A Disciple Making Movement

[Pour la version française de ce post, cliquez ici.]

We want each person who lives on the Plateau Picard (nearly 250,000 people in 456 villages and small towns) to have the opportunity to hear the good news of Jesus. We want to reach the whole population.

We asked God how we could reach the whole population with the good news of Jesus and He led us to the idea of launching a Disciple Making Movement, DMM (in French un Mouvement de faiseurs de disciples, MFD).

At the start, this idea seemed a bit weird and impractical: it’s new for France, there’s nobody here who can train us or help us with such a project. We prayed a lot and we sought the advice of wise and experienced Christian friends, who said to us “Yes, it’s great idea, go for it!”

So, we are  in the process of launching a Disciple Making Movement (DMM)!

At the heart of DMM are Discovery Groups: 5 to 8 friends who are not yet Christians who do Discovery Bible Studies (DBS) together.

DBS is based on the idea of discovering the Bible together (rather than being taught by a leader), using very simple questions like “What does this passage tell us about God?” and “What does this passage tell us about mankind?”. A very important question is always “If this is true, what must I change in my life to be obedient to what God is saying?”.

The groups multiply naturally, as the members of the groups share what they are doing with their friends, their family and their contacts in their networks.

It is through DBS that the members of the group become disciples of Jesus and are baptised. Groups of new Christians form new churches.

How do Discovery Groups begin? At the start, we pray: without prayer nothing will happen. We spend more and more time in the villages that God will show us and we look for opportunities to do good to the people there, to show them the love of Jesus in spiritual but non-religious ways. In each community we look for someone whose heart has been prepared by God who can be a doorway into the community: an entry person (or a person of peace). It is this person who will be able to gather friends and family members to form a Discovery Group in their home.

DMMs exist in many countries throughout the world. As a result, millions of people have become Christians and thousands of new churches have been planted. DMM is new to France, but we are convinced that God wants to use DMM here too.

And “we”, who are “we”? We are a team of four couples: two French couples and two British couples. We don’t have a mission agency or a denomination to support us : our support is God!