Your Personalized Disciple Making Makeover
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You’re closer than you may feel: you’ve already seen replication and you’re engaging people through real-life conversations. By writing down a simple plan and tightening your disciple definition into clear, shared language, you’ll make disciple making easier to repeat, easier to transfer, and easier to recognize when it’s truly bearing fruit.
Quick Snapshot
You have a sincere desire to make disciples, you’ve even seen some replication, but right now you don’t have a clear, written, repeatable plan for how you make disciples. Scripture is present mainly through topical passages, and your confidence in the current approach is medium.
What's Working Well
You already have several important building blocks that can be strengthened into a simple, repeatable disciple-making process.
- You’ve seen replication (someone you invested in has discipled someone else).
- Disciple making is not limited to meetings; you’ve had real-life conversations that matter.
- You do teach people to listen to God’s Spirit, which can keep the process from becoming only information.
What May Be Challenging
No major “fatal flaw” showed up, but the biggest constraint is structural: you described no clear method and no written plan, which makes it hard to reproduce consistently—even when there are good conversations and good intentions. In addition, your disciple definition is still fairly broad (“disciples follow God”), which can make it hard to know what you’re aiming for and how you’ll recognize progress.
- Scripture use is mainly topical right now, which can unintentionally leave gaps over time.
- You have only a rough sense of what success looks like, so progress can be hard to track and reinforce.
- Along-the-way disciple making is happening, but you weren’t sure how consistently it’s built into the overall process.
Why It Matters
Because you’ve already seen some replication, a simple, clear, written approach will help you protect what’s working and make it easier for others to do the same thing with confidence. Clarity around Scripture intake, personal application, and a simple definition of a disciple will help you form disciples who keep growing—and who can help others grow too.
— 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 Process is Done Along the Way and The Focus is on Individuals. 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 not trying to “start from zero”—you already have real-life disciple-making conversations and you’ve seen someone you invested in begin to invest in others. The highest-leverage move now is to make your disciple making intentional and transferable by putting a simple plan in writing, and to clarify your definition of a disciple so you can aim at the same target every time. These two strategies work together: a clear definition tells you what you’re building, and an intentional plan gives you a repeatable way to build it. This will raise confidence from “medium” to steady because progress becomes visible and reproducible.
Make Disciple Making Intentional (a simple written plan)
Based on what you shared, you already have meaningful conversations and some replication, so the main opportunity is to capture a simple, written plan that you can repeat and that others can copy.
- Write a one-page plan with 3–4 repeatable steps for a disciple-making meeting (for example: connect, Scripture, listen/pray, specific application).
- Choose a starter group of 3–4 people you can invest in consistently.
- Decide a simple meeting cadence and a simple between-meeting follow-up expectation (one message or one short conversation focused on application).
- Add one clear “win” you want to see in each person (for example: consistent time in Scripture, a clear next-step application, sharing with someone else).
- Keep the plan leader-led and simple enough that you could hand it to another person and they could try it.
Make the Definition Simple (clear target + clear markers)
Based on what you shared, you do have a definition starting point (“disciples follow God”), and the next step is making it simple and usable so you can recognize growth and guide people toward maturity.
- Write a one-sentence definition of a disciple that includes both relationship with Jesus and a visible life direction.
- Add 3–4 clear markers that show you what “growth” looks like (for example: Scripture intake, Spirit-led responsiveness, specific application, investing in others).
- Use those markers as your “rough sense” upgrade: the same markers become your simple success indicators.
- Say the definition out loud at the start of your gatherings for a few meetings so it becomes shared language.
- Use the definition to shape your questions: “What does it look like to follow Jesus here?” and “What is your next step?”
What Success Looks Like
- You can clearly explain your disciple-making process in a few sentences, and it’s written down.
- Each person regularly leaves with a specific personal application from Scripture and follows through.
- Scripture engagement begins moving beyond topical-only toward a simple Bible reading plan.
- Replication becomes more normal because others can describe and repeat the same approach.
Early Measurable Wins
- A one-page written disciple-making plan is drafted and used the same way in each meeting.
- Your starter group of 3–4 people is identified and invited into a defined next step.
- Each meeting ends with each person naming one specific personal application and when they will act on it.
- One follow-up conversation happens that directly reconnects to the person’s 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.
- Move Scripture engagement from mostly topical passages toward a simple Bible reading plan (even if you start with selected books and build from there).
- Add one simple success indicator you can revisit monthly (based on your disciple definition markers).
- Strengthen along-the-way disciple making by making follow-up around application an expected part of the process.
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!
