Train Believers
Part 1 – Raise the Sails
Part 2 – Focus on God’s Word
Part 3 – Multiply Extraordinary Prayer
Part 4 – Go Out Among the Lost
Part 5 – See Groups Start
Part 6 – Cast Vision
The sixth element in “raising the sails” for movement is “Train Believers.”
After casting vision to people to be generational disciple-makers & church planters, we need to train them. And what are we training them to do? Go Out Among the Lost & See Groups Start! The same thing we’ve been doing!
We’re training them to make disciples & plant churches. And more specifically, we’re training them to make disciples that make more disciples that make more disciples hopefully leading to multiple streams of disciples made down to the 4th generation and beyond.
I wrote an article called DMM Training that explains more about the training that we send people through. It’s the same training that has catalyzed many movements all over the world. And it’s the same training that my DMM Coach took us through at the very beginning of this journey.
It’s 12 Lessons derived from various Scripture passages on disciple-making.
The length of time it takes to complete these lessons varies. If it was a traditional American Bible study, it’d take 12 weeks because you’d do one lesson each week. But remember, we are concerned with obedience, not just knowledge acquisition.
I often describe the training as “Biblical principles to be obeyed, not information to be transferred.”
As a result, you might spend 2 weeks just trying to obey Lesson 1. Or it might take you 3 weeks to get through Lesson 6 as you’re trying to obey the Biblical principles in that lesson.
The goal is that by the time you finish the 12th lesson, you’re obeying all of the Scripture passages you read in the training. I was surprised when I went through the training by how much I wasn’t OBEYING. I should’ve been, but I wasn’t. I had learned it. I had memorized it. I had been in many Bible studies about it. But I hadn’t obeyed it. That’s what changes everything.
The reason we spend time Casting Vision & Training Believers is because the more teams we have raising the sails, the more disciples we’ll likely make & the more churches we’ll likely plant. So while we’re Going Out Among the Lost & Seeing Groups Start ourselves, we want to simultaneously be training others to do the same thing.
These articles on “raising the sails” have given you an idea of some of what you experience in the training.
The reason we gave our DMM Churches a goal of casting vision to one person per week is because we’re assuming it will take casting vision to 30 people to find 10 that are willing to go through the training with you. If you start with 1 per week in January, 30 weeks later is approximately mid-summer. Hopefully by mid-summer you’ve cast vision to 30 people & found 10 who are willing to be trained. Then you can start the training in August or September & hopefully be done by the end of the year since it usually takes 3-5 months to complete the training.
My DMM Coach constantly says that Church Planting Movements are basically Training Movements. Training is so vital for rapid exponential growth because you’re constantly raising up new leaders.
And, remember, training doesn’t mean teaching people a bunch of stuff. Training is best done through the MAWL approach.
MAWL = Model, Assist, Watch, Launch
A great example of MAWL is learning to drive a stick shift vehicle. When I turned 16, my Dad bought me an old truck. The only problem was that it wasn’t an automatic, it was a stick. I had no idea how to drive a stick shift.
He took me out to a shopping mall in town where there’s a big parking lot & he began to teach me. First, he “modeled” it. He had me watch him drive. Next, he put me in the driver’s seat & he “assisted” me in doing it. I would push down on the clutch & he would change the gears for me. Then I began to change the gears. At that point, he would just “watch” me & instruct me as I did it. Then after awhile (and it took a long while for me to get it down – haha), he was able to “launch” me to do it on my own.
That’s what we mean by training. If he would’ve just sat me down in our living room & given me a lecture on how to drive a stick shift, I would’ve never been able to do it. A lecture doesn’t help you learn to drive a stick. You’ve got to have someone get in the car & train you through MAWL. Lectures aren’t designed to teach you to obey, they’re designed to transfer information into your brain.
DMM Training is “on the job” training & you’re often going out & applying it together. It’s not lecture oriented. Often you’ll observe your trainer modeling a principle, then assisting you in applying it, then watching you apply it on your own, then launching you to apply it without them.
Each of our DMM Church Planting Teams that we’ve sent out from eLife has this goal related to this element:
Lead at least 1 training each year with the people you’ve cast vision to
Here’s a link to the Train Believers message in a sermon series we recently did called Raise the Sails.
Part 8 – Ongoing Coaching