Category / Coaching

by johnkking

Q&A: Are All DMMers Angry at Traditional Churches?

No, but many let their frustration boil over in this way. Often their angry sounding remarks arise from their impatience to see breakthroughs.

It is my firm conviction that great care should be taken to guard against derogatory comments. It is my studied conviction that what we are currently doing will not fulfill the Great Commission and I personally believe that DMM provides greater potential for experiencing multiplication.

I praise God for the good fruit that has been accomplished through traditional “building-based” churches. I came to faith by being reared in a church of about 100 people with Sunday School classes, a regular preacher and multiple scheduled gatherings at a meetinghouse. I have earned multiple degrees from private Christian universities and am thankful for the opportunities to dig deeply into God’s Word.

But I now realize those institutions were the fruit of spiritual movements that preceded them. They were the effects, not the causes of multiplication.

The people living around us who cannot imagine joining us in those scheduled meeting times still need the Gospel planted deep into their hearts. Note Jesus’ Great Commission directs us to “Go and make disciples among all nations (people groups, ethno-linguistic groups)…” Where are the pockets of those people groups in your city? Until we take seriously this Final Command, it may sound like we are being offensive. But if calling people to obey King Jesus is the reason for the offense, then we dare not back down.

Having written that, though, I have found it odd that some of my DMM friends admonish more care when speaking with an Imam than with a pastoral leader. Why would you care more about not needlessly antagonizing one over the other. At its core, Disciple Making Movements grow out of looking for the willing by finding Persons of Peace and Multipliers.

Persons of Peace are lost people who are open to the Kingdom (Luke 10). Multipliers are saved people who are open to the generational multiplication which results in Kingdom expansion. Do you seek to antagonize the lost people who are not yet Persons of Peace? Why antagonize the believers who are not yet open to becoming Multipliers? Do you trust the Holy Spirit to bring conviction? Orneriness does not appear in any of the spiritual gifts lists that I know.

If my last statement goads you a bit, remember it the next time you choose to take out your frustration on a brother or sister who is slow to embrace multiplication. Saying something derogatory to or about them likely will not help them open up to new ways forward. Pray for them and keep looking for the two types of people who are most strategic. Ask God to open their hearts and keep moving.

by johnkking

Q&A: Do you have any suggestions on who to invite to a DBS?

It is best to have intentional overt spiritual conversations with lost people. Those who respond with curiosity and receptivity should be invited to host a Discovery Group where they will invite some of their family and/or close friends to join them in participating. You may have to take them through 2-3 before they will invite others to participate and that is fine.

Other believers can be invited to participate in a multi-week experience of DBS as part of a training program to get them to begin using the format in their own disciple making efforts. But mixing this type of group with the one mentioned earlier is not preferable. Lost people are often concerned that they know so little of the Bible that their ignorance will show, so they hold back if they are with too many people who know much more than they do.

Inviting one other person who is training to become a Multiplier to sit in on a Discovery Group comprised of a lost family/friendship group can be very valuable. But you need to coach this person before they meet in this setting. They absolutely must not “show off” their extensive Bible knowledge! They need to model a humble learning spirit. They must obey their own “I will…” Statement and attempt to share with the person they name, if they are to return. Their greatest contribution will be serving as a role model of someone on a Discovery journey.

Many Christians will not do what is discussed in the previous paragraph, regretfully. Those who will not, will botch a Discovery Group.

by johnkking

Q&A: How do you deal with the very tough and difficult Scriptures?

Tough and difficult Scriptures are best studied after people have Discovered enough about God to trust that He loves them and only wants their best. When they have that level of trust in Him, they will be willing to explore the places where His Word confronts their lifestyle choices.

Too often, disciple makers who know one of the “hidden sins” of a lost person or household feels the need to confront that sin with a “head on” passage, or worse yet, with a personal rebuke. If the Holy Spirit produces that feeling, take action ASAP, but what if that feeling is really motivated by your own fear that other believers might condemn you for being too “soft” on sin?

Do you remember the saying Jesus quoted in Matthew 1:17: “We played the pipe for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not mourn.“ (NIV)? Jesus used this to probe the charge that John the Baptizer’s choices to not eat and drink brought the charge that he “has a demon,” while Jesus’ choice to have close fellowship with sinners brought the same people to say, “Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.“ (vs. 19). Consistency cries out, you cannot have it both ways.

Do not allow your fear of “what others may say” drive you to taking a premature action. Always do what the Holy Spirit prompts you to do. After people have established faith in God, forged through a process of hearing his Word and seeking to respond in obedience, they they have a foundation of trust strong enough to withstand the challenges of learning that some of their actions run contrary to what the Word reveals. Never rush this process because of your fear of what others may think or say. You know your heart is to see lives transformed and your trust in the Holy Spirit to bring conviction is strong enough to overcome your fear!

by johnkking

Q&A: If a Discovery process is facilitated entirely by not-yet-Christians, and Christians aren’t even present, how can harmful errors be avoided or even noticed?

Persistent and consistent coaching of the Person of Peace or another inside leader of a Discovery Group is the way DBSs avoid heresy. It is instructive to realize that 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians were letters Paul wrote to a group of believers in Corinth. Clearly that church had its struggles with false teaching and false practices. The founder, Paul an Apostle, did not stay with that young church indefinitely. But he had ongoing relationships with some of the people there and those insiders kept him informed.

Ongoing relationships with key leaders of a family or friendship group are critical to coaching a Discovery Group toward faith, becoming a church and guiding them to plant additional generations of churches. Early DMM trainers used the acronym M.A.W.L. as Model, Assist Watch and Leave. More recently some have changed the L to Launch. Leaving never referred to Leaving Alone.

The good catalyst recognizes the longer he/she is a personal participant in a Discovery Group, the greater the risk that the Group will develop a stunting dependency upon her/him. The goal is to model good Discovery. Assist an inside leader (someone the family or friendship group already looks upon as a leader) to be a good facilitator and then Launch that person into the role.

Weekly meetings with this Inside Leader provide opportunities to identify problems which are arising, recognize theological errors which may be surfacing and coach this leader to healthy corrective studies and practices. Personal presence is not the only way to bring correction, otherwise Paul would have dropped everything to return to Corinth. It is very possible for an Outside leader to stay too long and cause far greater problems than arise when he/she leaves too soon.

Also, we must recognize that the Discovery process has been developed to ensure that the actual teacher is the Holy Spirit at work through the Word of God which is being explored in each gathering. How much do we really trust the Holy Spirit? Are we more confident in our abilities or the power of the revelation of God contained in Scriptures?

by johnkking

How Much Trellis is Needed?

In John 15 Jesus has three promises related to fruit bearing. It is his promise that if branches will abide in him as the vine, they will be carefully tended so that they “bear fruit” (John 15:4), “bear much fruit” (John 15:5, 8) and “bear fruit—fruit that will last” (John 15:16). In Disciple Making Movements in West Africa we have observed all of these stages of fruit bearing–initial breakthroughs, increasingly rapid multiplication of new groups and then the stabilizing, formational work required for long-term preservation of fruit.

I am convinced these three phases actually correspond to the functions of the apostolic, evangelistic and pastoral/educational (which correlate to planting vines, tending vines so their fruitfulness multiplies and then preserving the grapes through wine making which requires the greatest labor and construction of the winepress and places for storing the wineskins while fermentation happens).

In keeping with those three phases, New Harvest Global Ministries in Sierra Leone (West Africa) has three different training tracks, with increasing training and education required for each subsequent phase:

1. Sending experienced disciple makers into a previously closed region is that initial breakthrough phase. Often, these workers have grown up under very similar circumstances to the people groups among which they are working. These apostolic workers are dilegently looking for Persons of Peace. They are experienced in spiritual warfare and the power encounters demanded to see breakthroughs come. Increasingly these workers are sent out of DMMs among least reached near-neighbor people groups. The very first apostolic workers are often highly trained and experienced and they find households of Peace where people come to faith in Jesus via Discovery Bible Studies.

2. But once the first believers come to faith in a village or community, they are sent out with very little additional training, because they will imitate the process which just resulted in them coming to faith. As they become successful in starting new groups in new places nearby, they will begin to receive additional training. Some of these who are early fruit will eventually be trained to become apostolic workers sent to other hard places nearby.

3. Others who show an aptitude toward pastoral ministry toward existing groups will receive training to be equipped to nurture the group with which they came to faith. In some emerging churches there are not yet existing leaders within the group. In those groups another type of leader will be sent in. Much like Barnabas was sent from Jerusalem to Antioch and he eventually brought in Saul, leaders are sometimes sent to stabilize new churches and raise up teams who can be sent to other nearby villages.

Some Americans who have travelled to Sierra Leone have been surprised to find such training mechanisms in place, but they have more than 20 generations of multiplication which has been happening for more than 15 years. More trellis and preservation capacities are needed after multiplication begins to happen, but those are not what we lead with if we want to see Movements! This is a significant difference between Disciple Making Movement strategies and traditional cross-cultural missions.

by johnkking

Q&A: Is DBS owned by anyone, denomination or para church organization?

No, the Discovery Bible Study process was developed by an international team focused on simple disciple making which can be easily replicated by brand new believers and even lost individuals who are “Persons of Peace” (Luke 10-12). No one person or group hold a copyright or trademark to DBS. There are multiple lists of questions that different groups have used, but each catalytic team needs to carefully evaluate the purpose behind the format which is utilized. I, John King, was part of that international team and I personally crafted the question list used by Final Command Ministries.

There are eight questions which drive the Discovery Groups we seek to see launched. Each question serves a distinct function for lost groups which are open to gathering to hear from and interact with the Bible and one another. We discourage changing the questions from week to week because a fundamental goal is to model an easily replicated study format. We know lost people who start new groups using the same questions. Changing them every week requires that each facilitator will have to have greater knowledge and reduce the likelihood of multiplication, thus I believe it is unwise.

While that international team settled on multiple Scripture sets, the same did not happen with the questions, so there is some diversity. The question that we all need to answer is, “What outcomes are we hoping to see?”

by johnkking

Q&A: Why is “pace and purity” so important in a Discovery Bible Study?

Pace, as we use it, refers to keeping answers brief enough that everyone answers every question every session. People here in the U.S. are particularly time conscious, so answering in sentences, rather than paragraphs, actually encourages more participation by more people. Purity refers to sticking with the passage being studied that session, or an occasional reference to a passage the group has Discovered previously. This practice of “purity” protects people who are less familiar with the Bible from feeling incompetent and giving up on hearing from God.

Seventy-five minutes is the ideal time frame here in the US. Request the group members to commit to ninety minutes and end it at 75 so everyone will be pleasantly surprised. They may hang around longer, but the first three to four sessions it is critical to complete the eight questions in 75 minutes every session.

When a Person of Peace connects you to her/his household, your goal is to equip their “inside leader” to facilitate the Discovery process ASAP. It is absolutely imperative that an ongoing coaching relationship be maintained on a weekly basis with this “inside leader” since he/she will be hearing these passages for the first time. This is where you explore the joys and challenges of the ongoing group since you may not be a personal participant. In the ideal situation this “inside leader” will begin facilitating no later than the fourth session.

As a group begins to find joy in hearing, trusting and obeying God’s Word, the great temptation will be to invite other family and friends to join this existing group. As noted in one of my recent posts (https://dmmcoach.com/2021/03/25/addition-vs-multiplication/), bringing new people into existing groups is one of the quickest ways to get addition results rather than multiplication. Encourage anyone who wants to invite a new person to the group to rather invite that person to identify a group of 3-4 family or friends who might like to be part of a new group. Offer to coach that person in starting this new group. Remember, your goal is to see people come to faith and become disciple makers. Do not forget that second part of the goal!

Starting new groups out of the relationships identified within the first group is one of the best ways to avoid a group growing so large it can no longer accomplish the deep sharing it grew out of originally. Multiplying groups safeguards the original group’s capacity for depth and combines the power of multiplication.

by johnkking

Why Do I Keep Getting Addition Results?

What has to change to transition from Addition Strategies and Tactics to Multiplication Strategies and Tactics?

Recently when I was discussing the answer to this question I started to envision a chart which helps to compare/contrast some of the differences between these two approaches. But I have also been meditating on why we default to Addition, even though many of us “want” Multiplication. Here is the chart I developed.

Addition Multiplication
1. Connects an individual to an existing group1. Individuals become connectors to groups
2. Is possible when group members are inclusive2. Is possible wherever PoP has friends
3. Strong leaders are needed to start each new group3. Facilitation lowers starting demands
4. Challenges participants to be open to an old group4. Changes participants into facilitators
5. Encourages decisions of faith5. Encourages participants to become disciple makers
6. Outgrows space when successful6. Expands to new friendship groups in new locations
7. Easy to do with existing group; difficult to expand7. Challenging to start; expands more once going
Compare/Contrast Addition Strategies with Multiplication Strategies

Why? Why would we take the approach I have titled “Addition” in the chart?

It’s what we know. It avoids filling our schedule with lots of groups. It protects us from the risk that a new group will not develop the new rhythms needed for life to materialize. It fits with our highly individualistic cultural norms. It “gives in” to our fear that people will not be willing to invite their family/friends to participate in a Discovery Group.

Please do not misunderstand me. Good things can happen when an individual is added to an existing group. But GREAT things can happen when we coach someone to start a new Discovery Group with their family/friends who are willing to participate.

by johnkking

Q&A: What Cautions Do You have for Us?

Question: What cautions do you have for our church to make this as effective as possible?

Answer: Please note that the question addresses a very specific context. The 8 Question DBS approach was not developed with the typical church setting in mind (be sure to read my previous post which is linked below). Whether you are envisioning using Discovery in a Sunday School setting or a traditional small group hosted in a church member’s home, you are applying the format for a setting which is significantly different than the setting for which it was designed.

Applying Discovery to a Sunday School setting will have immediate challenges regarding time frame and typical seating arrangements. But there is a difference that is of greater significance, which is the expectation of those who will participate.

Most church goers have experienced a long and consistent process of being expected to learn new data more than applying that learning directly to their lives. Transitioning to an obedience-based form of lifestyle will require great love, patience, and perseverance. Role modelling coming up with good S.M.A.R.T. “I will…” Statements and then following through with obeying them during the week will be the best way to call participants to make this challenging paradigm shift. The convener of this type of group must set a new tone by his/her consistent practice outside the class experience.

Let’s return to the issue of time frame. Typically groups of 4-5 people need at least 75 minutes to complete the DBS process and even then they will have to be quite intentional in being brief during their responses to each of the questions. Much like grade school children using their “best” stall tactics to prevent their teacher from getting to the quiz, many adults drag out their answers to the early sharing questions to avoid those which are designed to move to application via obedience, sharing and service.

Whenever possible, having the chairs in a room arranged in small circles with no more than five chairs in each circle increases the likelihood of success. Starting promptly on time and keeping the smaller groups moving briskly through the questions is critical. Early into this experience it will feel “rushed” to the majority of the participants, so you need to expect resistance, push-back and/or passive-aggressive behavior. You are asking people to change their norms and even the self-proclaimed “change champions” often dig in their heels. You likely will need to have a private conversation with the most vocal resisters and ask them to refrain from leading a mutiny.

Keeping the make-up of each small circle consistent is critical to building the trust required to get to the level of transparency needed to establish a rhythm of mutual accountability. Mixing up the groups is another way the passive-aggressive opponents seek to sabotage the process.

Creating smaller sub-groups within a typical “Small Group” setting will also be needed to reach the needed level of mutual accountability to see true application. Life transformation does not happen by knowledge acquisition alone. When we learn about God and discern ways to obey him, but disregard taking action, we actually begin to disciple disobedience. Discovery entails experiencing the joy of responsive obedience.

Remember Jesus’ warning about mixing “old” and “new” practices:

“And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the new wine will burst the skins; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins. And no one after drinking old wine wants the new, for they say, ‘The old is better.’” (Luke 5:37-39)

by johnkking

Q&A: For Whom is DBS Effective?

Question: Does God use DBS in the U.S. as an effective tool for bringing unbelievers to trust in Jesus as Savior and also become an obedient disciple of Jesus, or is this tool best used for the latter only?

Answer: Here in the U.S. and Canada, we find that Discovery Groups work well with spiritually interested lost people and also with maturing newer believers.

The longer a person has been churched, typically the more resistant they are (as a general rule) to the Discovery Group format. One factor is the expectation that Discovery calls for obedience, sharing and ministry every week and then the group holds one another accountable for following through with actual practice. People who have become entrenched in knowledge transfer often find Discovery troublesome.

Question: Why is this resistance so common and can anything be done to reverse this?

We’ve done knowledge transfer for so long, that it seems normal. Groups typically need an intensive, focused time of DBS to retrain ourselves for a new normal. It is absolutely essential that any catalyst for making this paradigm shift must model it yourself for others to follow you. So last week’s “I will…” Statement creates perfect opportunity to share an update with the group by saying, “Here’s how it went this week….” If you will not consistently provide a S.M.A.R.T. “I will…” Statement and then follow through, why would you expect others to do so? Model the new behavior you want to see. Be accountable and follow through.