Free eBook: Top Disciple Making Churches and Their Best Practices

Dear Discipleship-first Friends,

Thoughtful church leaders often ask us 2 simple questions: Who are the top disciple making churches in North America and what do they do?

If you identify with those two questions, we have helpful information for you. We have found about a dozen top model disciple making churches and their best disciple making practices.

Discipleship.org published a national study on disciple making cultures in early 2020 (with Exponential Network) and now, five years later, Discipleship.org is completing a follow-up study focused on top disciple making churches in North America and their best practices.

We have identified about a dozen churches whose effectiveness and cultures are significantly different from 99% of North American churches. We have relied upon research and verification described in the attach free eBook. This summary will be very helpful to church leaders.

CLICK HERE to get the FREE eBOOK

Here are some of the churches we have identified (a full list will be published by discipleship.org later this year).

Real Life Ministries, Post Falls, Idaho – Lead minister/pastor – Jim Putman
Church Project, Houston, Texas – Lead minister/pastor – Jason Shepperd
Elevate City Church, Atlanta, Georgia – Lead Minister/pastor – Joey McLaughlin
Act 2 Network Churches, Leader – Ed Kang
Lift Church, Ontario, Canada – Lead minister/pastor – Robin Wallar

The research is ongoing, and we plan to add other churches to the list with a more complete list to be published later this year by Discipleship.org (please email recommended churches and names to [email protected])

Their Best Practices

In the early stage, we have identified four best practices of these top disciple making churches. We are featuring these practices as the focus of our four main stage sessions at the upcoming 2025 National Disciple Making Forum (May 7-8, 2025 in Houston). Most of the leaders of the churches listed above will be making presentations.

Practice #1 – Convictional Leadership – In top disciple making churches, all the leaders bleed intentional, relational disciple making as their core mission—they are personally sold out to it.

Practice #2 – Contextual Model – These churches rigidly hold to and prioritize their unique, “simple, effective, and reproducible” disciple making model.

Practice #3 – Core Expectations – These leaders expect everyone in their church—high expectations indeed—to be engaged in disciple making and in their disciple making model.

Practice #4 – Cultural Alignment – These leaders focus everything in the church, down to a micro-level, on 1) missional, 2) theological, 3) philosophical, 4) organizational, and 5) relational alignment for disciple making.   Again, we will publish the results of our research later this year (stay tuned).

As a lead minister/pastor, this is the kind of information that helps me and my staff cut through the clutter and the noise – and focus on the things that really will make the biggest difference in our ministry.

Making disciples of king Jesus is the most important mission on planet earth and it undergirds all of our ministries.

For King Jesus,