Your Personalized Disciple Making Makeover
Caden Billingsley
What you described is a strong, active disciple-making system: Bible-fueled, intentional, personally applied, and already multiplying through new D1 groups. If you protect clarity of definition and make along-the-way disciple making more consistent across leaders, you’ll be positioned to expand without drift while keeping the same kind of fruit you’re seeing now.
Quick Snapshot
You’re actively making disciples with a written plan to expand, and you’re already seeing replication as others start their own D1 groups. Your process is anchored in a consistent Bible reading plan moving through the whole Bible, with personal application and real-life conversations continuing outside meetings.
What's Working Well
You have multiple high-strength elements working together: clear intentionality, strong Scripture fuel, and measurable outcomes that include replication.
- You’re measuring fruit in meaningful ways (progress in discipleship, staying engaged, and whether they begin discipling others).
- You’re helping each person apply Scripture personally through unique highlights, not just general discussion.
- Disciple making is happening beyond formal meetings through real-life conversations.
What May Be Challenging
No major structural weakness was described in what you shared; the system you described sounds active, healthy, and producing results. The main opportunity now is protecting clarity and transferability as you expand—especially since you noted method clarity is still hard to articulate simply even though you have a plan.
- As more people lead groups, leader-to-leader variation can quietly grow unless the method is easy to explain and repeat.
- Your disciple definition is present but still partial, which can create drift in what “success” means across groups.
Why It Matters
Because you’re already seeing replication and you have specific people in mind to expand, clarity is the multiplier: the simpler and more transferable your definition and method are, the easier it becomes for new leaders to reproduce the same Scripture-fueled, Spirit-dependent, application-forward disciple making without drift.
— 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
You’re actively making disciples with a written expansion plan, clear indicators of progress, and real replication through new D1 groups. The two highest-leverage next moves are the ones that will best protect your results as you scale: sharpening a simple, transferable definition of a disciple and strengthening how along-the-way disciple making gets carried consistently beyond meetings. Together, these will help new leaders aim at the same “win” and carry the same culture into everyday life as the number of groups grows.
Clarify a simple, transferable disciple definition
Based on what you shared, you already have a working process and high confidence in the fruit, and tightening your disciple definition is the simplest way to protect unity as more leaders step in. Since your definition is currently partial and your method can feel hard to articulate, making the end-product definition short and shared will reduce drift and make coaching new leaders much easier.
- Write a one-sentence definition of a disciple and a one-sentence definition of “a disciple maker” that your leaders can repeat the same way.
- List 3–5 observable indicators that match your current measurements (growth, staying engaged, and beginning to disciple others).
- Use those indicators as the shared language in every D1 group kickoff and leader huddle.
- Ask each new leader to explain the definition back in their own words, then tighten wording until it’s consistent.
Strengthen and standardize along-the-way disciple making
Based on what you shared, you’re already having real-life conversations outside meetings, and making that part more intentional and repeatable will help replication stay strong as you expand. The goal is to ensure along-the-way investment doesn’t depend on personality or availability, but becomes a normal, expected feature of every group.
- Decide on a simple expectation for between-meeting touchpoints that fits your context (for example: one intentional conversation tied to the person’s application).
- Have each disciple identify one real-life situation they expect to face before the next meeting, and plan how they’ll respond.
- Encourage leaders to follow up around the person’s application step rather than general check-ins.
- Build a lightweight leader practice: “Who am I encouraging this week, and what Scripture/application are we connecting it to?”
What Success Looks Like
- New and existing leaders can explain the disciple definition and the next steps in the plan in the same simple language.
- Each disciple regularly identifies a clear personal application and follows through in everyday life.
- Along-the-way conversations become a normal expectation across groups, not an occasional add-on.
- Replication continues as disciples start new groups with the same core approach.
Early Measurable Wins
- Finalize and test a one-sentence disciple definition and 3–5 indicators by having two different leaders explain it back consistently.
- In each meeting, ensure every person leaves with one specific personal application tied to the Bible reading plan.
- Track one simple outcome: how many disciples had an intentional along-the-way conversation tied to their application.
- Identify the next 3–4 people you plan to expand through and confirm the exact next step for each.
— 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!
If you are going to share this with others, you might want to uncheck Print Headers and Footers in the print dialogue to remove your browser’s standard ugly headers!
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.
- The Process Relies on the Holy Spirit: make your “make room for the Holy Spirit” practice explicit and reproducible for new leaders.
- The Goal is Application: keep tightening how specific and personal each application step is.
- The Process is Done Along the Way: keep normalizing between-meeting disciple making so it scales with integrity.
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!
