The 5 Phases of Creating a Disciple-Making Movement In Your City (Starting In Your Home)
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Hey everybody. Welcome to the 1000 houses podcast. So we have an exciting episode for you guys, a little bit different. Something I'm hoping we can do on a regular basis, maybe once a month or once every two months. I love to get various city partners together, 1KH city partners. To talk about some aspect of 1000 houses, you know, give you guys a little bit more behind the curtain.
Cause a lot of what we do at 1000 houses is we're trying to figure out blueprints for how households can be activated to disciple the [00:02:00] city. That's what our mission is. And this is what we were trying to understand. So city partners are those households within specific cities. They're trying to really live this out and also expand, you know, the footprint of 1000 houses and equip more households in their, in their city.
So, uh, the army of 1000 houses is definitely the city partners. And so I'm joined today by James Mawson over there in St. Louis, we've got Zach Shaner and lovely Dayton, Ohio. Chris Cirillo, who is now back in Eugene, Oregon and Joe Freudenberg, my partner in crime on the East side of Cincinnati. So thank you guys for joining me today.
So we're just going to kind of walk through what we call the city partner pathway. So what this is, is we are trying to figure out If you're in a city and you're, you're a nice household, you're just trying to figure out, okay, how do we do this? How do we actually start a disciple making movement through our household?
Is that possible? What, what were the steps? You know, what, what are the, what is the pathway to actually seeing a movement [00:03:00] begin to be created in a particular city, and it's a tricky question and one that we've, we've done lots of experimenting, like we've tried things and we're like, okay, does this work, does that work?
And so city partners actually is, came out of a lot of those, you know, Various trial and error attempts that we've had in different cities. And so I'm really excited about the city partner thing. We're kind of pouring cement around that strategy, but then we wanted to make explicit, what are those steps that city partners tend to take?
So I'm going to share my screen. If you're listening to this, I'll, I'll do my best to just be talking through the kind of the visual. Visual kind of steps that we're going to be looking at actually on our screens. You can also check this out on YouTube if you want to see this, but I'm going to share my screen.
I'm going to talk a little bit about the city partner pathway, you know, get some feedback from, from the guys. And then we also want to spend some time in each of the phases. There are five phases that we're saying a city partner can go through in order for. The city partner to begin to, to, to start a movement.
So the summary here, the pathway [00:04:00] charts, the course for how city partners activate the maximum number of households to multiply disciple makers in their city, I got a little graphic up here. So the five phases are these. All right. Phase one is gather the fathers. Phase two is build a city team. Phase three is expand the movement.
Phase four is a reestablish the city church. And so phase five is disciple the nations. So this is our attempt at trying to create what, what might, what might it look like? And so this is really running in parallel with, with churches. And we can kind of get into, we have, you know, a pretty open ecclesiology and understanding of church.
And, but what we really want to make sure we're doing is figuring out. How does a disciple making movement start in and through households? I really believe this is like such an underutilized part of the kingdom. So those are the five phases. And then as you go down this document, they, the five phases, they're, they're all, they also sort of parallel.
I, you know, I'm obsessed. If anybody knows [00:05:00] Genesis 1, 28, fruitful, multiply, fill, subdue, and rule the five part household mission given to the church by God when he created the first family in Genesis one. So each phase is really parallel to each of those five. elements as well. So gather the fathers is our way of saying, this is how you begin to become fruitful in a city.
So, so that's, that's the overall idea of the pathway. And then what we do is for each of the phases, I write a summary. What, what is the household ministry rhythm during phase one? So when you're gathering the fathers, What are the things that you're doing there? What is, what is sort of the, the one KH project that the household is trying to complete during this phase?
What are, what are the city rhythms that the household is trying to establish and really coordinate in that city? What's the economic stage of a household who's in this phase? What, what, what does the household's economic engine look like? One of the things that's really, really different about. 1, 000 houses is that we, we have a pretty [00:06:00] prescriptive way of thinking about how the finances of a household that is on this pathway ought to look.
And that is that they need to be, um, heading towards bivocational ministry life, which is they need to own assets that their family owns, that is freeing up an increasing amount of their time to do ministry. So we don't want anyone to be permanently dependent on donations. We, we can use that to accelerate or to supplement.
But we want to really help each other figure out how to grow our freedom businesses. Then there's a tool development element to every phase. And then there's how much time is required. And then I have like a little section that I get to play around with various bonuses. So, so if you're looking at your screen, this is what I'm kind of showing you guys.
And this is the phase one. So I want to just describe phase one and then get your guys thoughts on this. So phase one is gather the fathers. One of the things that the summary is fathers are the key to moving from Western families to households during this phase, you gather and equip teachable [00:07:00] dads, spread the seeds of the family team paradigm and establish your household's economic engine through building a profitable business.
So that's, those are the things that we really want to accomplish during phase one. Of a city partner's life and their journey household ministry rhythm is that they need, you need to, as a family, as a father in the city partner household, you need to be constantly gathering fathers and, and having a strategy for gathering fathers.
So we just had regular fire and fatherhood. So there's a lot of ways to do this. We're, we're really excited about things like rad dads that was developed by our friend, Chris Knopping in Denver, Colorado. He's been gathering fathers around that curriculum. There's lots of ways to do this, but the point is that we have discovered that when you want to move people from families to households, you need to reestablish the fathers.
Like it's the fathers that make the decisions. That transition possible. I don't think it's possible to move from the Western family paradigm into a [00:08:00] household. Cause households are it's real. And this is part of like why I spent a lot of my time, you know, debating online about the definition of fatherhood.
A lot of the reason why I try to defend a biblical definition of fatherhood is because it doesn't necessarily take a father to have a family. Right? You could have single family, single parent families, and things like that. There are lots of ways you could potentially imagine, you know, children growing up in something called a family, even when the father's absent for some reason or another.
I think to establish a healthy household, you must have a father. And the father has to understand that that's his goal. And so there's elements to being a household. One of them, of course, is this economic engine element, but there's lots of others. It really has to do with creating a vision that is household sort of starts at the household and goes out as opposed to the other direction or really what we do in our culture, which is just, you know, sort of send out all the individuals.
To pursue their own ends and then just come back as a family, kind of recover in between all of the various individual pursuits that each of us have. That kind of a vision is not a household vision. [00:09:00] Households have much, have a lot more going on than just sort of a arrest and retreat center for the individuals of the family.
So anyway, there's a lot there. There's a lot of assumptions there. If you guys have listened to us talk through this stuff at family teams, you're familiar with all that. So, but, but this is the reason why we're so committed to phase one being about gathering fathers. And so I'm going to pause there.
Anything that I'm saying either about the city partner. Pathway things you think that as people are listening to this, they might be having questions right now about lots of things, lots of things probably being stirred up. So I'd love for you guys to share what are, what are some things that you think we can say to either fill in the gaps, or I'd love to get your guys thoughts about phase one of the, of the pathway.
Yeah. James. Yeah, what I, what I love about this is, honestly, that it lets dads win. I think so often in the church, it's, the church structure is all about the, like, individuals winning, or the ministries are all centered around, like, what you can do individually with [00:10:00] your personal walk with Jesus. But so few things set up the family to win, and for the family to win, I think, like you've said, dads need to win, dads need to be a part of it, and that's such a big thing to do, because dads can win at work, but it's so hard to set up a place for dads to win within ministry, I think that's what this sets up really great as well.
Yeah, absolutely. They're very central to any kind of household based strategy. We have to equip fathers, we have to gather fathers, we have to encourage fathers. We have to think about how to design households in such a way. And I agree when, when you, when it's a household strategy and the fathers win, I think the women and children win more than in any other structure.
And so it certainly is not to put them in any kind of competition with, you know, the We don't believe in that. We believe in team, not, not, not that there's a sort of an individual fight for the scarce resources of the family that happens in the Western idea of family all the time in the biblical idea of the household.
That doesn't make any sense at all. Like we, we are [00:11:00] building something together. So that's huge. Yeah. Zach, what does this start for you? Yeah, I think this is such an important part because going off what James said, like, I think that fatherhood, like, there's a little bit fathers are just lost on what their role even is.
And so by starting with actually, Casting a vision and then actually giving very practical ways and just awakening that father's heart. Um, especially for, for men who have a kingdom perspective and trying to figure out how to integrate their, their, Like, their heart for discipleship, but it seems so separated from their home.
Like trying to figure out what that looks like together, really, I mean, that just awakens so much. I know that's kind of our story, but it just, seeing that vision, seeing how they work together kind of just recaptures this, this heart and this vision for what a household based ministry could look like.
Yeah, [00:12:00] yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it, it does start there. This is where we have seen that constantly that when a father starts to understand who they are in the context of this household, oftentimes the one who is super distracted by, by work or sports, they suddenly find themselves Very interested in family life, very interested in what they're building there.
And it does, we reawaken, it does the Malachi four turns the hearts of fathers toward their children. And this is this, that's an a critical step and so much of ministry in the, in the 20th century, at least was really typified by. By fathers who were getting more captured by sort of disintegrated models of ministry that were outside the house that really alienated them from the house that atomized the family into its individual units.
And then dad would go off and be a part of this ministry thing that really had almost no connection to his life. as a father. And so we were primarily just like everything in the industrial revolution. We were basically taking each individual, putting them as [00:13:00] almost like cogs in a larger machine. And you don't want those various cogs to be, you know, to have trailing children with them.
You just want them to be, you fit this particular ministry, this role or whatever. And that's all sort of a legacy of what happened, I think, to work in the industrial revolution. And for some insane reason, it took over the way we think about church and we've never recovered from that as, as a church, in my opinion.
So we're still trying to figure out when a God calls a family to, to do a ministry in the city, a ministry, some expression of mystery, he's calling the entire family into that. And if the father is, is leading his family, then yeah, there's elements that he's going to be uniquely gifted at. But it's going to be seen as a family ministry and the house and all of the rhythms of the family are going to, you know, be implicated in some manner by the, by the, the calling that that family has to not, God didn't say to him, be fruitful, multiply, fill, subdue, and rule.
He said to them, and that, that was referring to the entire family. Joe, yeah. What does this start up for [00:14:00] you? Yeah, well, I'm just thinking about, you know, if you're someone listening to this, like what is the city partner business? I think there's a lot of people in the, in the family teams world who have been so captivated by this idea of, you know, being a multi generational team on mission and so much so that they want to.
Share this with with other people and that excitement is really what's driving this first phase for I know a lot of us on this call is like, Oh, my gosh, this is been so fruitful for us and our own individual ministries as we've tried to do some of the stuff even outside of one K H. But yeah, I just I think that this is What we're really excited about is, is having some tools finally to, to do, to do that.
I, I just wanted to say for, for somebody that's listening to this, like you may be already excited about this for your own family. And then I think the next kind of phase beyond that is how do I share this with other people? And the good news is that, you know, this is all leading [00:15:00] to a disciple making movement.
So your excitement around family stuff is actually conveniently the, the first step. To, to helping a disciple making movement take shape. And I think that's really helpful for somebody who hears this idea of, Oh my gosh, yeah, I'd love to see a thousand disciple making households in my city, but that seems like such an enormous task, uh, which it is by the way.
Um, but this, this really is such a helpful, simple first step is let's get, let's get the dads together. Absolutely. It's interesting to, to your point, Joe, like, I think as people get excited about the family teams idea, when we're talking about like a disciple making movement, most ministries that talk about disciple making are still sort of caught, I would say in that idea that it's, this is all individual.
And so we're always trying to be sensitive to the reality of the family being called in the household being strategic. And integrating all those elements into ministry. Like, what does that look like? That's not really holding us [00:16:00] back. That's actually bringing forth. Far more of the values of the kingdom because God, when, you know, when Jesus came and he began to envision this new community that was going to come after him, he said, it's going to be like having a thousand times more mothers and brothers and sisters and fields.
He said this to the disciples, right? After the rich young ruler left, it's in multiple gospels. This was Jesus's vision, this new family that was like incredibly abundant. And how do you create that? When instead of creating. Families and then families of families. You're really creating, you know, like I'm describing organizations, right?
Essentially machines of productivity. They, they can churn out things like good worship services, but they may not have the ability to actually create disciple making movements. And so we want to be really careful how we do this. And starting with fathers is a very critical strategic way of, of getting this going.
Awesome. Chris, why don't you round us out on this one and then we'll hit phase two. Yeah. Yeah, no, one of the questions I have heard from men and I'm imagining [00:17:00] people are thinking, as you mentioned, growing a business, there's probably a lot of guys that are like, why is that kind of a prerequisite component of all of this?
And why is that necessary? I think there's a lot of really valid reasons on why someone would want to build a business or begin to develop family assets. But one of the things that I think is most critical for this component or this kind of phase of the process is that oftentimes fathers are producers and they are producing on behalf of the vision of another family.
And what's happening in this process is it's actually showing your family and it's establishing the foundational elements that rather than our family being consumers, we can actually become producers and we can catch a vision and produce towards an outcome. And I think that's actually not just bringing up time and space and resources to do ministry, but actually the foundation of the ministry changes when you have an understanding of production versus consumption and the family doing that together.
[00:18:00] Yes. Yeah. Great point. Yeah. This is one of the very strange distinctives of what we're presenting here. And so it's actually the opposite of what you're going to find in, I would say most ministries and most churches. If you were to go to most ministries and churches and say, who is your ideal staff member?
Is it somebody who's full time or somebody who's bi vocational and part time? Most ministries, most churches would, would really say, look, if you're not full time here, you need not apply. Like that, that's, that's an essential part of what it means to be on staff. There might be a position for you part time, but, but these key positions in the organization, they're really full time positions.
And so we, we just completely reject and resist that whole idea. And like Chris said, we're coming at this from a completely different perspective. And that is that there's all kinds of reasons why we want all of our fathers and all of our households to be asset builders. And this is not a call to all be entrepreneurs.
This is a huge misunderstanding because we have this idea that we're all somehow. Um, you [00:19:00] know, like careerists who are choosing various careers and entrepreneurship is one of, you know, hundreds of possible career paths. That's not a framing we even recognize as really relevant to this conversation.
Everyone 150 years ago. Hadn't had a ambition to own assets, own land, right? This is what really built the new world that the turn of the, to the 20th century from the 19th to 20th century, 70 percent of, of Americans lived on farms and owned assets, so it wasn't that 70 percent were entrepreneurs, everyone wanted to own assets because they understood that that created all kinds of advantages.
And that world, right? It allowed you to give something to your descendants. It allowed you to work together as a family. It allowed you to do all the things Chris is describing about, you know, being productive. And it also creates this integrated whole in terms of family life. And so I, I just don't, I, I don't have any interest.
And I think another big part of it is it actually disciples men. I think that what, you know, Chris is saying is when you're serving another [00:20:00] man's vision and you've made that, I think getting a job temporarily is completely fine, but when it's your long term strategy for providing for your family, like you're like, I hope 10, 20, 30 years from now, I'm also.
Only making money for my family through an employment situation. That's what I really feel like is, is strange historically. And just oftentimes just unwise. And part of it is your own discipleship as a man. I want to see how you respond to the challenges of, of actually owning something and trying to steward it.
Because if the call is to be fruitful, multiply, feel subdued and rule, you need to have access to something that you're doing that through. And you're doing that with your own children. But I think that the primary way that God begins to really disciple a young man is, is also through his ability to steward and acquire assets.
And like I said, that could just be a percentage of your income. It doesn't have to be all your income. You can get some income through employment. I think that's totally legitimate. It's just a long term trajectory should be asset development. And so I just feel like we have handicapped people. [00:21:00] And part of this is that God's, God's a good father.
And when he brought the Israelites into the promised land, he gave every single one of them assets, every one of them, every single family owned land, even all the Levites. Like some people get confused and they think priests and Levites, maybe they were the exception. That was sort of the, the clergy of the old Testament.
No. Read it more carefully, every single priestly household owned land, every single Levitical household owned land. The only thing that was different about the Levites and the other 11 tribes were the Levites didn't own a, an allotment of land that was, that was exclusively theirs. In terms of a land mass, they got cities and pasture lands, and that's described in detail in the book of Joshua, when Joshua allocated land to the Levites.
So, Anyway, I think we just have a really distorted picture of what normal family life should look like. And we believe that part of that is asset building. So we want to make sure that during this phase, you could be stuck in this phase for many years. And when a father is in this phase, we want to be really careful, not to put a lot of pressure on that [00:22:00] father to do tons and tons of productive ministry activity before their business gets to a place of more stability.
And so we're, we're coaching each other. We're talking about how to do that. And we're, we think we need to be. Really active in supporting each other in that process. But I would say this is a really, yeah, this is a really different distinctive. And part of this is you guys, I just, when you turn it, a lot of, a lot of the long term thinking, when you get into your fifties and sixties as a father, and you have to ask your employer for time to spend time with your grandchildren, I just think there's something fundamentally flawed about this idea of fatherhood.
No, like that you shouldn't. Want that if for your future, that doesn't mean you, you won't necessarily be bearing lots of heavy responsibilities during that period, but you should, they should be under the rule of your household. Like that should be your goal. And I, I want that to be the goal of the city partners that were, that they're able to decide what In, you know, in your fifties, how much time you're going to spend working with your adult children versus how much time you're going to spend doing ministry.
And that that's [00:23:00] not being basically determined by an HR department somewhere. I just, that, that idea, I find it, it just really grates on the idea of having a household centric life. But this has cost 1KH immensely in terms of our own. You know, ability to sort of scale up quickly because we can only like grow at the speed of, of the father's maturity and the father's asset building ability.
And so we're, we're, we're trying to just track with that. And if that takes many more decades, then we're going to go through a much slower process. We're okay with that. We just, we want to build on a really solid foundation. Yeah. Joe, what are your thoughts? Yeah, I just wanted to call out for as you're getting a vision for man, how could I start doing this in my city or something?
Like what I, what I've been really blessed by is seeing some fathers in our city do this, start to develop their own assets and then watching, this is kind of how I describe it. You guys can react to this, but like each, each [00:24:00] father Is almost launching their own non family nonprofit, almost their own family ministry.
That's what we're talking about and funding it as well. And there's, there's some things that, that happen. That I've just observed, we're starting to get just a little taste of it for our family. But you're, you know, you watch these families and all of a sudden there's no, there's, all the vision, all the, all the ministry is, is being funded, uh, by, by the family.
And there's, I think there's something beautiful about that, freeing about that. There's, there's much fewer hoops to jump through to, to make a vision come to life. If you don't, if, if it's your family, , you're, it's like, okay, God, you've given us a mission. You've given us a business or these assets to steward and, and you've blessed them, and now we're ready to deploy them.
Yes. And we're ready. We're ready to bless our city and our, maybe our part of our city in, in a very specific way that we [00:25:00] don't have to check with anybody except for you. God, you've, you've downloaded the mission and I just wanted to echo what was said earlier about what, what happens if you start down this path of trying to grow a business or trying, trying to clumsily start, you know, attaining these assets.
It's, it's like what it does to you. As a man is a we're talking about being fruitful here. All of a sudden the guys nights around the fire, you are a much stronger man because you have pushed that you've asked for the weight and Jesus is carrying that with you, but you've asked for it. And you now all of a sudden what you say around that fire.
isn't just facilitating some surface level questions. You're now, now all of a sudden, you've got some real strength behind your ministry in this first phase, when you gather the fathers, which is pretty, pretty exciting and, and bears this fruit that we're, that we're after. We could do a whole episode on this first phase.
That's great. I know we probably [00:26:00] will, we'll go, we'll go slower, but a big part of what this, this is what I really want to do in this episode is we keep moving through the phases. I want to spend a little bit more time on phase one, because it's where everybody starts and everybody gets stuck for years and it's reasonable.
And that's, that's where we're, you know, a lot of us are at. Some of us are getting into phase two or three, but I want you guys to start to see the future. Like what, what could happen if we go down this line? So we're going to pull up and look at phase, phase two here. So phase two is build a city team and this kind of gets into the multiply.
So the summary here is, it's time to launch a citywide multiplying movement of disciple making. So we've got the foundational phase. We've gathered fathers. We've kind of created our economic engine. We're really starting to free up our time. Phase one, we're only expecting about five hours maximum per week for anybody who's a city partner.
But in this phase, it's, it's more intensive. Like it's going to be more like a 10 hour a week level of activity. So during this phase, both the husband and wife lead a discipleship group. Okay. So part of what you're doing now is you're not just gathering fathers, but you're actually taking on apprentices, usually in groups of three [00:27:00] for about five months at a time.
And so you can start, you can do one or two groups a year, but this is a critical part to disciple making. We have a whole blueprint on life on life discipleship, how to do this. So they're also scaling their business to free up more time and recruiting a partnering family to take your city team to the next level.
One of the things we want to be trying to do during phase two is not just, we don't want to have isolated households. We'd love to have like more teams or two by two. So we're looking for, is there another family that could become city partners? And so that these two city partnering families could, could become a team that really tries to reach that city.
So what's the household ministry rhythms? It's these discipleship groups, both the husband and wife are leading disciple, disciple making groups. So 1KH project is that recruiting of that partnering family. And one of the things that we've learned is that the DNA of a, of a really good team is one of the families tends to be a little bit more of a visionary family.
And the other team tends to be a little bit more pastoral or operational. So that creates a little bit more of a, of a balance. It doesn't, I mean, we can look at that in [00:28:00] different ways, but I think that's, that, that seems like a healthy balance. The city rhythm is we want to start doing more like host 1KH specific events, like worship nights, vision nights.
So during the first phase, we talked about. Okay. Having sort of a family teams events. We do this thing called house craft. So phase one, you're, you're working a little bit more on just creating familiarity around this, this movement from family to household, right. From, from individuals to a team, but phase two, we want, we want to start talking about, okay.
Like what are some of the things that we can be really setting the vision for? And we do that through worship nights and vision nights. So working on those here in Cincinnati, we actually got a worship night for 1KH coming up in Cincinnati this Sunday night. I'm so excited about that. So the economic stage is that you're starting to grow more of a scale business.
So we talked about phase one is more of a freedom business. We go, I go into detail about the distinction between the three kinds of businesses, and we encourage that every family that wants to become financially free is developing these three businesses. A free to business, which is a little more of a service based business, a scale business, which could scale up and, and really [00:29:00] provide a lot of income for the legacy business, which is The, the, where you start to make money from cash flowing assets.
So the tool development during this phase is we start a level 10 meetings with the partners and with a coach from 1000 houses. So one of the things we want to be constantly doing sort of from one K H HQ is like, we're here to help coach city partners. We have a level 10 meeting, which is a particular way to do a meeting that we really enjoy, but it helps us like set goals and hold each other accountable and make sure we're getting appropriate amounts of traction.
So we want to be doing that for all the different cities during phase one, we kind of do that as a group. And then during phase two, we actually begin to segment that level 10 meeting just for that city. So we'd have a level 10 meeting, you know, just for St. Louis or just for Eugene, Oregon, if you're getting into phase two and start to have a team there.
Okay. Now there are time requirements for more like 10 hours per week. Cause you're still gathering fathers and now you're making disciples, right? And your, your goal here is to make disciples in a way that makes disciples. And so the ministry time requirement is going to be a little higher in this phase.
One of the [00:30:00] bonuses I put on here is to start to map out churches and ministries that were, you know, You could start to go into a church for like, let's say three to six months and really begin to partner with them on creating disciple making movements or other parachurch ministries. We can do that as well.
So this is what life could look like during phase two. So yeah, I'd love to get any of your guys thoughts. What do you guys think about phase two and the elements there that yeah, are really standing up to you guys, standing out to you guys.
Yeah. Chris. Yeah. I, I think one of the things I was realizing just as I'm looking back at this is that there is the potential that you find yourself kind of in between stages. And so like I know many of us are kind of more in the stage one But are also doing some of the activities that might land in stage two so it's probably just worth calling out that like You kind of move through this as it's appropriate and as time allows.
And it's not like a, Oh, I can't kind of jump over until I do the scale business or anything like that. It's like, if you've got the capacity to run discipleship groups, [00:31:00] absolutely. Let's dive in. I think that's a really good call. Yeah. I think that it's, yeah, it's, it's, these are overlapping phases. And so I think it's, it's, it's like you, some elements you'll start to dip into phase two.
We don't have some like huge transition where there's, there's, there's no overlap. So I think that's a really good way to describe it. Yeah. Joe. Yeah, I think phase one, like if you read, if you read through this and what we described about it, you know, it is a big part of that is getting that economic engine going through a business and what's really exciting about phase two is, you know, you've got, you are, you and your wife now are, are very focused, not you've made it through.
Trying to get that off the ground. And now it's like, yes, now we get to, like, we get to do the thing that maybe we were excited about the most. Maybe we were less excited about starting a business, but we understand that that was like such a important foundation for what we're, what we're doing. So I just, I love seeing this transition happen, especially that we're calling out.[00:32:00]
that husbands and wives are both taking on a disciple making group together, separately most likely, but they're, they're in it together from a ministry perspective. So I just, I wanted to highlight that too. It's like the, the, the first phase can, could take years and it's, it's important not to like, I I've gone through this, like where I'm, man, I have to make disciples and have to have all these guys groups and have to start a business and have to raise all my little kids.
And oh my gosh, how am I supposed to do this all at the same time? I think phase one gives a lot of, a lot of grace. Um, and I think the key is just to have this phase two and beyond constantly from a vision perspective, just constantly saying, we're, this is what we're heading towards. We're heading towards, you know, we're, we're having these fathers groups in phase one so that, you know, we can, we can have some relational depth, depth of these fathers and their network.
And out of that comes guides to disciple. Out of that comes moms for our wives to disciple so that, you know, there, there's, there's hope in the midst of [00:33:00] phase one, trying to grind it out. As long as we've got a really clear vision and we're on the same page with our spouse, phase two is coming. So that, that's what I was hearing.
It's exciting. It's good. Yeah. That's really good. Yeah. Well, one of the things that, that building the economic engine creates that's really unique, I think in this ministry expression. Is that a lot of times, like there's not a lot of dependence or need to do ministry. In other words, I think a lot of, for, for economic reasons.
So a lot of times what happens to people is they I've had, I've seen this happen where, where people like, I love ministry. I want to, I want to follow Jesus. I want to build a church. And then, you know, there are ministry and they're, you know, they're, they're paid and then they transition out into business ownership.
They start making money through business and then they drop ministry. And they, they claim to have this amazing calling, but once it became voluntary and non economic, they suddenly lost any, any interest in, in, in doing ministry. And a lot of times when people are in full time ministry as a career, they never know if they're doing it [00:34:00] for the money.
Or if they're doing it because they really feel called and, and in one cage, we just absolutely don't want to be dealing with that problem. Like if you, you, you are doing this, not it's costing you money. Not, not that there aren't times where we're not going to try to financially support people in this bivocational way, but there is important that that not be the driving, the factor that you, you always have the option to take time off.
You always have the option. To go at the speed of what your, your, your actual maturity, you're never being forced through economic levers, you know, being placed on you by the ministry with a ministry needs to go faster or to, to hold positions that are inappropriate for your level of maturity or your calling.
And this is, I think something that always, I found so frustrating about kind of the career ministry world is that there was an inevitability to what does the machine need? Well, you, despite your maturity. Uh, need to fit that. And if you don't, we're going to pull economic levers to make sure that you do, or we'll find somebody who [00:35:00] will.
I want to completely not live in that world ever. And so we want to make sure that you, you have a financial level, financial freedom. And then when you actually start doing ministry, it's not primarily because you have to economically, it's primarily. Because you really do feel called. You, you really do have something to reproduce.
You're making disciples because there's, there's something fruitful happening in your household and it's time to multiply like that. That ought to be the motivation, not, not primarily economics. Yeah. Zach, what does this strand for you? Yeah. Two things. The first is like, we're on phase two, but it's still feel so slow.
Like, like the, like the foundation. Like what you said, we're trying to build a solid foundation, and that takes time, and that's okay. Like, you have to make sure everything is in place, and that your family is operating in the rhythms that's sustainable and healthy, but that is going to [00:36:00] be producing fruit over the You know, your lifetime, because even though that this year you might only be spending a lot of time with two or three guys or two or three girls, that's going to multiply and have who knows how much fruit.
So that's. That's one thing. And then the second thing that's so critical about this phase, I think, is that partnering family. I think that when there are two families that, that have this vision together, I think there is some synergy that begins to happen. And I think we've seen that in a couple of other cities and some cities, we're still praying for those partnering families.
And I think that's just such a critical piece to this, but that it's okay that it's happening in the Lord's time. So that's, that's, I think would be a highlight for me in this phase. Yes. I agree. I love both those points, the slowness that you have to kind of get okay with. I mean, this, you know, what, what people look at, it's a really important to [00:37:00] understand that in the West, when you see, when you walk into a church building, you see 500 people in seats.
You're like, there's something really important happening here. And then when you like walk into like, you know, somebody's living room and you see three men, you know, hanging out with a spiritual father, you're like, something really small is happening here. Like we, we have this, this is the way we think in our culture.
We just love anything that's bigger. If it's thousands of people, then it's super important. And yeah, one of the things that we're really working on life on life is, is to put the seed in the fruit, because if we can multiply to the fourth, the fifth, the sixth generation, we're you are impacting hundreds or thousands of people, but it's happening through disciple making.
So this is the way Jesus liked to multiply. And it, it also similar to what I said about sort of the economic incentive being really, really small in our model. Also the fame incentive, honestly, is really, really small because there isn't some giant platform. that all of us are trying to shoot for in order to, in order to either, like, be fruitful or, or in some [00:38:00] cases maybe secretly stroke our ego in some way.
Like it's really important that we spend most of our time in ministry in obscurity the way Jesus did, and just believing that the slow, the slow. And the multiplication, just like when you're parenting your children and you see your grandchildren, your great grandchildren, as you look at them, as you're parenting them, you, you have a vision for that.
And that's, what's providing a lot of your excitement. I want to be famous to my descendants. That's what Abraham was promised. That's a very different trajectory than saying, I want to find a platform that I can get in front of that is as large as possible right now. And so there's, if that's sort of in you anywhere, then our whole model is going to feel really dissonant because there's not a lot of that happening in even by phase two, which you could be easily seven, eight years into your city partnership.
And still like, is this really what it is? I'm just here. Like make, yes, this is what, this is what we do. This is how disciple making movements start. Don't despise the days of small beginnings, James. Yeah. I'll let you round this out and then I'll introduce the last three phases. Yeah. And [00:39:00] I, I've kind of going off of what you and Zach were just saying, I just love how the discipleship.
Yeah. It's really started here in phase one, you kind of build, build up your own family and start bringing some other families around you who might be going along with you, but now start launching out from discipleship here, I think it's really important. And I think another important thing that I kind of realized this morning, as my wife and I were talking about, like her process and getting ready to start a discipleship group is my default for what discipleship is.
Theological training, but I think the model is pretty different about the model that one cage is bringing up. The discipleship is life training. Like it's discipleship. Isn't just about like, do you know all the systematic theology bits from all the different systematic theology books, but like is discipleship your discipleship needs to be about.
What are you doing when you wake up in the morning? What are you doing when you go to bed? What are you doing with your kids to help them grow? What are you doing after we're done meeting for [00:40:00] this, these six month period to start doing another one? And I think that's something that's, again, really fun.
Can be fruitful and not sterile. That was another word that you've used a lot for what others, how other discipleship models can work. And like, we have generational problems that the church is trying to address and you need to have a generationally minded solution, having, making disciples that make disciples is really a big about.
A hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah. A big part of the life on life disciple making blueprint has to do with what we don't give you a curriculum, which is really. The hardest part about it, but we help you build one is you can only give what you have. And to James's point, if you're a theologian, there's going to be a lot of theology in your disciple making, but most of us aren't theologians.
Most of us have really learned through our own lives, our own testimonies. And, and so we want to activate all of those lessons, right. That are a part of your. Past a part of your testimony, a part of what the Holy Spirit has taught you. And [00:41:00] you give people what you have, not what you don't have. And so we want to make sure that that is how discipleship is happening.
All right, I'm going to go over these last three phases. And what I'm going to do here is just kind of, I want you guys to just use your imagination. You know, as we look at these last three phases, so phase one, you're imagining this family. Who is gathering fathers around fires, really talking about the importance of fatherhood, maybe using rad dads to train fathers, how to think about how to get, you know, restore biblical fatherhood.
And they're seeing more fathers start to take on this idea of really becoming, becoming a patriarch of a multi generational family line. We're using things like housecraft to equip. The couple and really build into both the husband and the wife in this process. And so phase two, we begin to make disciples, both the husband and the wife.
And so the wife is really, is really focused on a lot of those Titus two lessons that she's learning about how to help a mother really embrace and, and, and develop skills that actually cause the household to grow. To flourish and likewise, fathers are being coached by other fathers. And so this has happened.
You've got a partnership [00:42:00] going on and now we enter phase three. So we've done fruitful, we're multiplying. Now we need to fill, subdue and rule. And so phase three, we call expand the movement. The summary is your ministry is now becoming known in the city. During this phase, you are hosting monthly citywide events, seeing discipleship reach to the third or fourth generation, raising funds to free up your time and get the admin administrative help you need for sustainability.
So there there's enough activity at this point where it does, it is important to have, you know, some part time help in, in your ministry. We can. There's various ways we can fulfill that need, but we definitely are going to need some help on, on that front as well. So the household ministry rhythm, start a regular worship gathering guys and gals nights.
So part of what you want to be doing at this phase is you're going to have so many spiritual children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren again, in this phase, you start to see the third and even the fourth generation of your discipleship efforts, part of what we want to equip you to do is how do you gather the children?
So you're going to take some of the rhythms that hopefully you're learning spiritual rhythms in your home. You're doing with your own children. And you begin to like enfold your spiritual children and [00:43:00] grandchildren into those rhythms. We talked about how to do that. It's often like just one night a week, but something that does that, that can, you can pair that with your attendance at a particular worship service or church, or you can actually launch a house church.
Those are both options at this phase. One cage project is recruiting that, uh, the admin help the city rhythm is carefully track the generations of your discipleship movement and celebrate its expansion, having where we're going to have, we're going to do this, this for the first time this year, at the end of the year, we want to have an annual banquet where we actually.
Like, like map out what's happening with discipleship in our city, because, because it is so small and it seems so like, it's, it's like ineffective in comparison to large, you know, ministries where they're constantly gathering hundreds or thousands of people. We need to actually just once a year, see the map and see, no, no, no, this is really where, or if it's not like, let's say we're discovering that our discipleship is not getting past the second or third generation.
We need to find that out. So we're going to be tracking that as city partners, but we also want to celebrate what's working at the, at an annual. And then the [00:44:00] economic stage is we want to make sure that our legacy businesses are healthy and growing some of the tools that we really like to use during this phase of story from life, that becomes a more central part of how we're gathering people.
That's a tool that we really use. So, so this is the fill part. So what's happening here is you are starting to see people are starting to go. What is that? What's going on over there? Like, it's just starting to penetrate into so many different parts of the city that, that people, um, around the city are going to start taking notice that something is changing.
And what they're really experiencing is an underground disciple making movement. That's beginning to become large enough to be recognized or noticed. And so that requires a certain amount of stewardship, you know, so, so you're starting to talk to other. in a ministry leaders around the city. Okay. That's phase three, phase four.
So we feel, so we were filling that. That's what, that's what we're, that's, we're describing that starting to happen, right. As people are starting to know that now there's subdue, right? This is the fourth phase, a citywide transformation has begun, right? So this disciple making movement now is really taking off.
You're starting to see a city [00:45:00] change. So. And you can see if you, if you continue, you'll have a thousand disciple making households in your region. So this is the, where we get our name. And that is, we were really felt called by the Lord. And I really feel like the Lord gave us this vision to create a movement that would get to a thousand disciple making households in a single city.
But by phase four, you're going to see that that's sort of inevitable. At this phase, you're going to, you may only be like a hundred or 200 households by phase four, but, but because they're multiplying, you can actually see sort of the vision, get to its, its, its conclusion, at least at that phase. Okay, so this is happening during this phase.
Your team is leading the way in evangelistic efforts. So one of the things that starts to happen when you subdue is that you've gotten the ministries that are really interested in disciple making on board. You've gotten, you know, your own households trained up and you started to run out of people to disciple.
If you don't actually do some evangelism, which is an amazing problem to have. And we'd love to have that problem. Most of our cities do not have that problem. There's just, there are so many believers who've never been discipled. [00:46:00] So we're going to start to really scale up evangelists, evangelism efforts.
So we have a whole course made for mission that will become really strategic, especially at this phase of. Of, of the development, the one cage project clearly identify the boundaries of the city, recognize elders. So there's a whole thing that you want. We're starting to really reestablish the city church.
That's what we're saying is the sort of phase four is the reestablishment. You're, you're starting to see coordination and cooperation happen at the city level. And so there's a whole theology we have of elders and deacons. I never, I don't believe those were ever intended to be locked within a very small brand.
Like some, something that's larger than a household, but much smaller than the city in the, in the new Testament, elders and deacons were always at the city level, the village level village elders, like you see at the end of Ruth. And so we want to see that reestablished. So that's starting to happen.
There's a lot more we can talk about, but I don't want to get too much too detailed. The further we get down these phases, we just, these, these become more and more theoretical for us because we're still mostly in phase two and three or phase one. So. But that gives you kind of a picture of what we can imagine.
And we'll definitely [00:47:00] update the blueprint as we actually, as theory hits reality. And then this is, this is very much on the vision dreaming side. So what, what happens once you get there? What happens once you have a thousand cycle making households who are multiplying in a single city, like you have people establishing the city church, and there's all these expressions that are happening across these households.
What do you do with your time during phase five? And so this rule phase is sort of tricky. And what, what I picture is this is, this becomes the, the, the impetus for the sending phase really. And that's what we're talking about in this phase. Disciple the nations is the, is the phrase that we like for this one.
Now that things are thriving, it's time to prune fruitless branches. Spread the fruit of what God's doing in your city to cities and even, even other countries. So you want to start adopting foreign countries, like households start to like, like see strategic areas of the world they feel called to address.
Now that they've got the funding, they've got the disciple makers, they've got the households, they've got children who are becoming adults. There's so much, so many resources that you can sort of point at any direction. So you [00:48:00] want to ask, where's the Holy spirit moving in the world? What, what places has God.
Put a call on our lives. We want to see this happening in other cities in the West, of course, but I think we're going to really want to begin to think about this beyond establish a missions base for singles and training and sending, you'd want to see a sending base really established within that city that you're developing because there's so much.
Potential there. So map the fruitful and fruitless ministries in the cities, confront the latter. So there's actually a confrontation. I think it happens at this phase with, with those people who are having ministries that are like James was describing, they're just sterile. Like they're, they're literally just hoarding people and nobody's reproducing, and they're trying to create a model where everyone stays a spiritual child and nobody becomes a spiritual parent.
These, these are, these are very problematic ministries. And so we need to, first of all, just try to help them and equip them and love them. But then sometimes people are saying, no, we actually like it that way. And they're really being disobedient to the call of Jesus. They're, they're telling Jesus, like the great commission is not for us.
And we want to be careful that in our cities, we're like, Hey, that's not okay. Like we're here to [00:49:00] obey Jesus. You've got the name of Jesus on the door. Then you need to be obeying his commands. And, and it was really clear what he commanded this area. Okay. So there's a lot going on here. Economic stage delegate, most economic activity to maximize ministry engagement.
So you're really turning down a lot of your time being spent just for money and turning up your time in ministry. So that those are all dreams. We're all dreaming right now. These last couple of phases are like, yeah, I hope this happens. So, but I just want you guys to have a picture in your, in your minds and in your hearts about this.
There's a big version 1. 0 over this document, which means we plan to have lots of new versions as we learn. More and more. And so please, everything you've heard today, it's, you know, especially as you get further and further down, the document is more and more experimental and theoretical. And so we love that.
We love the fact that we get to learn and trial and error. And so we've done a lot of that already. And especially the first couple of phases, and those are a little more clear to us, but just, I just want to give you guys a picture of why we have city partners. What we're encouraging them to do, what it would look like.
And just [00:50:00] imagine in your own city, if you guys started down this pathway, what could, what could it look like in five years, 10 years, 20 years? That's really our heart. Like we, we want to be operating under a blueprint that where we can see the great commission being increasingly fulfilled. And I just don't see that in a lot of blueprints.
You see, you're looking at a blueprint. You're like, if this succeeded, I don't think the great commission would. Be fulfilled in any way, any meaningful way, because it's not really multiplying disciples, for example, it's not really operating through households is seen to be basic violations of the design of what we're given.
And so we want to make sure that we're operating on a blueprint that does that. So we're out of time now. So I'll let you guys go. Thank you guys so much for giving, giving time, listen to this and thank you guys, James and Zach and Chris and Joe for joining me today. [00:51:00]
