I remember the first few times I heard about “DMM.” Frankly, it sounded like some kind of “latest fad.” To be honest, I avoided tackling the material because, I justified, I was already involved in “ministry.” (What does that mean, exactly? I worked full-time in an office for a missions agency. And I’ve previously served overseas as a full-time missionary. But — how was I truly “ministering” now?) Truth be told, I was rationalizing. Because my job as president of a missions agency keeps me hopping, I guess I somehow thought I deserved a free pass — an exemption from being a “normal disciple maker.” After all, lots of our missionaries focused on church planting (all of them?). Didn’t that make me a disciple maker vicariously?
What’s more, the training for “DMM” (Disciple making movements) always seemed to take too long. And beyond that, it just seemed… too ethereal. I needed a way to get started — to get over the hump. I needed a way to “break it down” into bite-sized chunks that my racing mind could manage. I needed a compressed format — with uncompressed results.
The breaking point for me came in conjunction with a CHE course (CHE stands for Community Health Evangelism) at a megachurch in Indianapolis. Somehow, I ended up accepting the responsibility of facilitating the final day of the course, with a specific focus on how to take CHE methods/principles to the next level of disciple making. I could avoid the topic no longer. I dived in to Trousdale Watson, and Curtis Sergeant. And suddenly, I was hooked.
But what helped me more than anything was when a colleague suggested we just take it one “bite” at a time. Basically – 15 minutes per day. She agreed to brainstorm with me about this website and, before I knew it, she thought of the idea of an automated series of emails over the course of 30 days. The 30-Day Challenge was born. Others had followed similar paths. We were sure of it. But what made it different this time was that we owned it. We embraced the additional work of dissecting all the material into 30 “chunks.” And before we knew it, we had fallen in love with the principles, the practices and the potential for staging Discovery Bible Studies (DBSes, also known as three-thirds groups) with the hopes of launching Disciple Making Movements (DMM’s).
This journey… this amazing journey… will not be at all easy. Distractions will try to crowd it out of your life. You’ll need to make it a priority. Our hope is that, if you can keep it as a priority for 30 days, the habits will be somewhat ingrained for life. That’s our prayer. Because if we can just make these habits happen on a regular basis, we’re convinced we’ll start seeing local, regional, and global repercussions. And those repercussions will be epic in proportion.
So fasten your seatbelts — and get ready to see God’s power unleashed in your life. Welcome to the amazing journey that is the 30-Day Challenge at MoreDisciples.com!
