% of those people, depending on what neighborhood they lived in, would not be in church on any given weekend, and we suspected that most of those were far from God. How do fewer than ten people reach all of them?
We all went out and started small groups. We each began to diatribo with anywhere from six to sixteen people. That was great. We saw God do amazing things. But that left 7.99999 million other people.
To continue to reach others, we each selected at least one apprentice leader. That apprentice leader would come alongside us and learn from us how to lead a group and diatribo with another six to sixteen people. In time, usually six to eighteen months, those apprentice leaders were ready, and they went on and led the existing group or started a brand-new small group.
Now, more than twenty-five years later, there are thousands of kids, students, and adults at multiple locations who call Community Chr
istian their church home. Every year across Chicagoland, hundreds and hundreds of people are baptized, finding their way back to God.
But I’ve witnessed firsthand that when you’re committed to being a disciple multiplier, the impact reaches beyond your church and your city. One of my early apprentice leaders was a guy who worked at General Mills, named Troy McMahon. He did a great job as an apprentice in my small group, and soon I made him the leader of the group, while I went on to start another group. In time, Troy became a coach for small group leaders. Then he joined our staff, and eventually he became our first campus pastor. All along the way, I was mentoring him, and he was mentoring others, who were mentoring down the line for literally hundreds of others.
Eleven years ago, we sent Troy off with our blessing plus about twenty-five people he had recruited at Community Christian to plant a new church in Kansas City with NewThing, our international network of reproducing churches. Now not only does Troy lead that church with one thousand people at three locations, but that church has helped plant forty-one churches. On top of that, he is leading a network of churches in Kansas City that is focused on planting one hundred more churches in that city! This is the kind of multiplication that advances the four-to-ten mission I talked about in chapter 1. When we see disciple multipliers birthing new communities of faith, we will begin to move the needle from 4% of churches in America reproducing and multiplying to 10% and beyond!
I’ve witnessed firsthand that when you’re committed to being a disciple multiplier, the impact reaches beyond your church and your city.
We could have started just one church with one site and had an impact, but through apprenticeship and a commitment to being disciple multipliers, we have been able to reach exponentially more people.
Volunteers Can Be Disciple Multipliers
Is successful apprenticeship the opportunity or responsibility only of church staff? Absolutely not! In fact, the growth and impact of God’s kingdom is in direct proportion to the number of people who multiply disciple makers outside of being hired at church. For every Troy McMahon, there should probably be fifty to one hundred hero makers like my friends Mary and Dr. Bill. Their stories inspire me.
Mary has always been very successful, both in business and as a volunteer at Community Christian Church. Despite her success, she didn’t always see in herself what others and God saw in her. Mary has remarkable leadership gifts and the ability to influence hundreds and thousands of people. It was at a retreat called Ultimate Journey that she began to see the truth about herself and about God. She was so excited about the healing and the changes that were taking place, she immediately invited four other women to go through a small group to study the same content she had studied. Over the next few years, other women began to have the same Ultimate Journey experience she had, and they talked about it with great enthusiasm. Mary could see the difference she was making and set a goal to mentor other leaders and see ten new small groups.
Within a few years, she had met that goal and surpassed it. At this writing, Mary has trained fourteen leaders, and small groups are now being led in three churches. One new group leader is preparing to use Ultimate Journey in a church plant in Johannesburg, South Africa!
Mary is a disciple multiplier. When I asked Mary about her dream for these groups, she said, “I want to mentor enough leaders that we can have Ultimate Journey at every Community Christian location, that it can expand into more churches, and that we’d also see it begin to be used by men too!”
My friend Dr. Bill shares the same multiplying vision. He was leading a medical mission trip to the Philippines. He was the only medical doctor on the team, supported by a handful of nurses and volunteers. So he was charged with overseeing the medical clinics they would run during this fourteen-day trip. Because Bill has been around a church that values reproducing everything, he started the trip by giving the team this pep talk: “Everything we do needs to be reproducible. Just like we reproduce churches, I want all of you to be able to take what you learn here and be able to reproduce a clinic to help others in other countries. So what I am about to teach you can be easily reproduced anywhere you go.”
The growth and impact of God’s kingdom is in direct proportion to the number of people who multiply disciple makers outside of being hired at church.
He is vision casting for multiple generations of medical apprentices. I love it!
Multiplying Apprentices in the Arts
I like to give grief to my coauthor, Warren Bird, by telling him that he needs a recovery group for people addicted to visiting growing churches. His boss at Leadership Network tells me that Warren has done more large-church study visits than anyone on the planet. Whenever Warren finds a church with a strong apprentice culture, a particular interest of his, he starts digging around the various departments to find out what’s working.
What does he find? Inevitably, the hardest and last area of a church to reproduce and multiply is the worship arts. Why? Warren hears a lot of stereotyping:
• “Artists want the platform for themselves and don’t want to share it with others.”
• “Artists by nature aren’t good people developers.”
• “Artists are kind of quirky, and you don’t want them to reproduce.”
• “Artistic quality demands that you keep the bar high and work only with the proven few.”
• “Artists on church staff are paid too much to spend time training others.”
Ouch! If you’re an artist, you perhaps aren’t happy that I voiced these painful stereotypes. But stay with me. I want to show that they’re often wrong, and maybe they could be proved wrong at your church as well.
Tug-of-War or Riding a Bike?
Let me start with Community Christian Church. From our early years, we challenged every person at every level to reproduce themselves. I mentioned in the previous chapter that our church started with just a handful of people, all leading small groups and developing other small group leaders. To this day, I still lead a small group and develop an apprentice leader.
We didn’t stop with small groups. We did likewise with children’s ministry, student ministry, first impressions ministry, and yes, the arts as well. The book The Big Idea33 is a three-way authorship by me, my brother Jon, and Eric Bramlett, the creative arts director at Community Christian Church. In it we tell how I asked Eric, when we first hired him, to place his desk right next to mine. I wanted to diatribo (rub off on) him and reproduce in him and the arts the multiplication that was happening in the rest of the church. Eric and I became fast friends, and to this day he continues to serve as the leader of our creative catalyst for our artists at Community Christian Church.
Today Eric laughs when someone tells him that artists can’t reproduce themselves at every level. Eric’s team has done it year after year, and they’ve taught many other churches to do likewise. But it’s never easy, because most artists feel they are stuck in a tug-of-war between excellence and multiplication.
If you focus on excellence, you trust only a few very talented artists, and you never multiply or develop anyone else. If you focus on multiplication, you develop lots of new artists, and in the process excellence suffers. This mental paradigm seems always to produce a no-win situation. If you have to choose between excellence and multiplication, you will lose, the congregation will lose, young emerging artists will lose, and the mission of Jesus will lose.
Artists need to hear, “You have been forced into a false dichotomy! You do not have to choose between excellence and multiplication.”
A better analogy than a tug-of-war is how Eric and our artists think of it at Community Christian: it is more like riding a bicycle.
A bicycle has two pedals, and in this case one pedal is excellence and the other is multiplication. To create forward motion, you need to push them both, one at a time. (See Figure 7.2.)
Focusing on either excellence or multiplication is like trying to ride a bike by pushing only one pedal. It’s hard to get any mo
mentum. We need to push the pedals of both excellence and multiplication. The pedal of excellence will attract artists, while the pedal of multiplication will develop more and better artists. If we are to see a movement through starting new churches, we must think about the next generation, and we must learn how to push the pedal of artistic excellence and then the pedal of artistic multiplication.
FIGURE 7.2
Here is what will happen: As we gain speed, we will alternate pedals so quickly that it will seem as though we are pushing both pedals at once. And pushing both pedals will create momentum. And that momentum will lead to movement!
Eric has the artistic gifts to be a solo performer on any stage. But he understands the secret of teamwork to grow God’s kingdom, so instead he and our other artists work at eagerly mentoring new generations of Erics, who in turn are raising up others. Together they coordinate Christ-centered creativity and worship across all the locations of Community Christian Church, which represents over thirty weekly services.
Mentoring Artists Is the New Normal at Other Churches Too
Bayside Church in Granite Bay, California, has likewise rejected the tug-of-war mindset and is riding the bicycle of excellence and multiplication. They are so committed to artist development that they have created a school for it.34 The church, which was started in 1996, today hosts about eighteen thousand people every weekend in twenty services across five campuses and has also started seven new churches.
You may not have heard of Bayside Church, but I bet you’ve sung a song by one of its worship leaders, Lincoln Brewster—songs like “All I Really Want,” “All to You,” “Everlasting God,” and “The Power of Your Name.” The church is led by a team of four senior pastors: Ray Johnston (who founded it), Andrew McCourt (who led the largest church in Belfast, Ireland), Curt Harlow (twenty-year veteran of college campus ministry), and Lincoln Brewster (recording artist and songwriter). Notice that Lincoln is only one of the worship leaders, and he’s one of the senior pastors as well.
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