Own The Mission

Dear Discipleship-first Friends,

I am writing to ask for your patience and support and leadability over the next two weeks… 

We are about to launch our year-end effort–The 12 Days of Disciple Making. We hope to get as many as possible to access and use all the amazing free resources we will be offering… and to sign up for the 2026 National Disciple Making Forum on April 15-16^th, in Houston.  

But our goal is not to sell as many tickets as possible…

Our goal is to encourage as many people as possible to access and use the free resources we will be offering, to purchase tickets and attend the 2026 Forum, and–in all that we provide–to become sold out to disciple making.

We champion Jesus-style disciple making. 

And we want as many as possible to own the mission.

To own the mission is a phrase commonly heard in high-performance environments—startups, military special-operations units, elite sports teams, and organizations like SpaceX and Tesla. It means far more than simply doing your job or following orders. It means a person has so fully internalized the goal that it has become their own personal responsibility—something they will move heaven and earth to accomplish.

Here are the key characteristics of someone who truly owns the mission:

1. Personal Accountability They treat the outcome as if their own reputation, money, or life depends on it—even when the task technically belongs to someone else. Failure feels personal.

2. Proactive Problem-Solving They don’t wait for instructions or permission. If something is broken and it affects the mission, they fix it (or escalate aggressively) without being asked.

3. Extreme Ownership (A principle made famous by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin in their book Extreme Ownership.) They take 100% responsibility for success or failure—no excuses, no finger-pointing, no “that’s not my department.”

4. Bias Toward Action They move fast, take calculated risks, and make decisions with incomplete information because delay would harm the mission.

5. Alignment Over Ego Personal credit, titles, and work-life balance take a distant second place. They’ll work 80-hour weeks or jump on a red-eye if that’s what the mission demands.

6. Infectious Commitment Their passion lifts everyone around them. People want to work alongside them because they know this person will never let the team fail if it’s humanly possible to prevent it.

You see this in the secular world all the time:

• SpaceX engineers sleeping on the factory floor to solve a problem before the next launch window—even when the issue is outside their specialty.

• Navy SEALs carrying an injured teammate miles to safety without being ordered, because mission success includes bringing everyone home.

• Early startup employees rewriting onboarding docs at 2 a.m. because a bad customer experience could kill the company.

But what happens when this same mindset is applied to the greatest mission on earth: reaching lost people and making disciples who obey everything Jesus commanded (Matthew 28:19–20; Luke 19:10)?

Far too often, that mission stalls—not because leaders don’t love Jesus or work hard, but because only a handful of paid staff and key leaders truly own it. They become the bottleneck. They personally disciple people (which is good and obedient), yet the moment their calendars fill up, Great Commission growth in that church grinds to a halt.

That is not owning the mission.

Owning the mission of making disciples means refusing to let disciple making remain a leadership program. It means building a culture where every believer sees themselves as a disciple who makes disciple makers. The mission only multiplies when disciple makers are multiplied.

Paul modeled and commanded exactly this in 2 Timothy 2:2: “And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others.” Four spiritual generations in a single verse:

1. Paul → 2. Timothy → 3. reliable people → 4. others This is not addition; this is multiplication. This is the early church’s practical outworking of the Great Commission—and it must become ours.

What It Looks Like to Own the Mission of Making Disciple Makers

1. Personal Accountability Leaders never say, “I’m discipling three-five people; my part is done.” They constantly ask, “Who am I equipping to disciple three-five more—and who will each equip those disciples to make more disciples?” The lostness of their city and the creation of obedience-based disciples feels personal.

2. Proactive Multiplication They don’t wait for people to self-identify as “gifted teachers.” They scout the faithful (not the flashy), pull them close, and intentionally entrust truth to them the way Paul did with Timothy. Every small group, class, and serving team is restructured around one question: “How does this raise up disciples who can disciple others?”

3. Extreme Ownership When disciple-making plateaus, leaders don’t blame busy schedules or consumer Christianity. They look in the mirror: “Have I made multiplying disciple-makers the unmistakable win, or have I settled for being the hero disciple maker myself?” No excuses—just personal recalibration.

4. Bias Toward Action They start a discipleship group with three busy people before the curriculum is perfect. They hand off their group of new believers to a less-experienced leader because the mission of multiplication requires release. They celebrate when someone they discipled baptizes their first convert—even if it wasn’t done “by the book.”

5. Alignment Over Ego Their identity is no longer “the person everyone comes to for answers.” It becomes “the person who gives the answers away, so the mission outlives and outgrows me.” Stage time, titles, and being needed all bow to releasing an army of reproducers.

6. Infectious Commitment Soon the everyday Christian stops saying, “Our church has great preaching, praise & worship, and programs” and starts declaring, “We raise up disciple makers!” Teenagers, baristas, accountants, and retirees all begin to see 2 Timothy 2:2 as their personal calling. The culture shifts from “come and see” to “go and multiply”.

How Leaders Build a Disciple Making Culture That Multiplies

Owning this mission as a leader demands ruthless clarity and intentional practice:

1. Be crystal clear in your role – You are not primarily a preacher, counselor, or CEO—you are a reproducer of reproducers. Your win is a church full of Timothys who are actively looking for their own “reliable people.”

2. Fast and pray regularly for laborers – Jesus modeled this before choosing the Twelve and before sending out the Seventy (Luke 6:12–13; Luke 10:2). Beg God to raise up and thrust out disciple makers from within your own congregation.

3. Pursue multiplication at every level – Every class, group, strategy, and budget line must answer one question: “How does this raise up people who can disciple others?” If it doesn’t, reshape it or starve it of resources.

When leaders own the mission this way, the bottleneck shatters. Disciple making ceases to be a staff-led initiative and becomes the very DNA of the church. Lost people are saved by the dozens, then the hundreds. Spiritual infants mature quickly because they are needed in the mission. The hurting are loved as Jesus loved—by an ever-expanding family of disciple makers.

This is what Paul entrusted to Timothy. This is what Jesus has entrusted to us.

The mission is too urgent, the King too worthy, and the world too lost for anything less.

Own it. Multiply disciple-makers. It is the greatest mission on planet earth.

For King Jesus,