The Simple Discipleship Process That Works Anywhere

One of the questions I get most often — from practitioners in East Africa and from pastors in the American Midwest alike — is some version of this: what does a discipleship process actually look like that doesn’t require a seminary degree, a curriculum, or a full-time staff member to run it?

It’s a fair question. And the answer is simpler than most people expect.

Simple doesn’t mean shallow. It means reproducible. And reproducible is exactly what most discipleship efforts are not.

Complexity Is the Problem

There is a temptation — especially among leaders who love to learn — to equate depth with complexity. The more layers, the more stages, the more content, the more serious we must be about discipleship. Right?

The problem is that complexity is the enemy of multiplication. If it takes months of training before someone can disciple another person, you’ve already lost most of your potential disciple-makers. The process becomes something only the trained few can do, and the movement stops with them.

Jesus didn’t hand His disciples a curriculum. He modeled, included them, and released them. The process was visible, participatory, and repeatable. And it was simple enough that fishermen could do it. That’s still the pattern that works.

What the Process Actually Looks Like

At its core, a reproducible discipleship process has four sections: review, discover, obey, share.

Review — we always look back before we learn more. What did we learn last time, and how did we do at obeying it and sharing it with others?

Discover — someone hears or reads a portion of Scripture, usually a story or a short passage. They wrestle with it and discuss it. The standard questions are worth asking exactly as they are. They are simple and easy to understand: What does this say about God? What does this say about people? What do we need to obey? Who can you share this with?

Obey — they take one thing from that discovery and determine to do it. Not study it more. Do it. Be specific and make it easy to determine if it was done. Stay away from vague applications.

Share — they pass it on. To their household. To a neighbor. To someone they’re already in a relationship with. The sharing is built into the process from the beginning — not added later as a program. That’s the multiplicative DNA baked into it.

This is not complicated. But it is countercultural. Especially for those of us trained in environments where discipleship happens in a classroom and ends with a certificate.

The Test of Any Discipleship Process

Here is the question I ask whenever I’m evaluating a discipleship approach: Can the newest believer in the room do this with someone else by next week?

If the answer is no, the process is probably too complex to multiply.

Movements around the world — in places where there are no seminaries, no budgets, no professional staff — are growing because ordinary people are doing exactly this. They’re encountering God’s Word, obeying what they find, and sharing it immediately. The process is simple enough to reproduce. And it’s reproducing.

The question isn’t whether this process could work in your context. It’s whether you’re willing to trust something that simple. And if you are a DMM/CPM practitioner, the question is, are more complexities creeping into how I do things?

If this is stirring something in you, I’d love to have you join us in the Dare to Multiply membership community — where we go deeper into exactly this kind of practical, reproducible discipleship and encourage one another toward it. Find out more at multipliersmindset.com/dtmmembership. We offer both free and paid subscriptions.

Something to Think About and Discuss:

•Does your current discipleship process pass the “new believer by next week” test? Why or why not?

•What feels most countercultural about the encounter–obey–share pattern in your context?

•What is one way you could simplify your approach to discipleship this week?

Share in the comments below or on our Dare to Multiply community.