Contagious Disciple Making

Contagious Disciple Making: Leading Others on a Journey of Discovery [LINK]

By David and Paul Watson
Thomas Nelson Publishers (2014)
225 pages

I attended a daylong conference with M28 Global Discipleship Ministries a while back. They introduced us to a radically new way to make disciples among unchurched people.

Mission teams have been going overseas for years, often with little to show for their hard work.
As the story was told, one team looked over their results and decided to change the way they did things. When their mission board reviewed their results, they sent a team over to investigate, believing the report was overly optimistic. What they found was that the team had actually underestimated their success.

What they have called the “Disciple Making Movement” involves going among those you are trying to reach, rather than drawing them in.

“The DMM is about doing what was done in the first century— giving the Gospel to a people and teaching them to obey it; seeing them become faithful disciples of Christ; leaving them to struggle in obeying the Word of God in their own context and history; and allowing them to develop their own unique practices for worship, leadership, and governance within the confines of biblical obedience.”
Watson, David; Watson, Paul. Contagious Disciple Making: Leading Others on a Journey of Discovery (p. 26). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.​

An App for with basic instructions, the questions and group guidelines applying the methods discussed in the book can be found on the M28 website.

Rob

 

PART 1 THE MIND-SET OF A DISCIPLE-MAKER

Chapter 1 - Disciple-Makers Embrace Lessons Taught by Failure
Chapter 2 - Disciple-Makers Deculturalize, Not Contextualize, the Gospel
Chapter 3 - Disciple-Makers Plant the Gospel Rather than Reproduce Their Religion
Chapter 4 - Disciple-Makers Realize How Hard Completing the Great Commission Will Be for Strategies and Organizations Built Around Branded Christianity
Chapter 5 - Disciple-Makers Realize the Structure of the Community Determines the Strategy Used to Make Disciples
Chapter 6 - Disciple-Makers Realize Their Culture and Religious Experience Can Negatively Influence Their Disciple-Making Unless They Are Very Careful
Chapter 7 - Disciple-Makers Understand the Importance of Obedience
Chapter 8 - Disciple-Makers Make Disciples, Not Converts
Chapter 9 - Disciple-Makers Understand the Importance of the Priesthood of the Believer​

PART 2 PRACTICES OF A DISCIPLE-MAKER

Chapter 10 - Thinking Strategically and Tactically About Disciple-Making
Chapter 11 - Be a Disciple Who Makes Disciples
Chapter 12 - Prayer
Chapter 13 - Engage Lost People
Chapter 14 - Finding a Person of Peace
Chapter 15 - Discovery Groups
Chapter 16 - Establishing Churches
Chapter 17 - Leadership
Chapter 18 - Mentoring​

Watson, David; Watson, Paul. Contagious Disciple Making: Leading Others on a Journey of Discovery . Thomas Nelson.

 

From Chapter 6 - Disciple-Makers Realize Their Culture and Religious Experience Can Negatively Influence Their Disciple-Making Unless They Are Very Careful

So, what kind of churches do we plant, anyway? We strive to plant the Gospel of Jesus Christ and let it transform individuals, families, and communities so that a culturally relevant and redeemed church will emerge. As we introduce the Gospel we ask the question, "If this is from God, what are you going to do about it?" We insist that the role of any believer is to be obedient to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and allow it to redeem self, family, community, and culture.

As the new believers become obedient to the Gospel, worship emerges out of their culture and is acceptable to the culture within the limits set by God's Word. As they struggle with the Word, new leadership forms develop. As they strive with the new and push out that which is not from God, unique systems develop that look like the local culture but are redeemed by the Gospel. The church emerges out of obedience to the Word of God and expresses itself in uniquely cultural ways, thus removing or limiting the barriers of foreign culture and times.

Churches grow from the soil of culture where the seed of the Gospel is planted. This leads to churches that can naturally and quickly reproduce, as well as leaders who can reproduce. It makes disciples, who by the very definition of "disciple" reproduce more disciples.

In this model, everyone is trained to ask the question, "In this situation, how will I [or we] be obedient to the Word of God?" Faith is defined as the continuous act of choosing to be obedient to God's Word regardless of what it may cost, even our lives.