Disciple Making Takes More than a Pipeline

by: David Putman

“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matthew 28:19-20).

Disciple making is our one and only mission, as a church.  This mission-based pursuit means that our measure of success is more and better disciples that are making more and better disciples.  More and better disciples means have a growing pipeline, when it comes to disciples.  A generic disciple-making pipeline consists of pre-disciples, new disciples, growing disciples, multiplying disciples, and catalyzing disciples.  Therefore, a healthy pipeline means that we have a healthy number of disciples at every level, as described in the chart below.

The Disciple-Making Pipeline can be a good tool for assessing your overall effectiveness when in comes to making more and better disciples.  A simple place to begin an assessment is by identifying the percentage of individuals that fall into each of these categories that attend your Sunday Morning Gathering.  In a healthy disciple-making culture the results may look more like a normal bell curve.   ​

The Disciple-Making Pipeline is one tool, among others, when it comes to assessing our overall health and effectiveness in the area of a disciple-making culture.  Other areas that you will want to include in an assessment are culture, leadership, mindset, and strategy.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

David Putman

David Putman

David is a Lead Navigator serving on the Auxano Team, the category leader in vision clarity and vision focus campaigns. He is also founder leader of Planting the Gospel a non-profit ministry committed to helping churches move discipleship from a program to a culture. He has been involved in church planting for over twenty years as a planter, strategist, and coach. He is author of I Woke Up In Heaven, The Gospel Disciple, Detox for the Overly Religious, Breaking the Discipleship Code, and co-author of Breaking the Missional Code with Ed Stetzer. He latest book The Gospel Disciple Journey will be released in February 2014. David’s life mission is to help others discover the simplicity, centrality, and beauty of Jesus and his ways. David is married to Tami and they have two awesome kids, and two even more awesome grandkids.

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— Abel Singbeh
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comment_post_ID); ?> Thank you Ed for sharing your insights into the Church Growth Movement. I have my reservations with Church Growth models because it has done more damage than good in the Body of Christ. Over the years, western churches are more focused on results, formulas and processes with little or no emphasis on membership and church discipline. Pastors and vocational leaders are burnt out because they're overworked. I do believe that the Church Growth model is a catalyst to two destructive groups: The New Apostolic Reformation and the Emerging Church. Both groups overlap and have a very loose definition. They're both focus on contemporary worship, expansion of church brand (franchising), and mobilizing volunteering members as 'leaders' to grow their ministry. Little focus on biblical study, apologetics and genuine missional work with no agenda besides preaching of the gospel.
 
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comment_post_ID); ?> Thank you for sharing such a good article. It is a great lesson I learned from this article. I am one of the leaders in Emmanuel united church of Ethiopia (A denomination with more-than 780 local churches through out the country). I am preparing a presentation on succession planning for local church leaders. It will help me for preparation If you send me more resources and recommend me books to read on the topic. I hope we may collaborate in advancing leadership capacity of our church. God Bless You and Your Ministry.
 
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