Lesson 1 –Disciple Making Movements Intro & Extraordinary Prayer

Introduction

This is a training that has been used since the late 1990s but you’ll see that the ideas have been around since the New Testament.

This training isn’t theory. It’s basic principles of movements that are exploding all over the world. It should make us ask the question—Could God do it here? Can we be a part of something like that? More than seeing one person but whole families, neighborhoods, work places and friendship groups come to Jesus.

You’ll receive the notes after each lesson that you can then put into your disciple making binder. You can take notes but everything said will be handed out or emailed to you. Anyone could lead this. You could do this.

This training is for anyone who wants to be obedient to Jesus’ teaching of being a disciple maker. Whether you right now have a passion to reach your whole neighborhood or a single friend or family member—this training will be insanely helpful.

Revelation 7:9-12

Have 2 people read this out loud (ideally in 2 different translations).

We want to start with the end in mind.

Ask: What should the church strive to accomplish? What is the end goal?

The end goal is that we see many people as possible from every nation, tribe, people and language would be worshiping God with us in heaven one day. We need a movement of God in order to see this happen.

Without exaggeration we can say that Church Planting Movements are the most effective means in the world today for drawing lost millions into saving, disciple-building relationships with Jesus Christ. That may appear to be an ambitious claim, but it is an accurate one, and an honest description of how God is winning a lost world. –David Garrison (from his book Church Planting Movements)

We don’t want to be satisfied with just a few people from every group; we want to see MANY from every group worshipping before the throne.

Prayer (on our knees as we start this journey together)

Pray that we would hear from God through this training.

Pray that we would become more effective disciple-makers & church planters.

Pray that we would be a part of reaching our entire people group.

DMM Definition (post it on screen)

Obedience-based discipleship that sees disciples reproducing disciples, leaders reproducing leaders, churches reproducing churches & movements reproducing movements.

What stands out?

Obedience Based. In our culture most disciple making is knowledge based. So growing as a disciple means I learn more.

Read Matthew 7:24-28. What is the difference for people who build their house on the rock versus the sand?

So a brand new believer who is actually obeying/doing the Bible can be more mature then a long time Christian who doesn’t live it out. We are educated far beyond our obedience. Around the world they say—know 1 thing, do 1 thing. Why would you learn something new till you’re able to obey what you’ve already learned? The power in this training is in the obedience. It will take 6 weeks unless we don’t obey then we will have to redo a lesson till we get it.

Read Deuteronomy 17:18-20. ESV What steps are the king supposed to follow? 1) Write down a copy of the law. Why?

Read it all the days of his life.

Follow carefully all the words of the law.

Vs 19…that he may learn o fear the Lord his God BY keeping all the words of this law and these statues, and doing them.

We traditionally think of following God and then learning to fear him. God wants us to follow him and through obeying we learn to truly fear Him.

2) Reproducing (disciples, leaders, churches, movements)

There are currently about 1400 documented Church Planting Movements in the world. We need a clear definition of what a movement is…

Church Planting Movements are a 100 or more new churches in an area over a 3-4 year period with multiple streams to at least the 4th generation.

It’s actually more difficult than this. Imagine our church leads someone to Christ and that person goes and starts a new church with a bunch of their lost friends. That new church would be a 1st generation church. If a new believer from that church went out and started a new church from among their lost friends that would be 2nd generation. (Bottom line this hardly exists in the North American culture)

The average movement sees close to 70,000 believers getting baptized. That makes even the average movement larger than the largest American church..

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A common thing said in every place where a movement has occurred is, “it could never happen here.” So, can we all say that right now just so we are in good company? 1-2-3, “That could never happen here!”

There was an area in India known as the Graveyard of modern missions. Missionaries

didn’t last long and saw very little fruit. David Watson was a missionary there and wrote this training with some others. After 5 years they had 1 church plant. 20 years later there are now over 12 million people who have been baptized from this one movement and it has started many new movements in other areas.

This DMM training is being used by God to start CPMs (Church Planting Movements) all around the world. Often in the American church, we start churches hoping to get disciples, but many times it doesn’t happen. In this training you’ll see seek to make disciples that then go start churches.

2 Timothy 2:2

Have 2 people read this out loud (ideally in 2 different translations).

Have everyone draw an illustration of what 2 Timothy 2:2 is talking about & then share it with the rest of the group.

What are some things that stand out in this verse?

– Pass on what you learn to those who will pass it on to others. (Not randomly)

– Not a 1-on-1 process w/ Paul & Timothy as you might suspect (there were many witnesses who then passed it onto others). Look for a person of peace who will open up their network (oikos) & begin to discover more about God from the Bible. Goal is to see groups come to Christ.

– For disciple-making to become a movement there must be multiplication.

–Paul as a Senior Pastor, his strategy was not to come and listen to me.

Read 2 Timothy 2:3 What does this mean in context of what we just studied?

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Sailboat analogy

We can’t start movements! Like a sail boat, we can’t bring the wind, we can only prepare for it. The Holy Spirit has to bring the wind that leads to movement. What we can do is raise the sails up But let’s have our sails up to be ready for when He does move. We can’t produce movements but we can cooperate with what God is doing.

How do you raise the sails? Remember, this is not made up, these are consistent and observable in ALL movements. We will flesh out these elements over the next 6 weeks.

7 Ongoing Elements in a Movement (7 Ways to Raise the Sails for Movement)

1. Focus on God’s Word (palms up and hands together like a book)
2. Multiply Extraordinary Prayer (Cross arms like an X)
3. Cast Vision (like you’re holding a fishing pole and casting line)
4. Train Believers to go out among the lost (like your curling dumbbells)
5. Go Out Among the lost (point upward and to the side)
6. See Groups Start (hand roll)
7. Ongoing Coaching (baseball signals with your hands)

An example of Movement

In North India a husband and wife served as missionaries for many years mostly focused on compassion ministries but saw little fruit. They came back home to Texas and received this same training you’re going through now. They heard God saying two things 1) “listen to me” and 2) find your Paul (you are Barnabas). They went back to India and found a man who had planted 12 churches in 14 years. He was stunned he had never seen some of these strategies in the Bible. They began training other Indians and now God has started 40,000+ churches in 8 years (see the book Dear Mom and Dad by R. Rekedal Smith for the full story).

Here is one closer to home. Brent is a pastor of a large church in Oregon. He took many people from his church through this training and one member met a woman struggling with coming out of a background of addictions. They studied a story in the Bible together and then asked if she had any friends who would like to also go on a journey from bondage to freedom through discovery truth about God in His word. She (not a Christian yet) invited 30 friends and 21 joined that week on zoom. They agreed to come back the next week. The woman met with her new mentor and asked some questions from a new story that turned into a gospel presentation. She received Christ and the next week with her group of friends saw 10 of them receive Christ as well. It’s only been a couple months but this group has seen dozens get baptized and they’ve become a church and in the process of starting new groups.

Jim Thurber and I were walking in a nearby neighborhood and asked two guys sitting in their truck if we could pray for them about anything. One shared that his wife had just left him and the other had a daughter who had an intense form of diabetes. Before we prayed we shared a short story with them from the Bible and had a mini Bible Study right on the street. One of the men was so excited that he asked if he could learn how to lead a study like that for his kids. Over the next few weeks he gave his life to Christ and started groups with his family and some coworkers. In the next few weeks he will be baptized and then has at least seven others from his groups that he will be baptizing.

For the rest of our time we are going to transition to talking about one of the elements.

Extraordinary Prayer (and Fasting) We usually don’t do either.

All movements are founded in extraordinary prayer. One thing is for certain – prayer and fasting is foundational to movements because at the end of the day it’s the Holy Spirit who starts movements.

“We pray because our vision exceeds our abilities. Prayer is the soul’s deepest cry of rebellion against the way things are. It’s seeing the lost of this world and crying out, “This does not glorify God, and so, by God’s grace, it must change.” –David Garrison (in book referenced above)

In movements around the world, the average believer prays 2 hours a day (devotional life: includes Bible reading, etc.) and it’s common for their churches to have weekly or

monthly all night prayer meetings. (see Miraculous Movements by Jerry Trousdale).

Definition of Extraordinary Prayer is simply Extra-Ordinary. Whatever you are praying now is ordinary. As it begins to grow it becomes extraordinary. Start where you are and begin to grow. When you invite others to pray with or for you then you are multiplying prayer. So often times around the world they being praying 10 minutes a day until that becomes ordinary and it continues to grow on average to about 2 hours a day.

Discovery Bible Study (DBS)

We discover from Scripture what God wants us to know. It’s not a teaching method as much as a learning through questions and facilitation method. We let the Holy Spirit be our teacher. We’ll lead you through the process next.

DBS – Mark 11:20-25

Have 2 people read this out loud (ideally in 2 different translations).

Have each person in the group repeat it in their own words (the group can help and correct). Retell it as best as you can like you heard it. Do not share what you learned yet. If the group is bigger than 4 then break into 2-3 people to retell the story.

1. What does this passage teach us about God?
2. What does this passage teach us about how God want’s people to live?
3. What should you do this week in response to this passage to increase extraordinary prayer in your life? (Use “I will …”)

This is left out by most American Bible Studies. This is where the rubber hits the road.

4. Who should you share with this week? (Most important for movements.)

Encourage them to write the answers down to the application questions they answered and be prepared to share at the next training how they did.

Challenge This Week – Extra ordinary vs ordinary.

1) Live out your “I will” statement from Mark 11:20-25.

2) Share the story with someone this week.

3) Create a prayer calendar and start to live it out this next week. Instructions were sent on another attachment.

Here is also a video of lesson 1 if you have someone that you’d like to join so they can be caught up for next week.

You can still join the training each Thursday at 4:30

JIM BRITTS

Parkside Church

phone: +1 760 717-3735

website parksidechurch.cc