Your Personalized Disciple Making Makeover
Dan Mularski
You’re already seeing the kind of outcomes many people hope for—Scripture-centered disciple making that produces new groups and new disciple makers. The goal of this makeover isn’t to replace what’s working, but to protect clarity and increase transferability so the multiplication you’re seeing stays unified as it grows. If you lock in a simple definition and make Spirit-reliance explicit in the repeatable steps, you’ll strengthen both maturity and reproducibility at the same time.
Quick Snapshot
You’re actively making disciples with high confidence, and you’re already seeing replication as people start their own groups. Your approach is anchored in a consistent Bible reading plan through the whole Bible, and your meetings are discussion-based with a meaningful personal-application focus.
What's Working Well
You have several high-strength ingredients working together: a whole-Bible Bible reading plan, a clear method, and real multiplication signals (people starting groups and discipling others).
- You’re measuring progress with clear indicators, not just vibes.
- You’re helping people land on personal application, not only group discussion.
- You’re creating space to listen to the Holy Spirit rather than relying only on technique.
What May Be Challenging
No major structural weakness was described—your system sounds active, Scripture-anchored, and already reproducing. The main opportunity is protecting clarity as more people lead and replicate, especially since you said your one-sentence definition of “disciple” is still a bit fuzzy and your Holy Spirit reliance was hard to score consistently from what you shared.
- As multiplication increases, a fuzzy definition can produce leader-to-leader drift.
- If Spirit-reliance isn’t explicitly built into the steps, it can become assumed rather than practiced.
- “Mixed” application emphasis can show up as uneven follow-through across different groups.
Why It Matters
Because disciples are already starting groups, small clarity gaps now can scale into big variation later—while small clarity upgrades can scale into stronger maturity and more consistent reproduction. Tightening your simple definition and making Spirit-reliance more explicit protects the fruit you’re already seeing and makes your process easier for new leaders to carry.
— 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 The Goal is Application. 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 clear method, a whole-Bible Bible reading plan, and measurable multiplication (people starting groups). The two strategies below were selected because they are the highest-leverage ways to protect what’s already working as more leaders carry the process. Clarifying a simple definition reduces drift, and strengthening explicit Spirit-reliance keeps the process dependent on God while making it easier to reproduce. Together, these two moves increase consistency without disrupting your current momentum.
Clarify a simple, transferable definition of a disciple
Based on what you shared, you already have a clear method and real replication, and tightening your definition will protect consistency as others start leading and reproducing what you do. A fuzzy one-sentence definition can quietly create multiple “end products,” even when everyone uses the same Bible reading plan and meeting format.
- Write a one-sentence definition of a disciple that your leaders and disciples can repeat word-for-word.
- Add 3–5 clear “marks” that show what progress looks like (the same ones you’re already using when you say it’s working).
- In every meeting, connect the personal application step to that definition (so application is clearly heading somewhere).
- When someone starts a new group, have them teach the definition in their first meeting and revisit it regularly.
- Use your existing clear indicators (like starting groups) as part of your definition of success, if that fits what you mean by maturity.
Make Holy Spirit reliance explicit in the steps people repeat
Based on what you shared, you are making space to listen to the Holy Spirit, and making that reliance more explicit will increase transferability as more people lead. When Spirit-reliance stays assumed rather than built into the repeatable steps, newer leaders often default to discussion skill or good intentions instead of helping disciples hear and respond to Him.
- Build a short, repeatable “listen and respond” moment into every meeting (a consistent question and a consistent quiet space).
- After Scripture discussion, ask each person to name what they sense the Holy Spirit is highlighting before they choose an application step.
- Normalize praying in simple, specific ways tied to the passage and to the application decision.
- When you follow up along the way, start with “What did you sense the Holy Spirit prompting you to do since we met?”
- Coach new group starters to lead this the same way, so Spirit-reliance scales with multiplication.
What Success Looks Like
- Anyone you train can clearly state what a disciple is, what success looks like, and how your process gets there.
- Personal application remains specific and consistent across groups, not dependent on who facilitates the discussion.
- Listening for the Holy Spirit becomes a normal, expected part of how decisions and applications are made.
- Replication continues with less drift as new leaders start groups that feel aligned with the same pathway.
Early Measurable Wins
- Draft a one-sentence disciple definition and test it by asking someone else to repeat it back accurately.
- Add one consistent “listen to the Holy Spirit” question and one short quiet moment to each meeting.
- Track whether every person leaves with a specific personal application step (not just a good discussion).
- Ask one new or emerging leader to facilitate using your clarified definition and Spirit-listening step, then debrief what stayed clear and what drifted.
— 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.
- Tighten your written plan so it’s easy for a new leader to pick up and run without extra explanation.
- Strengthen along-the-way follow-up by making it a predictable part of the process (brief but intentional).
- Keep your success indicators visible so groups know what they’re aiming for as they multiply.
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!
