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The year was AD 400, and Patricius resided in northeast England. The island had been home to the Britons, the Celtic people who populated what is now the British Isles. However, Patricius’s family was Roman, resulting from the Roman occupation of England. He was raised in an aristocratic family, well-educated, and Christian. He was baptized…

I know, I know Jesus said “Go and make disciples” not “Go and make disciple makers” but I believe that a disciple is a disciple maker. Here is why this is an important distinction followed up with why I believe Jesus intended us to not just make disciples but to make disciple makers. Why this…

 Making disciples the way Jesus made disciples works everywhere. Disciple-making literally transcends culture. When Jesus said, “make disciples of all nations”, he knew it would work in every possible location. The Jesus approach to helping untrained seekers become fully trained disciples works in first-century Jerusalem as well as in twenty-first-century North America. The disciple-making process…

An Avoidable Leadership Crisis I’ll soon be in Turkiye with 270 disciple-making leaders from approximately 120 nations for Concentric’s Global Disciple-Making Leadership Summit. Eight years ago in Israel, while at Concentric’s last Global Summit in 2015, Sonlife’s disciple-making leadership pathway was born. It was then that our leadership team wrestled through a simple, clear paradigm shift. Our…

I had been betrayed. I do not mean this as hyperbole. If you want to be in ministry, you will have scars; The longer we are in, the more scars we will have, that is, as long as we are really in. There are those among us who figure out how to have a kind…

What does a disciple look like? Clarifying and simplifying the definition of a disciple is critical if your church is going to be committed to making disciples. You can’t have a fuzzy vision of your end product. That is what a disciple is—it’s the end product of a church.  Just as a tire factory produces…

Language matters.Before discussing some practical concepts of Intentionally Branching, I’d like to briefly discuss the importance of a church being unified in the language they use in making disciples. For instance, notice the word branch. Merriam-Webster defines branch as “to put forth secondary shoots or stems: to put forth branches.” Branching describes movement, growth, maturity, and life….

Discipleship is not enough… Over the weekend, Jennifer and I went to see Jesus Revolution, a new movie based on Greg Laurie’s personal journey with the birth of the Calvary Chapel movement of the late 60’s and early 70’s. As we sat in our seats at the movie’s conclusion, Jennifer and I both found ourselves saying…

What is a Disciple? Years ago, I received an invitation to meet with several national discipleship leaders. If I mentioned their names, you would know them. Most of them had written extensively about discipleship for decades and led national disciple-making ministries. Honestly, I’m not even sure why I was in the room. I felt like…

As a young Christian, I remember coming across a book titled The Fight by John White.  It appeared to be a volume on basic discipleship with chapters on the importance of Scripture, prayer, holiness, and other matters of what we would call personal piety.  But the final chapter caught my attention.  It was titled Deliverance…

When Jesus commissioned His disciples, He was very clear. He told them to make more disciples. But that begs the question: What is a disciple? The term “disciple” comes from the Greek word “athetes,” which means, “to learn.” The Hebrew word for a disciple is “talmidim.” That word, too, is connected with learning. So, in its most basic sense, a disciple is someone…

There are 15 ministries that will be teaching about disciple making at the National Forum in April. We want to give you an idea of some of the key breakout topics to be discussed as they add so much value to the event and to the ministries of those who attend. We also hope this…