Set up disciple making in your group or church

Same framework, smaller scale. Take them in order — a method you have never used is no use when someone is sitting in front of you, and someone sitting in front of you is what makes learning the method feel worth it.

1. 1

   Identify

   Find people who have already asked — without running outreach yourself.

   • Find the outreach ministries near you. A clinic, a food program, a recovery group, a shelter, a prison ministry, your own church's benevolence work — anywhere people are met at a hard moment.
   • Go and ask. Tell them plainly what you are offering: you will study the Bible, one to one, with anyone they meet who asks for it. You are not asking them to change what they do or add a program to it.
   • Volunteering with them helps. A ministry that already knows your face hands over contacts far more readily than one that has only had an email — and you end up standing where the opening happens, rather than hearing about it second-hand.
   • Make it easy to say yes. You are one person volunteering to take one conversation at a time. That is a much smaller ask than it feels like while you are rehearsing it.
   • Be patient with the first no. Ministries are protective of the people they serve, and they should be. Ask a second one.

   You're done when A local ministry is willing to pass you seeker contacts — people who have asked to study the Bible.

2. 2

   Equip

   Learn one simple, repeatable method well enough to hand it to someone else.

   • Learn Discovery Bible Study. It is a short cycle of questions you ask of a passage, and the whole point is that it is simple enough to pass on. A method you could not teach in one sitting is the wrong method for this.
   • Run it on yourself first. Read a passage, work the questions, do what it tells you. You are not preparing a lesson — you are practising the thing itself.
   • Then do it with someone you already know — a spouse, a friend, someone from your own church. The first time is for you, not for them.

   You're done when You have studied the Bible with someone else using the method, and you would be comfortable doing it again with a stranger.

3. 3

   Connect

   Meet a real person and open the Bible with them — more than once.

   • Make contact. Say who you are, how you came by their name, and what you are offering. Ask whether they still want to, and when.
   • Meet, and follow a plan. Viens et vois is built for exactly this. It opens with the prodigal son — a story about being welcomed home, rather than a lecture about being wrong.
   • Before you leave, ask for the next one. Every time, and name a day. Asking for the next meeting while you are still in this one is the single thing that turns a conversation into discipleship.
   • Pick up at the next study in the plan. There is nothing else to prepare.

   You're done when You have met with a seeker several times, and opened the Bible together each time.

A group borrows Identify the way one person does — but it has an advantage one person does not, and its Equip has to fit inside a meeting that already has a purpose.

1. 1

   Identify

   Get a steady supply of seekers from a local outreach ministry, without running outreach yourselves.

   • Find a local outreach ministry and ask. A clinic, a food program, a recovery group, a shelter — anywhere people are met at a hard moment. Ask whether they will pass on contact details for anyone who says they want to study the Bible.
   • Then go and volunteer with them. This is the thing a group can do that one person often cannot: show up together and serve. A ministry that knows your faces hands over contacts far more readily than one that has only had an email — and you end up standing where the openness surfaces instead of hearing about it second-hand.
   • Agree how the handoff works before anyone is waiting on it — who sends what, to whom, and how quickly.

   You're done when A partner ministry is passing your group contact details for seekers who have asked.

2. 2

   Equip

   Get everyone in the group able to open the Bible with someone — without turning group night into a training course.

   • Do not hand the whole meeting over to it. Your group time is valuable and it already has a purpose. Replacing that with a method class is how this gets resented, and then quietly dropped.
   • Run a short drill at the top of every meeting instead — before the teaching or the discussion, not after, when everyone is tired and the clock has already won.
   • Keep the drill small: one to three verses, ten to fifteen minutes. The point is not to cover ground. It is repetition, until the steps are muscle memory and nobody has to think about what comes next.
   • Rotate who leads it. Someone who has only ever watched will freeze in front of a stranger. Someone who has led the drill four times will not.

   You're done when The drill is a fixed part of your weekly routine, and more than one person in the group can lead it.

3. 3

   Connect

   Get the contacts you are given in front of the people you have been drilling.

   • Divide the contacts among the group. One person holding the whole list is a bottleneck first and a burnout second.
   • Make the calls and set the meetings. Confirm they still want to, and agree a day.
   • Meet, and follow a plan. Viens et vois is built for exactly this, and it means nobody has to prepare anything.
   • When it makes sense, invite them into the group — and better still, help them start their own. A seeker who becomes a group leader is the entire thing working.

   You're done when Members of your group are meeting seekers regularly to open the Bible — and it is more than one member doing it.

A church runs all three itself, at congregation scale — that is what separates this tab from the small-group one, where Identify is borrowed. Take them in order: identifying seekers before anyone is equipped leaves people waiting, and equipping people before anyone is identified leaves them with nobody to study with.

1. 1

   Identify

   Get a steady flow of spiritually open people from your community.

   • Start a prayer ministry — a few people who will receive prayer requests and actually pray them.
   • Take prayer requests at every outreach event you're already part of. A card, a QR code, a clipboard: the ask is simple, and almost nobody turns down prayer.
   • Talk to the outreach ministries at your church and in your community. They are already meeting the people you are looking for, and most of them have no way to follow up on what surfaces.

   You're done when You are identifying seekers from your community — not once, but regularly.

2. 2

   Equip

   Get your congregation able to open the Bible and study it with anyone.

   • Learn Discovery Bible Study. We recommend it because it is simple and repeatable — that is the whole reason, and it is the important one.
   • Then run it, over and over. Multiplication only happens when everyone involved believes they can do what they are watching someone else do, and repetition is what produces that belief.
   • Set up something ongoing — a rhythm, not an event — where people keep training on studying the Bible for themselves and with others.

   You're done when Your church has a process running that continuously trains people to study the Bible for themselves and with others.

3. 3

   Connect

   Get the seekers you are identifying in front of the people you have equipped.

   • Keep two lists: seekers who have asked, and disciple makers who are ready. A spreadsheet is enough. So is a paper notebook.
   • Connect them as quickly as you can. A seeker left waiting goes cold, and that delay is the most common place this breaks.
   • Watch the load on your disciple makers. An overloaded disciple maker stops being available, and then everything behind them backs up.

   You're done when You have something in place — however plain — and you are continuously connecting seekers with disciple makers.

Your ministry runs all three, but the middle one is a different job for you: you do not equip believers yourself — you make sure a local church nearby has, so the people you find have somewhere real to go.

1. 1

   Identify

   Turn the openness your outreach already surfaces into seekers you can actually follow up.

   • Decide what the ask is, and make it the same every time. A prayer request is the most reliable one — it is honest, it costs the person nothing, and almost nobody turns it down.
   • Put it where the moment already happens — the intake form, the end of an appointment, the wall by the door. Not a separate event you have to staff, which is the version that quietly stops happening in month three.
   • Ask everyone, not the people who seem receptive. Screening by who looks open is how a ministry ends up identifying only the people who would have asked anyway.
   • Give it somewhere to go before you start asking. An unanswered request is worse than one never collected — you have taught someone that your ministry asks and does not follow through.

   You're done when You are collecting requests from the outreach you already do, regularly, and every one of them has somewhere to go.

2. 2

   Equip

   Have at least one local church or group with disciple makers ready to receive the people you find.

   • Find the churches near you already making disciple makers. Not the biggest ones — the ones where ordinary members are opening the Bible with people outside the building. Ask around; a pastor will usually tell you honestly whether that is happening.
   • Ask one of them directly. You are not proposing a partnership agreement. You are asking whether they have two or three people who would meet a stranger who asked to study the Bible.
   • If nobody near you is doing it yet, hand them the way in. Share this page with a pastor or a small group leader — the framework, the method and the classes are free, and the setup guide written for them is one tab away. A ministry that talks one church into starting has done more for its own Connect step than any amount of internal process ever will.
   • Then keep more than one. A single willing church is a single point of failure: a pastor moves, a volunteer burns out, and the people you identify have nowhere to go.

   You're done when You are confident at least one local church or group has disciple makers ready to meet the people you identify.

3. 3

   Connect

   Get the seekers you identify to disciple makers in local churches.

   • Build the church relationships before you need them. Know which congregations near you have people trained and willing, by name, before the first request comes in.
   • Move fast. A seeker left waiting goes cold, and the gap between asking and hearing back is the single most common place this breaks.
   • Watch the load on the disciple makers. Overload one willing person and you lose them, and everything behind them backs up.
   • Keep a record you actually look at — who asked, who was matched, what happened. A spreadsheet is enough. So is a notebook.

   You're done when Seekers you identify are reaching disciple makers in local churches, and you can say what happened to each one.