Clarify Discipleship and Grow Your People

We will help you do what you long to do – make disciples – without burning out.
With the Sustainable Discipleship Method you will have a consistent discipleship process that leads people to maturity. Even better, you can spread that process to your disciples and build an army of life-changing people.

Workshops

We host workshops in Atlanta, regionally, and privately to help folks get started, hone their craft, and design a launch plan for their organizations.

Resources

From the book that started it all to practical tools like a customizable Bible reading plan, we share everything that God has shared with us.

Speaking

Let us help light the fire of discipleship, clarify discipleship and challenge your people to get involved in the process and practice of discipleship.

Sustainable Discipleship is a Team, a Model, and a Movement.

We are discipleship nerds. We are passionate about success in disciple making—for us, but more importantly, for the disciples. We study discipleship. We have studied discipleship in the Bible. We rediscovered how God made and makes disciples. We study the work of others—their successes and failures. We study the results of our discipleship. We measure, we test, and we experiment with new discipleship ideas and techniques.

Our team’s single focus is helping others achieve success in making self-sustaining, self-replicating disciples. In other words, we are focused on helping others do well the one thing that God told us to do: make disciples.

Our approach is different than most. Our team does not produce discipleship courses or promote a specific program. We help disciple makers become rock stars, making self-sustaining, self-replicating followers of God in their context: large, small, contemporary, or traditional. We do this by combining God’s method with a clear understanding of how people learn, think, and make decisions. In other words, we make disciple makers and give them a simple, repeatable method to make more disciples than ever.

Sustainable Discipleship is also a movement of people passionate about helping Christians discover and live the abundant life that God promised. It is a movement to help people be prepared, confident, and skilled at following God. Churches of all denominations and characteristics are discovering passion, simplicity, and success in making disciples. Pastors and leaders are reaping the rewards. Disciples are succeeding.

If you want to talk discipleship, supercharge your discipleship, or join the movement, we are here. Sustainable Discipleship works. We guarantee it. And we have the data to back it up.

Decision Scientist - Disciple Maker

Doug has been described as the mad scientist of disciple making, an out-of-the-box thinker, and one of the brightest minds in discipleship. When you meet him, you will experience Doug’s deep humility, contagious passion for disciple making, and commitment to helping people be all that God created them to be.

Doug is the creator of Sustainable Discipleship where he combines his skills as a Decision Scientist with years of pastoring, research, and development to help leaders become disciple-making superheroes.

He is also the founder of Different.ly, a decision science consulting firm that helps leaders, churches, and corporations make better decisions. And the creator of the award winning new Bible Study software, WordBloom.

Doug has a degree is decision sciences, a PhD in Christian leadership, and a master in biblical studies. He has researched, designed, and carried out discipleship for over twenty years as the pastor of Three Taverns Church.

Doug writes about discipleship from his home in Acworth, Georgia, where he lives with his wife and two dogs.
Doug is a high-energy, creative speaker who thrives at unlocking the secrets of how to make and be disciples. To learn more or book Doug for your team or next event, email team@sustainable-discipleship.com.

A Zero to Hero Ride

Our churches have a sturdy culture, Biblical leaders and we watch people apply God’s truths in an inspiring way. The 80-20 rule no longer rules. Gone are the days of infighting, scarce resources, and drama. But, it wasn’t always that way.

Your journey might be like ours. We passionately headed out to change the world and help people find what we found. We used classes, materials and every program that came along. We even sent a bunch of our people to seminary. But, smart did not always equal transformation.

We noticed that those we spent the most time with, the hungry ones, really become followers of Christ. They got it and their lives changed. They also became the movers and shakers of our ministries. But, what about the rest of the people.

One-on-one was not enough change the world. We began to use retreats, special events, and missions. We tried to broaden the reach to our whole congregation. But, one off and topical teaching didn’t have a lasting effect for the masses. 

When the poop hit the fan, the masses hit the road. These attenders didn’t have what they needed to survive at home, work, and life – much less thrive. And worse, we couldn’t attract many people to discipleship.

We struggled to make few disciples intentionally. We made a few others accidentally. The brutal facts were that we didn’t know what we were doing and we didn’t get consistent results. Then, we rediscovered the secrets of Biblical discipleship.

Twelve years, bunches of churches, a couple countries, and lots of disciples later – God’s methods are still working for us and others with a crazy 95% success rate.

What Drives Us Forward

For the immigrants and the lost ones of Christianity,
who came to this great faith full of hope,
who long to know how to follow God,
who want to understand His words,

 but who live on the streets of Christianity,
neither prepared, confident, nor skilled
to find abundant life or live their dream

 because they found no experienced guide
to teach them the language,
to provide clear direction, and
to show them the ropes along the way.

 We should have been ready for them . . .

Ready for Change?

How many disciples do you plan to make this year?” may be the most powerful question we ask.

The Sustainable Discipleship Model works with any size group but we have found that one leader with three followers is the most powerful. 1-3 avoids the challenges of large groups and is exponentially more effective than 1-1 discipleship.

If you invest 4 hours a week (that’s less than 10%), you could make 450+ disciples in the next ten years. That’s not 450 new members. That’s 450 prepared, confident and skilled God followers living the dream.

Do you know four other followers who can help you make disciples? A team of five can start from scratch and make 1,300 disciples in the same time.

Ten leaders can transform over 7,000 lives in the same time.


Year One - One Generation

3 New Disciples

You +
3 Followers

Year One - One Generation

Year Two - Two Generations

3 new disciples

You +
6 Followers

Year Two - Two Generations

Year Three - Three Generations

12 new disciples

4 Leaders Now +
15 Followers

Year Three - Three Generations

Year Four - Three Generations

9 new disciples

4 Leaders
24 Followers

Year Four - Three Generations

Year Five - Four Generations

27 New Disciples

13 Leaders
39 Followers

Year Five - Four Generations

Year Ten - Ten Genrations

Hundreds of New Disciples

You + 450
Self-Sustaining,
Self-Replicating Disciples

Year Ten - Ten Genrations

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How to Make Disciples

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How to Make Disciples

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