Your Personalized Disciple Making Makeover
Jaime Lewis
You’re not starting from zero—you’re already meeting, you already care, and you’ve already identified what’s unclear. If you simplify your definition and method and then consistently drive toward personal application with light follow-up outside meetings, you should quickly see clearer progress and growing confidence as disciple making becomes more repeatable and transferable.
Quick Snapshot
You’re already trying to make disciples, but right now it’s mostly informal and centered on a curriculum-style meeting with only occasional application. Because the definition and method aren’t clear yet, it’s difficult to measure progress, build confidence, or see replication.
What's Working Well
You have genuine momentum: you’re meeting with people, you have a plan in mind, and you’re paying attention to what’s unclear.
- You’re taking initiative to invest in people (even without a fully defined process yet)
- Scripture is still present in your disciple making (even if it’s mainly topical)
- You can honestly assess outcomes (you named low confidence and no replication, which is a key starting point)
What May Be Challenging
Based on what you shared, the biggest constraints are clarity and transferability: it’s hard to reproduce something that’s difficult to explain, and general discussion tends to stay general rather than landing in personal life application. Also, since nothing is happening outside the meetings and Holy Spirit reliance isn’t a consistent part of the process, growth can stay meeting-bound and feel more like information than transformation.
- “A plan but nothing clearly defined” makes it hard for others to follow the same pathway
- Application being only occasional (and mostly general) slows real-life change
- No along-the-way follow-up and low Holy Spirit reliance limits depth and multiplication
Why It Matters
When the definition is simple and the next step is clear, disciple making becomes easier to repeat, easier to evaluate, and much more likely to move from one meeting to everyday life. That shift is often what raises confidence and eventually produces disciples who can disciple others.
— SEVEN SUCCESS STRATEGIES —
WHAT DOES SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE?
Contrary to popular belief, the best measure of success is not multiplication because if you multiply immature disciples no one wins. The best measure of success is life change (transformation)—which oddly enough always results in healthy, big multiplication.
Making disciples is a “get to” not a “have to” or “should do.” It’s a natural result of being a mature believer. It’s the BE comes before DO principle. Healthy people do healthy things. Here’s your best measure of disciple-making success,
The disciple does the right things for the right reasons, navigates the unknowns of life, and makes disciples long after your influence fades.
The quickest pathway to success is to stop making makers and focus on making individual healthy followers. Jesus did not come to make makers, he helped individuals follow and then called them to make. And the most efficient way to do that is to implement the Seven Success Strategies!
You + The Seven
Every successful disciple making effort leverages three or more of seven success strategies. Highly successful disciple making systems leverage five to seven of the strategies. The more you implement, the greater your success—which means the disciples succeed! Your top success factors are The Fuel is God’s Word and Making Disciples is Done Intentionally. Based on our conversation, you can see (in red) your depth of implementation alongside each of the seven strategies.
The Fuel is God's Word
Disciples read the entire Bible, cover-to-cover being exposed to all scripture which is useful to guide, correct, direct and prepare them for good works.
The Definition is Simple
Disciple makers know exactly what it means to make a disciple, what the end product should be, and how to know when they have succeeded in making a well-made disciple.
The Process Relies on the Holy Spirit
Disciple makers embrace the truth that it is the Holy Spirit that sanctifies, renews, and transforms making space and helping disciples hear from Him.
The Focus is on Individuals
The process is focused on leading disciples individually even in groups helping them find and apply immediately useful, relevant truths that transform their lives.
The Goal is Application
Disciples makers embrace Jesus’ call to help disciples obey (apply) God’s truths to their decisions focusing on transformation not education.
The Process is Done Along the Way
Disciple makers model following Christ and make disciples inside and outside weekly meetings over the course of several years giving disciples time to fully mature.
Making Disciples is Done Intentionally
Disciple makers embrace disciple making as the primary work to reconcile the world, have a plan to make disciples, and set specific, measurable disciple making goals.
— ONE BITE AT A TIME —
HOW DOES STRATEGY BECOME SUCCESS?
Strategies are big objectives, big concepts, and the key to implementing them is to align what you “do” with the seven strategies. Your “dos” are your methods.
If you’re just getting started or are ready to try something new, you can implement all seven strategies right from the start. Just build your disciple making plan to incorporate them or adopt some proven methods that achieve the seven strategies.
But when you are already making disciples, implementing all seven strategies can feel overwhelming. In a church setting, moving too quickly can feel a bit too disruptive. Your leadership might not even be open to a total overhaul! So what do you do?
You figure out which two strategies could use the most makeover and focus your work on them.
As those two strategies become consistently present in your disciple making, then you pick another strategy to work on. Before you know it, you’ll see even more success than ever before!
You’ll find your top two makeover strategies (with some practical steps and “how tos”) below.
And we’ll help you pick your next next
strategies in the last section.
Your First Makeover Strategies
Based on what you shared, you’re already investing in people and you have a plan in mind, but the lack of a simple definition and a repeatable method is lowering confidence and making progress hard to measure. That’s why the two highest-leverage moves are to simplify your definition/process and then shift your meeting from general discussion to personal application that naturally continues outside the meeting. Together, these two strategies create clarity (so you can explain and repeat the pathway) and traction (so people actually apply Scripture in real life). If you implement these in the next few meetings, you should feel your confidence rise because you’ll be able to see clearer next steps and clearer fruit.
Make the definition and method simple enough to repeat
Based on what you shared, the main gap is that you don’t yet have a simple definition of a disciple or a clear, repeatable disciple-making method—so even with good intentions, the process is hard to explain and hard to reproduce.
- Write a one-sentence definition of a disciple that you can say the same way every time
- Write a one-sentence definition of “making a disciple” (what you are actually helping a person do)
- Choose a simple meeting flow you will repeat each time (same few steps, in the same order)
- Decide what “progress” means in observable terms (a few indicators you can look for)
- Start with a small starter group of 3–4 people you can invest in consistently
Shift from general discussion to specific personal application (and follow-up)
Based on what you shared, you already meet and discuss Scripture, but application is only occasional and mostly general—so people may learn ideas without consistently connecting Scripture to decisions and next steps in their lives.
- In every meeting, require one specific application step from each person tied to what they read or discussed
- Ask application questions that force specificity (what will you do, with whom, and by when)
- Build a simple between-meeting follow-up: one short message or call to ask how the application went
- Keep Scripture central, but move from topical-only to a simple Bible reading plan (selected books is fine to start)
- Add a brief moment to pray and intentionally invite the Holy Spirit to guide application and next steps
What Success Looks Like
- You can clearly explain what a disciple is and what you’re aiming to produce in one or two sentences
- Every meeting ends with specific, personal application steps rather than general takeaways
- People begin taking steps outside the meeting, and follow-up becomes normal
- Over time, one or more participants begin helping someone else take the same steps
Early Measurable Wins
- Draft and use a one-sentence definition of a disciple and a simple repeatable meeting flow
- Start a simple Bible reading plan for your group (even if it’s just one book at a time)
- Ensure every person identifies one clear application step each meeting
- Do at least one intentional follow-up outside the meeting with each person to reinforce application
— THE BIG FIVE —
HOW WILL YOU
MEASURE SUCCESS?
Most of the methods we research have one of five focuses and naturally measure success based on that focus. We call them the Big Five.
- Education (Success = Participation and Knowledge)
- Assimilation (Success = They Stay and Look Like Us)
- Behavior Modification (Success = They Fix Their Problems)
- Multiplication (Success = They Get Others Involved)
- Leadership Development (Success = They Lead Something)
The Church has been doing the Big Five for, well, forever. We do them because that is what we know. We do them because they are easy and easy to measure. Done well, they will result in some spiritual growth but normally the Big Five just produces “dos.”
The problem is the Big Five only work for 20% of all believers because all five are actually the outcomes of transformation, not the cause.
Whether you adopt or design an overall plan, your best bet is to pick a method focused on discovering and applying all of the truths in God’s Word that measures effectiveness by transformation. Something like,
The disciple does the right things for the right reasons, navigates the unknowns of life, and makes disciples long after your influence fades.
Don’t settle for anything less because when they get transformed, they will be smart, be a part of the body, fix their stuff, make disciples, and lead! Remember, healthy followers do healthy things—naturally.
The team at Sustainable Discipleship uses the
highly Predictable PathwayTM to measure success.
You can learn more below
Ideas + Resources for You
The ideas and resources on this page have been curated based on your Makeover answers and, like your previous “how to” ideas, are based on the Sustainable Discipleship Method—a model that’s fueling a global disciple-making movement.
Our single-minded goal is to share what God has shared with us. But let’s be clear—there are many ways to make disciples. Whether you are evaluating methods or designing your own, we hope these customized ideas help. But definitely check out the Makeover Meetups!
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Future Strategies to Consider
Once you get your first two makeover strategies going, you’re ready to work strengthen the rest. Based on your makeover answers, here a few next steps that will increase each disciple’s transformation.
- Add a simple way to track progress indicators so “a rough sense” becomes clear signals
- Re-center meetings around Scripture itself rather than curriculum as the driver
- Look for one “ready person” to train to lead the same process, even before replication fully emerges
Seven Success Strategies ➞ How To Methods
The Fuel is God’s Word
The Goal is Application
God designed us from creation to understand the Bible. Brain Powered Bible reveals a reading method that will have folks engaged cover-to-cover, getting immediate value working with God’s learning design rather than against it. It’s like Bill Nye the Science guy meets the Bible!
The Definition is Simple
Making Disciples is Done Intentionally
Even if you are designing your own disciple making model, the proven “how tos” in this book may give you ideas that will supercharge your disciple making. The principles and methods have fueled thousands of disciple making efforts for individuals and churches.
Disciple Making Focuses on Individuals
Making Disciples is Done Along the Way
This free ebook introduces the Predictable Pathway. It’s fourteen, highly predictable steps that every believer takes as they mature. The beauty of the pathway is that you can know exactly where someone is and know exactly what to give them to get to the next step. It’s the simplest way to measure success and boost transformation.
Makeover Midday Meetups
Want to talk about your makeover plan? Join us (and others!) for a one-hour Makeover Meetup the first Tuesday of each month at noon.
- Want to go over your makeover report with a team member?
- Want to be greater at the one thing God called you to do?
- Are you an independent maker who needs a tribe?
- Just want to talk disciple making?
- Looking to get tips and tricks before you change things?
- Trying to get leadership buy in for something new?
- Need to avoid disrupting what's already working?
Makeover Meetups are for you! One of our experienced team members will be there to help you with whatever you’re working on—not to pitch you! See you there!
