S.3. Bonus 4 Truths for Building a Disciple Making Culture

Bonus Episode: 4 Truths for Building a Disciple Making Culture

Hello, friends. My name is Justin Gravitt with Navigators Church Ministries, and we're really excited to be with you today on the Discipleship Collective. , I'm with Navigators Church Ministries, and we are, , really excited just about what is happening, , on Discipleship. org, at Discipleship. org, at the for, on the website, on the podcast, everything Bobby and his team are doing, , we're glad to be a part of because we really see the impact of moving disciple making forward, not only in churches, but in the culture at large.

And so it's just fun to be here. It's so fun and discipleship. org is like everywhere and I love getting emails and it's just so cool to be a part of something bigger where we're consciously choosing to put disciple making first. That's right. That's right. We're going to be sharing with you, , today, whenever you're watching this for the morning evening, sharing with you, , four truths about growing a disciple making culture.

We have been impacted by this. This comes out of our lives and out of our ministry. And so we really think it's gonna be valuable for you in your context. My friend Tony and I, I'm gonna have him introduce himself here in a second, but we do a podcast together called the Practitioners Podcast. We just finished up season two of that.

And so, , we're just, it's another context for us, right? Another context, another opportunity to share what God's done. Yeah, the crazy part is, is we talk about Jesus style disciple making on the Practitioner's Podcast, and we really feel that when we look at these truths, we're going to get to a whole lot of that and much more.

So like Justin said, my name's Tony, , I am the Director of Leadership and Discipleship for a non profit known as Spirit and Truth. A Wesleyan minded equipping ministry, and , prior to that, I served in a local church, which is where I met this guy. That's right. And , funny story, you guys will love this, , I, I don't know if you've ever had a meeting where you walked into the meeting and you thought, oh, this isn't going to end well.

And that was kind of how it went for both of us. Right. After that first meeting, it was eight years ago, and I was pastoring a church, and I, I walk into this meeting with this guy who, who was with Navigators Church Ministries, NCM, and all of a sudden they're like, He's like, you've got to be disciple making, you've got to be disciple making, that's all he ever talked about.

And I'm like, Justin! There's nobody here to make disciples with! And it was very stressful, and I tried to break up with you at least three times. Yeah, yeah, and I felt similarly, I was like, this is not working, right? And we kind of butted heads for... Not kind of, we did butt heads. We did butt heads for about a year.

We're both eights on the Enneagram, if you know anything about that, so we're naturally aggressive. Yeah, and so tell, tell more about that story. What was the transition point? What happened? So the reality is, is that I had worked in churches for a couple years prior to becoming the lead pastor, and one of the things that had just been burdened on my heart is that we had done so much small group work, but we weren't seeing fruit.

And so there was lots of small groups, no small group leaders, no intentional, relational, reproducible, or even missional outcomes. And so, , I knew that I needed to do something different, even though the message was hard to hear. So, Justin and I would often pray together, and pray for each other, even if maybe sometimes it was in angst, or anger sometimes even.

Frustration is probably a better term. But, , the Lord just would not release me from the relationship. Yeah. And eventually, I think in both of our hearts. , things began to shift and, and I, I saw the value of, , how God was using Justin and Navigator Church Ministries. We began to, to trace the promise of disciple making throughout scripture and I realized that this was something that I needed to make part of my life and my ministry.

And now, , now it's what I do all the time, and I blame Justin for it every day. Yeah, so it was really hard. Like, like you said, like early on, it was just relationally difficult, and as a practitioner with Navigators Church Ministries, my job is to walk alongside pastors and church leaders, and to help them figure out disciple making, not only in their own lives, but also in their church, and so I wasn't just meeting with Tony.

I was meeting with a nber of other pastors throughout the area. And for Tony in particular, I remember that we were kind of butting heads on this idea of How do we make disciples that go out and make other disciples? That's right. Right? And so, it kind of flows into the first truth that we're talking about today, and we're going to move through four, the four truths that we have, and then we're going to invite a current local pastor onto our time together, into this time together, and he's going to share with us just kind of what's been going on in his church as he's seeing disciple making become an expressed part of the culture.

at his church. But the first truth that we have to share with you guys is a disciple making culture starts with you. Starts with you, wherever you are, whoever you are. And whatever role you play in the church. Yep. Not just the lead pastor, but staff, church leaders, you know, everyday folks in the church. If you want a disciple making culture in your church, it starts with you.

And for you and I, I remember one of the things that you said to me was, Justin, I have no trouble making disciples. The trouble I have is getting them to go and make other disciples. That's 100 percent right, and what kind of the tension point was is that I'm naturally relational. And so I love to meet with people, I love, some people joke even in my community now that my job is really just going to have coffee with people, and you probably know a pastor like that or you are a pastor like that.

And one of the things that I realized is that you can't program your way to a disciple making culture. You can't program your way into disciples who are going to make disciples. You actually have to do it. And I think this idea of ownership is really important in ministry. Whether you're a lay leader or a pastor, or you're just a normal Joe sitting in the pews, we have to own the responsibility.

Funny story, at my very first church, , one of the expectations to be on staff was that, , you had to tithe, right? And so there's a, a, a kind of this legendary story that's been told from employee to employee where the, the lead pastor walked into the youth pastor's room and sat down in his chair, which is unusual, big church.

It's not very often that the, that the senior pastor was just roaming the halls, sitting in people's offices. So the youth pastor would tell the story and he would immediately start to sweat as he mentioned the senior pastor sitting in his seat. He sat down, he looked at him and he said, , Hey buddy, you know, while you're on staff here, you actually have to do the things that we preach about.

The youth pastor looked at him and was like, Yeah, absolutely. That makes perfect sense. And he goes, great. So I'll expect you're tied in by the end of the week, or you can go ahead and walk away. Wow. Wow. Cut and dry. Subtle, right? Subtle. I wouldn't say Grace was high on his, you know, gift list, but convicting?

Absolutely. And I think that's the similar approach that we have to own. When it comes to disciple making, right? We have to own it. Yep. Because we can't just talk about it in local church, whether you're a lead pastor or anyone in the local church. If you want to have a priority or a value around disciple making, that means you have to be practicing it yourself.

Not just talking about it, not just encouraging it. But, Tony, I think one thing we need to do is kind of bring some more definition around what do we mean when we talk about disciple making, right? So in discipleship. org, we use this phrase, Jesus style disciple making a lot. And I talk about it like this, that there's an assption that I make, and the assption that I begin with is that Jesus way of making a disciple is the best way to make one.

Yeah, amen. Right? And so I want to get as close to the way that He did it. As I can understanding that we are all kind of contextualizing because I don't know anyone that's just kind of wandering around the u. s Which well people following him and you know him or her but What is it precisely see I think disciple making will always yield a threefold fruit Hmm.

Okay. So the first fruit disciple making will yield is the fruit of new converts So we have new people coming to faith, right? The loss the loss. That's right So if we are only talking about disciple making in our church and the loss never get impacted We're really not practicing Jesus style disciple making so the first thing we're gonna yield the first fruit is that Fruit of new converts.

Yeah, the second fruit then would be the fruit of new disciple makers Now, a lot of churches, that's where they start. There's people in the church that have been there a while that haven't heard or haven't been trained or haven't understood about disciple making. And they then begin to understand and practice what it means to disciple somebody else.

And so they become a new disciple maker. Now the third one is a little bit more complicated. It's what I call three fold disciple making moment in the church. And so, , in the church, it goes into the local church. So there's moment that moves in, but that moment also moves outward to the lost. And then it moves downward in the life of the individual believer.

And so really, it's those three things that, as I'm looking and evaluating a church's disciple making, I'm thinking about the three fold fruit that biblical disciple making should yield. Yeah, and the reality is, is that, , it's not fully Jesus style disciple making. Unless all three parts are brought together, right?

And when we talk about culture, which is one of the major points that we're going to talk about today, this is the culture that we're striving towards. Right? It's both aspirational and it's both prescriptional to what we're trying to do to make Jesus style disciples. And so when we think about culture, this is really important for us as leaders.

Lay leaders or pastors, we've got to get clear about our language, right? One of the things I love to say is that common language creates common movement that changes the individual for the corporate good. Oh wow, Tony, you've got to say that again for us. Let me say it again, yeah. Common language creates common movement that changes the individual for the corporate good.

So again, if you think about what Justin just talked about when it comes to the three fold ministry of Jesus style disciple making, there's... There's individual change, there's corporate movement, and then there's corporate change, right? And this is what we want for our church. We don't want churches that just add people, but rather we want churches that multiply people.

I think one of my big sticking points is I think for the last 20 years, the North American church model, in most cases, taught people how to go to church, but never taught them how to follow Jesus. That's so true. And if we want to follow Jesus... You know, we must be willing to move. Yeah. One of the things I love about that statement of, you know, the common language is it hits on kind of what culture is, right?

So if we're talking about culture, we've defined a little bit what disciple making is. If we're going to build a disciple making culture, we need to have some sort of working definition of what culture is, right? And part of culture is language, right? It's these words that we use and we have a common understanding of what those are.

You know, I like to think about culture as a river. Right? That it flows and it moves people even if they're passive, right? So if you get into a river and you're not actively resisting the current, it's gonna move you. It's gonna move you. And so as the things that go into building that culture in a church, one of the biggest ones is our language, right?

Another big one is like practices. You know for years I was a missionary overseas and in the culture that I was in it was a It was Thailand, actually, and so a really hot place all year round. And I still remember early on when we moved there and just getting to know my Thai friends and every day they were going to a restaurant for lunch and the thing that was on the menu, now there are different variations, but it was the thing that was on the menu, was hot soup.

in 90 plus degree weather. And that sounds awful. I mean, being from the Midwest, hot soup was for the winter. Right, right. And so we're sweating our tails off over there and, you know, sit down to a bowl of hot soup. And it took a while for us to be impacted by that culture. But by the time we had been there a year, maybe a little more, we were excited to go and eat that hot soup because it had become a normal practice for us.

Tony, what are some of the other pieces and parts of culture? Yeah, so I think one of the things that I really love to talk about when we talk about culture is the idea of stories, right? Craig Groeschel, , many of you probably have heard of before, but one of the things he says is that What gets rewarded gets repeated.

So in building an intentional culture, it's crucial that we begin to tell stories of the things that God is doing through this Jesus style disciple making approach, right? And oftentimes we tell stories about, Oh, we gave this much money here. We gave that much money there. None of those things are bad, right?

We all have to do those things as. But how many times do we say, man, so and so walked alongside so and so and now that person is walking alongside that person and lives are being transformed. So I love the idea of stories when it comes to culture. , and then the second thing is vision, right? We talk about vision, , from the sense of like showing where the current is going.

If we go back to that river metaphor, which I loved. , it's telling the people who are in your church, in your community, and not just that, individually, the people that you're discipling, you're giving them the vision of what this looks like. And this is what I found, and maybe you found it too, is if I fail to cast the vision, we end up getting stuck.

Because the vision points the direction in which God is calling us to. And if I don't keep our eyes on the big prize... We end up, , spinning our wheels, stuck in the mud, and next thing you know, I'm completely out of the river, and I'm just in the mud. Right. I love that, right? Vision protects us against stagnation.

Yeah, that's a great way to say it. It absolutely does. Vision protects us against stagnation, and it's not only personally, but also corporately in a church. So, our first truth, right, that we've been talking about with you is a disciple making culture. starts with you, right? We talked about what disciple making is, what culture is, and really, for culture to change, there needs to be someone or something, a catalyst, to show something different, and that brings us to our second truth.

A disciple making culture grows with your team. Now, this whole truth comes out of 1 Thessalonians chapter 1. 1 Thessalonians 1, as you probably know, Paul goes into Thessalonica with his team, His team live amongst the people of Thessalonica, they model, and then they begin to have some people imitate them.

Right, but it started with Paul, Paul brought his team, the team then modeled for other people in that place. Those people started to imitate, and then it says other people started to imitate, and finally other people, and so we see this kind of concentric circle of imitation and doing the same thing that really Paul started to do first, which Paul tells us he was trying to do what Jesus was trying to do 1, and so a culture grows with your team.

That's right. If you think about how the second truth corresponds with the first truth, Right. So the first truth is that you own it, right? So at when I begin to build a team I own it then I pass on ownership not just to me But now to you so I own it you own it and then when you begin to really build the team We own it.

Yeah, right And so this is really a kind of a key element of changing culture in your church No matter how big or small your church is Because if you can get a group of people united in the vision, centered around the language, really getting the culture moving, right? Then all of a sudden, you're not the only person.

that has to advance the mission of Jesus style disciple making in your church. It's how we change a lot of different things. We're going to get into more of that. I almost jped ahead. I stopped myself. So when we think about a team, Justin, we think about this idea about, , we like to use the acronym CORE.

Yes. Can you run us through the C in CORE? Yes. So the C is common vision, right? So this comes out of the ebook that I partnered on, , partnered on and wrote with discipleship. org. So it's available on the ebook section. of discipleship. org, the foundation of a disciple making culture. The foundation is this CORE team.

Yeah. CORE is an acronym, , as I expound on it in the book. , the C is common vision. So we have to get on the same page as a team. together of what are we doing? Where are we going? Because if one of us on the team thinks, oh, the most important thing for us is getting a lot of people in the building on Sunday, another person thinks, no, the most important thing is getting a lots of people tithing, for instance, or the other most common ones like baptism, right?

Getting the most people. Well, all those are good things, but none of them are real. Disciple making metrics, right? And so again, if we start with disciple making culture starts with you, then as a team, it starts with me and it starts with each of us in this room on this team. Then that means that all of us are practicing it.

And now we're looking and figuring out, are we making disciple makers? Are we bringing new converts to faith? Are we seeing that threefold moment begin to move not only amongst our team, but in our church? And the common vision part is that idea again, of we are aligned, we are aligned in what we're doing.

And Tony, you know from being a pastor that this is a challenge, right? To get people together and get them on the same page. Preach! Moving to the same place. That's right. And it actually leads right into the second part of this core team. So if C is common vision, then O is A. , owned individually. So again, every person on the team has to own the vision of the team, of Jesus style disciple making, of what it looks like in the church.

And so that's getting people away from programmatic things. It's getting people away from what they've known. And right, wrong, or indifferent. If you've been in the church for any nber of years, you know that everybody comes in. with a little bit of baggage about what church should and shouldn't look like.

I like to joke all the time that there's only a couple of jobs that are second guess. , as much as pastors are, and it's actually police officers and doctors, thanks to WebMD, right? And all of us in the pastoral role know that that email on Monday is oftentimes a result of how they would have done things on Sunday.

And so again, you want to build a team, a group of people, common vision, owned individually. Yeah, and that owned individually, again, we're trying to figure out. Not only do they see where we're going, but are they willing to do it? To do the work. Right? Because it's easy to sit there in a team setting and nod your head, but the hard part's actually putting yourself in the game.

I've been in so many meetings where all of a sudden the board or the team will look at me and say, Okay, Pastor, good luck with that. That's right. No! That's not what we're doing! You've got to do it too. It's important. Yep. Yep. And so that's the C and O. The R then is Relationally Resilient. I was with a pastor not long ago and he said, Justin, I've heard a lot about multiplication, right?

So if I reach one and you reach one at the end of the year We got four and if they do that then we got eight and it multiplies and real soon We've reached the whole world, but that's been talked about for generations. How come we how come we're not done yet if this works? And I said, yeah, that's a great question.

, the only thing I can tell you is people, people that sometimes it just doesn't move because relationally we have trouble together. And especially in the church, we have trouble being in relationship and being honest with each other, right? Even with our story, I mean, it took a while of kind of clashing and working through that.

Yeah, 18 24 months probably, somewhere in that range. And now, I mean, I count you among one of my closest friends. Yeah, likewise. And so, that's the dynamic that happens on a team, is The pastor or others on the team need to be willing to step into some of that conflict, some of that tension. Maybe it hasn't gotten to conflict yet because people are withdrawing.

How are we going to step in relationally together and into the tension so that we're truly loving each other and making peace and not just keeping peace? You know, I think one of the things that comes in play here is that often times leaders are more scared to lose someone from the church than they are to grow someone in Christ.

And when we talk about being relationally resilient, we're talking about speaking the truth in love and grace. Calling out sin, calling out toxic behavior, , and sometimes it means even asking someone to step down from the team. Right. If they're not going to individually own it, if they're not going to be a part of the vision, they're not going to do those things.

And, , and you know, as well as I do that, that always comes with a fair amount of lps and, , it's hard. It's hard. COVID, COVID has certainly been, , a good reminder of how hard it is to be in relationship with people. , especially when, you know, maybe you see them three, four, five times a month. Yeah.

Right. Not very often. So, , take us to the E. Yeah, well, before I get there, I just want to say, we don't want to minimize the difficulty of these steps, right? It's easier, it's much easier to talk about than it is to live out, but it doesn't change the fact that it's necessary, right? If we're going to have a team of disciple makers...

This is what we have to move through. Yeah, it's much easier to talk about it here than it is to actually, , talk about it in a room full of people who you're trying to serve, and you love, and you love their family, and you know it's going to hurt their feelings, and like, all this stuff is hard. Yeah. , but the life transformation on the other side is...

Yeah. Absolutely. So the E then, so we have, so far, a common vision, owned individually, relationally resilient. The E is enduring to the end. And what happens towards the end of the team process is, you know, the team is clicking together, they're discipling someone or a couple someones, and the pastor or the leader of the team is feeling really good and really encouraged because he's seen the progress that they've made.

Yeah. But the problem is the team themselves are exhausted and a lot of them are feeling it man If I could just go back we can I'm I did it all now ignorance is bliss. That's right I did it Can we just be done and I'll just go back to the way things were and that's when the the team lead needs to step in and walk alongside even closer than he has been because That's when they need him the most.

And so that E is enduring to the end, helping them finish and get to the finish line. Tony, will you talk to us about one of the biggest challenges in the team building process is this idea of a team versus a group. Right. Can you share with us just a little bit about that? So oftentimes, in especially the church settings, we group people together.

We love small groups. We love all the groups. We, we love groups. We're a group kind of culture. The, the difference is with a team, we're all going to the, , a common goal. Yeah. Right. And I think that's the difference, right? It's a, it's an agreement. That we're all going to get in the metaphorical river together and let the culture and also create the culture together Then just kind of you know bping into each other.

So here's how this plays out practically on a team teammates regardless of whether or not they're on staff at the church or a pastor Teammates check in on each other. Groups don't. Teammates challenge each other. Groups don't. Teammates are there for each other. Groups aren't. So, a lot of times we put people together.

Call it a team when it really functions as a group. Yeah, so as you're thinking about how Disciple making culture can impact your church always be thinking about a team not a group. Mm hmm Yeah, that's a great word because it's we're really used to being in groups right in churches But teams, you know, they can count on each other.

Yeah, that's right They don't just call up. They don't just not show up without telling somebody you're having a good reason or saying hey I know I made this commitment, but There's all that, and it's just hard for people to learn to be in a team when they've been used to being in groups for so long. So okay, Tony, so that was our second truth, right?

A disciple making culture grows with your team. How about our third truth today? Our third truth, a disciple making culture impacts your city. A disciple making culture impacts your city. So one of the things that we often hear about when we talk about disciple making cultures with pastors. Is that, well, I'm just more, , into evangelism than I am into discipleship.

And what we would argue is that Jesus style disciple making really is kind of the first step of good evangelism. Justin, tell us a little bit about how we came to that conclusion and some of the fruit that happens when you do it well. Right, yeah, so we would distinguish evangelism and disciple making.

When I say distinguish, I don't mean separate. They are connected. I would say that one always feeds the other. That's right. Right? So you cannot have biblical disciple making that doesn't include evangelism. Right. Right? And so if I'm discipling somebody and I'm not modeling evangelism, I'm not training evangelism, I'm not doing Jesus style disciple making.

On the other hand, if I'm doing evangelism and I'm only sharing my faith and bringing in new converts, But I never helped them. That's not what Jesus did. That's not the picture that we're presented in the New Testament, either for the individual or the church. Right? And so we believe these work together.

We cannot separate them, but they are distinct in what we do in the same way that I think it'd be a little ridiculous if, if we would think, well, Jesus is discipling somebody that doesn't want to be like Jesus, right? I don't think he would do that. It wouldn't work. No, it wouldn't work. Now what he would do and what we're called to do.

is to love those people. To walk alongside them relationally in a similar way that we would do with disciples. But the way that we're engaging them is a little bit different with what we're talking to them about, how we're serving them, what we're trying to move them into. It's just, it's a different phase.

Yeah, one of the things that we like to say is that you're a disciple maker wherever you are. So that gives you the opportunity to interact with non Christians. And start with evangelism. But once they've said yes to Jesus, well now the work of disciple making really begins. So because Jesus style disciple making is not programmatic, I get to take it with me wherever I go.

So I get to, for example, I'm on a couple of boards for local sports teams. My kids are sports nuts. We live the sports life, if you know, you know. Right? So, one of the things that happens is in that community, I'm surrounded by non christians all the time, which is great because even though I love my church family They're already all following Jesus or at least, you know know who Jesus is, right?

They're working on that. They're working on it, right? And so what I get to do in that community is I get to represent Jesus in a very tangible way, and walk alongside someone once they said yes to follow him. So evangelism has a place. And then evangelism very quickly moves into disciple making, so that we can make more disciples.

, this disciple making culture is going to impact our city, right? If disciple making only impacts the church, or if it stays in your church, again, not only is it not Jesus style, but it's not maturing, right? We don't see that moment moving outward, and the strongest disciple making churches that I know are really passionate about the place and the people around them, right?

You know, locally, we have a local disciple making network, the Dayton Disciple Makers Network, and, , One of our goals and one of the things that we're trusting God for is a movement of disciple making through Dayton. And one of the things that we believe, it's a nber of churches together, cross denominationally, pastors, all moving towards the same thing.

One of the things that we believe is that as we start to see God do that, see this movement move through Dayton, we're going to see things like crime rates go down. We're going to see those who are impacted by the heroin epidemic in Dayton. , go down. There's lots of things that we can look at outside of our churches that disciple making should be able to shift.

And for the everyday believer, you know, it shifts the way they are. Just like you were talking about, Tony. We are disciple makers everywhere. And so if you think about the people in your church... As they become disciple makers, it's going to impact their workplace. That's right. It's going to impact their neighborhood.

It's going to impact their family. And it just moves out. Tony, would you share just a little bit more in detail about kind of what you're doing with sports and how you're seeing disciple making move, , through you and through others? Yeah. So we all know that there's a temptation to make sports an idol in our communities.

And I can be as guilty of that as the next person. I love the sports, especially the Cincinnati Bengals, whoo dang, you're welcome. Go Bengals. , so when we talk about bringing the gospel into those kind of communities, we really have to do it from the inside out. And inside out disciple making means that we're going to be in the community, we're going to serve the community, not with the agenda of like reaching people for Jesus, but also with the agenda of reaching people for Jesus.

Because I believe that Jesus has transformed my life so much. Everywhere I go I have to share Jesus. That's my testimony, right? He's transformed my life, and I believe he can transform the world. Now, this is really important because for so long we've taught people how to go to church and not how to follow Jesus.

So if we release our congregations to not worry about bringing someone to church, and we only ask them to bring people to Jesus, What will end up happening is we'll have full churches because once you fall in love with Jesus, you want to worship him. Amen? I know you believe that. So what we have to do is take our foot off the gas of Hey, come Sunday, come Sunday, come Sunday.

And we've got to put our foot on the gas with the message that says wherever you are, whoever you're around, teach them to follow in Jesus. Yeah. Oh, I love that so much because you're modeling and communicating about what it looks like to share our lives. as we share the gospel. Yeah. Right? Not share the gospel and then share our lives.

I don't want the gospel to be separate from my life. That's right. Yeah. We're sharing our lives as we're sharing the gospel. We're sharing the gospel as we're sharing our lives. And so a disciple making culture, again, it will impact your city. And now our fourth truth, Tony, , is a disciple making culture will transform your ministry.

It will transform your ministry and, and Tony, I want you to kick this one off. I want you to share just a little bit about who this, who this truth is going to hit most fully. So I want to be careful with my words. But what I know is that so many of us leaders in the local church right now are burdened, heavy, right?

We feel like we're fighting culture in different ways. We feel like we're fighting attendance in different ways, budgets in different ways. , I come out of a, a Methodist tradition, so we're, it feels like oftentimes we're fighting the denomination in certain ways. And, and every day I go into work or I went into work when I was a local pastor and, and I felt like I had to fight.

There was a, a season in COVID, probably about six, eight months before, as God was working on my heart about leaving the local church where there were days I felt like I could cry. , and I love. Love, love my church family. And what happened is, I began discipling a new, , follower of Jesus. His name is Zach.

He's incredible. And he came into my office and he was struggling with some personal issues. He didn't know the Lord. He came to the Lord. And eventually, , we began a disciple making relationship. And so when we say that disciple making culture transforms your ministry, what it does is it gives you promise and hope.

That, that individual lives are in fact changed by the gospel, and it's bigger than a building, and it's bigger than your board, and it's bigger than your bishop or your budget, right? It's bigger than all of that. It's one life at a time, because what I know is that Jesus transformed Zach's life, and that's a ministry that's sustainable.

Man, that's such a powerful story, right? And I know that there are many, many leaders that are probably tuning in or listening in some way today that that resonates, right? They're just weary. They're tired. They're wondering, you know, can I keep going? Is this really effective what I'm doing? And you know what?

What you and I both seen, what you've lived, but I've seen it as I've walked alongside pastors is that pastors, as they engage disciple making. It becomes kind of an encouraging place in their life. It's the, it's the well, yeah, it's one of the places where they get renewed and refreshed in ministry because working with an individual or a few individuals or.

, a small, you know, triad. They began to see that, yeah, this is working. The gospel still has power. The gospel still transforms, and these people that I'm walking alongside and loving and discipling, their lives are changing, and they're now beginning to go and disciple others, and so whatever other stuff they're dealing with that their door.

Or that might blow up in the church, they will turn their attention to that and say, well, man, there might be fires here, there, and over there, but, but right here, I see the light. I see Jesus doing His work. And you know, as, you know, not saying that in the fires Jesus isn't, it's just a little harder to see at times.

That's right. That's right. Right? But it becomes that encouraging place. Where they can see it. Now for me, I was on the other side of that, right? So I've not been a pastor, but I was someone like Zach, you know, 20 25 years ago. Where I had grown up in the local church, I had, , said I want to follow Jesus, but I didn't really want to follow Him.

Yeah. I mean, I just thought that that meant, okay, I need to follow these rules, be in church on Sunday, and I don't like rules to begin with, so that wasn't a great fit. , be in church on Sunday, and it wasn't until... So, , someone began to disciple me and they opened up the scriptures for me and said, Justin, are you spending your life or are you going to invest it?

Hmm. I don't know. I feel like I'm just trying to live my life. And , and he opened the scriptures to me and he said, Justin, there's a way to invest your life for eternity. 43, 40. , which says, Since you are precious and honored in my sight and because I love you, I'll give men in exchange for you and people in exchange for your life.

And I thought, wow, I would love that. And he went to Abraham and he showed me the Abrahamic promise where God took Abraham under the stars and he said, Count the stars and if you can count them, this is how nerous your offspring will be and and he showed me how this promise was passed down through the Old Testament and into the New Testament and Galatians 3 29 if you belong to Christ and you're Abraham seed and heirs according to the promise He said to me Justin if you want this promise can apply to you.

God wants to use your life to multiply it for the kingdom, to multiply it for God's glory, so that your spiritual descendants might be as nerous as the stars in the sky. And I said, I was so young in the faith at the time, I said in my heart before God that night, I said, God, I don't know if this is true.

If it is true, I want you to do it in my life. And I've seen it happening in my life, that God is multiplying me and I see him doing it in others lives. And honestly, there's nothing I know that's more exciting than what God does in the lives of individual believers and in churches and disciple making cultures as they invest themselves into God's kingdom and what He's calling us to do.

There are so many things in the world today that demand your attention. And we're not going to pretend like those demands aren't real. We're not going to pretend like those demands aren't hard. , but we can sit here and tell you. , from our own experiences that nothing has changed my relationship with Jesus than making disciples who will make disciples.

And so that's what we, that's our prayer for you. That's our desire for you. And , we want to kind of wrap everything up here and go over the four, , disciple making cultural truths. Right? Justin, will you take us through the four? Yeah. So, again, these are the things that we just walked through with you.

, we hope they're helpful for you in your context. But the first one, as you remember, a disciple making culture starts with you. We can't just talk about disciple making. We can't just plan and prepare and cheer for a disciple making culture. We have to practice it. Right? Whoever you are listening to this, if you want to see this in your church, You have to practice it.

The second one is a disciple making culture grows with your team and with your core team specifically and so There's a lot more again in about that truth in the book the foundation of disciple making culture You can download it right on discipleship. org website for free The third one is a disciple making culture impacts your city.

It doesn't just impact your church. We're not just after impacting Christians with disciple making. Disciple making is a means to the end of reaching the world for Jesus, for the kingdom expanding so that, you know, that the glory of the Lord covers the earth as the waters cover the sea, as Habakkuk 2 tells us.

And then finally, the fourth one is a disciple making culture transforms your ministry. And it becomes, again, something that, that fuels us in ministry. It refreshes us. It encourages us. It helps us through the hard times. It brings some of its hard times. Some hard times of its own. Truth. But as that happens, , we really get to see God using us in the lives of individual believers in ways that are undeniable and that keep us going.

And so, again, we hope this has been helpful to you. We're not finished. We are not finished. No, I'm really excited. Justin mentioned our Disciple Makers Network, and it has been a group of pastors that have really given me life and given me a group of people to kind of bounce ideas off of in a lonely pastoring world.

Find yourself some pastor, lay leader friends, plug into them. And I hope they're as good as the gentleman we're about to introduce you to, Mike Tuttle. Mike is the senior pastor at Miamisburg Christian Church. He's an incredible man. He's got energy for days. And you're gonna love his charisma as we talk with him about what it means to create a disciple making culture.

His successes? All right, we're here with Pastor Mike Tuttle, the pastor of Miamisburg Christian Church. The legendary. Legendary. Yeah, my business card says his pomposity. I had to get a bigger business card so it would hold the word. That's an 8 by 10. He just hands it out to people. Yeah. , Mike's been the pastor at Mikes for Christians for 20 years, and I just wanted to share, not share, I want you to share, about your experience with disciple making and kind of what that journey's been like for you.

Sure, yeah, and I, and I grew up in a church very similar to the one that we're in right now, , over in Colbus, my home church. And I, I just, I kind of, I guess the church has always assed they're making disciples. I don't know that there's a church that hasn't thought they were doing the right thing. I know I thought that growing up and, and I was a product.

As a matter of fact, the whole group I graduated with, they all ended up in church leadership in some, you know, manner. , and so, , I was back at my home church teaching class of adults. I was the youth minister, but I was teaching an adult class. And It was actually, it was the largest adult class that we had at that time.

And I, I say that because we had a group. , that would switch. We had 40 people every quarter, but they were a different 40 because they were, they served in the church. And so these were, I mean, they were there all the time. They were serving. They're part of class. And in our class, there was this big, a big time teaching, big group teaching.

And then we would break into small groups. And in those groups, they would ask each other questions. And, hey, what does this mean? And how are you applying that? And what, hey, I did this this past week. So there was, you know, accountability. There was personal growth. I think people were enjoying it. They were inviting their friends.

So that was part of it. What we realized was the relationship, this wasn't time for the relationship piece. And so we're, we actually were trying to figure out how to have activities just to have relationship time. And that's about the time small groups came into vogue, at least in our church. And so we kind of began to lean into that.

And when I, when I came over here, we, we were doing, again, we were doing what the church has always done. And so I just thought we were doing it right. And, , after sitting down and talking to you, I realized what I knew we were missing something, but I didn't know what it was after talking to you. I think we got it figured out.

How did that mind shift, , begin to happen for you? Right. So you went from. Growing up, like most of us, church, disciple making, it all looks like this. , and then all of a sudden, you began to create a culture that looks different. So, how did that shift in your heart, and then how did you shift it in the church?

Well, it was a painful shift in my heart. Right, because we all blame Justin. Right, exactly. It all goes on. Yeah, yeah, thanks. , yeah, a couple, one of our guys here said, Hey, there's somebody you should meet. His name is Justin. So he, he introduced Justin to a couple of other staff members and they started meeting with you and they met with you for a while.

And then at some point you must've said, we need to get the lead guy involved. We're going to make a culture, right? You can't create the culture without the lead guy being involved in it and also communicating it. And so they said, we've got a guy you should meet. I said, why? , I don't want to, I don't have time, my calendar's full.

Oh, preach. I know, you know, I mean, so it's not like we're sitting around twiddling our thbs. And they said, we, we need you to. And so I agreed to, and we started meeting. Yeah. , although if I remember correctly, even early on, I would call you and say, on the day of, Yeah. Hey, I'm gonna have to cancel today.

And you would say, why? What's going on? Right, and if it wasn't like a really good reason, you know, I mean like a really good reason. I even remember one time you saying, Can they not schedule the funeral for some other day? And I'm like, what in the world? I'm just wondering, you know. That's a fair question.

But, at any rate, it was, it wasn't long after that I went through a real, a very difficult, it was very dark days in my life. And you walked me through that. Yeah. And so I, I actually experienced what you were talking about. You know, before you hit something like that. It can be just a lot of talk. Yeah, but when, when, when you're walking through, you know, the valley of the shadow of death, and you have somebody walking beside you and helping you.

It becomes apparent you're not selling a program or a product or something. And so that, that helped me quite a bit to begin to understand. And we've been meeting every other week for four years. That was a unique opportunity that kind of God gave us. Just to, to knit us together. It felt like an opportunity from my side.

From your side, it was a terrible time. But even in the midst of that valley, you know, some of the good that God was doing to kind of help prepare the soil of your heart for disciple making and what it might look like and what it felt like, right, on your side. , but what power it would have, not only in the lives of individual believers, but also in the life of a church body, right?

And so could you share with us just a little bit about, , what that shift has looked like or how you've started to, to move the church towards a disciple making culture? Sure. And, and, and to be sure it was not an immediate, I mean, it wasn't like you and I met for a couple of weeks when we said, all right, here we go.

We met for a couple of years, I think it was, before we started to talk about this. And you were still meeting with the other guys. So there were three of us, at least at that point, that you were meeting with. And then we began to talk about culture. And so we began to talk inside our staff. Not the whole staff, but the three of us began to talk about what that would mean.

, we went to our elders. And talk to them, talk with them about it. And they had the same response I think probably I had initially of, What are you talking about? I mean, it worked for me. Of course it's working. We've got our attendances going well, you know, things were happening. And, , and so it was a little bit, they, they wrestled with that as well.

And so it was a matter of, we, we prayed about it a ton, and I know that sounds cliche, sounds like something a pastor is going to say, but we, I mean, we, we covenanted, we, , we, we made this agreement that we would pray about this every day, , for a set amount of time, and we did before we came back together again.

And, , so we, we were praying for our elders, praying for this process in our own lives and what God was doing here. And so then we began to talk to you about a team. And I remember we prayed, I want to say it was, we prayed for two months every day. It was every day for two months. About who to ask and we didn't talk to there were three of us involved at that time We didn't talk to each other about who was making our list because I would pray then I would write down names as they came to me and And they were doing the same thing and when we came together at the end of that two months It was interesting to me how similar our lists were.

I'm trying to remember There weren't very many people, I think, that didn't overlap a whole lot. And that was the core team list? That would become the core team, correct. , , before that though, you actually had me discipling somebody, I forgot. So, yeah, this was in practice beforehand. Starts with you.

Yeah, and so, you know, I chose two guys that I thought would be pretty easy because one lived geographically in proximity, super easy. And the other was a new guy who I thought would be really easy too. And one of those two, it became apparent very quickly that easy doesn't mean this is who you should be going after.

Geographically easy, , because that process stopped. He wasn't ready. I was trying to make him be ready. Don't do that. That doesn't work. , so I picked up a second guy and have been working with both of them now for a couple of years. I'm curious, Pastor Mike, , at your church from all North American indicators was doing well, right?

Like, all the things that we've all come to know. How do you go into your elders? Butts, bucks, and baptisms. Yeah. We were doing well. Yeah, how do you go into your elders and what do you tell them to say, Hey, guys. We're really being wildly successful based off of everything we've ever known. How, , but I think we should give it all up and change the culture.

Yeah, so first of all, they, they knew that I was walking with Justin through this dark period of my life. And, and actually they were, and to be truthful, I, Actually, I stepped away from, they had me leave for a bit, it was a sabbatical, and it was for eight weeks. I had zero contact with the church, or anybody in the church, just zero contact.

And, , so, I mean, the elders were helping me with that as well, but they knew Justin was walking. with me through it. And so I think that that gave you a little bit of street cred here because they knew that you were someone I trusted. Relational equity. Yes. So, , I think that helped, but it It was, , and it, it wasn't, it wasn't easy.

It was a lot of conversation. And here's why I think we need to do this, and here's what I've been doing and here's what I'm seeing. Here's what our other guys have been doing. Here's what they're seeing. So it wasn't even just my experience, it was our, you know, three of us on staff who were having this experience.

And, and our elders are, they're great elders. And so while it took, they're not just gonna switch because you say switch. They're, they are like the Bereans who are going to make sure that what you're saying is accurate and true to scripture. And they began to walk with us on this. Can you share this, so you guys have been in the the culture building process for probably what a year and a half now, two years, somewhere in there?

Yep. Can you share just a little bit about what you've seen occur in that time? What, what's been the effect of it? I'm only laughing because It's COVID. Actually, did we, had we started, , seems like we had started when COVID and it was like towards the tail end, I think, mask, right? You're meeting with masks.

Oh, yes, that's right. And do we have to wear masks in our meeting? We're all over the room. I mean, we're spread out in this big room and, , my goodness. Yeah. So that was part of what we experienced. And you know, interestingly, within this group, there was nobody really complaining about the masks. There was no politics going on, nothing like that.

It was just kind of a, hey, do we have to wear the masks in here? Because I hear better if, if the mask did not. I can see your face better and understand and read you a little bit more. Connection. Yeah, and I, I appreciated that. , and really I didn't, so, , COVID aside, the, the, every other week, we experienced Some of the people that were on the team initially, they dropped, , some for personal reasons, some because they decided it just wasn't for them.

, we had at least one person move and we've tried to keep up with her and, and, , and just sort of see it as a planting a seed in another location type thing. , but the, the group as it's, as it has shaken down to who has remained. , they have been solid. And right now we're working through some of the foundations of culture here as a group.

So they, everyone on the discipleship team, disciple making team has a disciple, at least one. My understanding is within this timeframe, there are at least two, and I don't know if there are more than this or not, but the last I heard there were at least two of them whose disciples. Are now discipling someone and so that's seeing that third generation.

Yeah I yeah that does something for your heart by the way, just in case you're wondering I mean it just does something for you when you see that sort of thing. I always say grandparenting is much better than parent And that's true. Well, that's yeah, I'm a grandparent. So yes, that's absolutely true We would have bypassed the kids to get to the grandkids if that were possible But But with our team then they have been great about Really being involved in the work of culture, vision, you know, defining mission, the core values and our church had some, we had all of those things, actually not some of those, we had all of those.

Again, our staff here, our leadership is, they're great, they're, they're, they're incredibly intelligent. They love Jesus. They love the church. They want to reach our community. They want to change the world. And so these things were not far off, but what we've begun to do is just make sure that disciple making.

, communication, vocabulary is intentionally, strategically placed inside all of those things so that they reflect. Again, they weren't far off. You could have actually, without writing the words disciple making into them, saw how that fit in. That's great. But we wanted that language in there. Common language creates common movement.

Yes. And it's interesting how many times you now hear disciple maker around here. Oh wow. So. There's a lot of pastors listening and as we prepare to wrap up. I'm wondering if you might just give them a little encouraging word if they're maybe in the beginning part of the disciple making process Or they haven't seen the fruit yet that the year that I mean they maybe they're not to the third generation yet Yeah, if you could give them a little pep talk Mike, what would you tell them?

Well and I Just want to make sure you understand as well We haven't arrived by any stretch on this. It's still very much a work in progress But it takes time. There's nothing fast about this, this process. And there's nothing fast about helping someone who doesn't know Jesus come to know him unless someone has done a lot of work ahead of time.

But most people who make that decision being discipled by someone else, that's not. in their head yet. And so, to walk beside someone, but when you, when that happens, when you do it, when you do it, and then when you help someone else learn how to do it, because you now are modeling it, and you understand the experience, and your congregation begins to get the picture, it, it is incredible.

It is, , it just changes your outlook on life, and you understand differently how you're going to impact. Your congregation, which will impact your community, which is going to impact here in our area, the Miami Valley, and we'll well, we've already begun to drop seeds in other places. So other cities in the state and other states.

And so You can see very quickly it's going to spread through the country and outside the country as we continue to move forward. Amen. Yeah. Pastor Mike, thank you for coming on today. We're reaching the end of our time. , we hope it's been encouraging to you. Tony, can you kind of wrap for us the, the hour and the time we've had?

Well, our, our goal is, , was simple but not easy, right? We wanted to take you through the four disciple making cultural truths. Hopefully understanding that you have the opportunity to do this wherever you are, whatever leadership role you play in. And now is the perfect time to start making disciples.

And so we're thankful for you. If you want more information from us, if you want to hear from us, I recommend subscribing to our podcast, the practitioners podcast. Wherever you get podcasts at just go and hit that subscribe button It , it'll go a long way to help spread the word about what god is doing through that platform And you can hook up with justin at justingravitt.

com Myself at twmilt. com And as always go and download justin's book on discipleship. org It's got a lot of the core resources that we talked about here It's an honor and a privilege to be amongst you our disciple making first friends And we can't wait to see you guys at the for