5 Steps To

Reproducing
Disciples

Jeff Vanderstelt

An edited transcript of a message

given at the Verge Conference


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God’s Creation Mandate
In the very beginning of Genesis God says, "Be fruitful
and multiply and fill the earth." He says, "Every plant
that I make has the ability to throw off seeds and
multiply. Every animal has the ability to reproduce after
its own kind, and man and woman are also supposed to
do the same thing."

God's intent, in his creation mandate was to fill the earth

with his glory through his image bearers. That's his
intent. As a result of rebellion God sent his son to be the
perfect image bearer, the image of God in physical form.

And now we his body, the church, are sent by Jesus to be

recreated image bearers who display the glory of God to
the ends of the earth, so that the earth would be filled
with the glory of the Lord. That's our call, and that
requires reproduction.

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Adjust Your Metrics
In fact, I would ask us, "What are the primary metrics
we're using to determine whether or not we are being
faithful to Jesus' command for the church?" If you don't
rethink your metrics, you won't reorder your behaviors.

If your metrics are primarily attendance and church size,

you don't have reproduction at the heart of what you're
doing. Reproduction, if that was at the heart, you would
say, "How many disciples are making disciples? How
many people are being sent? How many people are being
released to new places?" That's the stuff we'd start to
measure.

Step 1: Keep It Simple

So, how do we do this? How do we create a reproducing
culture in the church? First of all, keep it simple. When
you think about the picture of reproduction throughout
all of creation it starts with a simple cell. Okay, you've got
a seed. Trees don't reproduce trees. They produce fruit

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that fall that have seeds in them, and then seeds grow up
to reproduce trees.

One of the mistakes we made at Soma was that we

thought that we were supposed to reproduce structures.
Now let's have missional communities multiply and
create more missional communities, and we made our
goal multiplication of missional communities instead of
our goal multiplication of disciples.

If you want to be a church-planting church, you're all

ready starting in the wrong place. You should be a
disciple making church, and let churches come out of
disciples who know how to make disciples. We aren't
reproducing structures. We're reproducing at the most
simple form. We're sharing the Gospel and we're seeing
disciples formed in Christ's likeness.

I had a couple that came into our missional community

via our cookouts. In the summer, we do weekly cookouts
and Doug and Ashley just started hanging out with us.

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They were living together at the time, and they asked if I
would start to help them think through what it might
look like to be married. They heard that if you do pre-
engagement counseling, or pre-marriage counseling, it'll
help you have a great marriage.

So, I started to meet with them, and the very first session
I said, "I want to talk to you about God's intent. God's
intent in marriage is that you would tell the story of what
God is like and what God is doing. So, your marriage is to
be a picture of what God's like and it's to tell the story of
how he loves the church through Christ laying down his
life for her. That is the reason you get married."

They stopped, and I went through Genesis 1, 2 and 3 to

show them that and Ephesians, and when I did that, they
stopped and said, "We've never heard anybody ever tell
us that marriage was about Jesus." They said, "We kind of
grew up in the church. We kind of walked away." And I
said, "Well, I want to let you know, everything is about
Jesus." And so, I started walking through all the stories

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of the Bible, and they said, "We've been having a lot of
troubles in our relationship, because we don't agree on
the Bible in a lot of places, but what you just said, if it's
all about Jesus, then we could actually come to unity
about Jesus instead of all the arguments over every text."

What was I doing? I was doing what we're supposed to

do. Get it back to the fundamental point. Simplify it. I'll
tell you, I watch a lot of people and their disciple making
techniques. They make it more complex so that almost
nobody can do it.

And I wonder if it's a subtle form of narcissism, saying, if

you have higher spiritual knowledge and more degrees
behind your name, you are more spiritually accepted
before God. But in reality, God loves you to be like a little
child who simply walks by faith and loves Jesus and
wants to obey him. Listen to Jesus' s call, "Come follow
me. I'll make you fishers of men." Pretty simple. Pretty
simple. Keep it simple.

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Step 2: Keep It Transferable
Keep it transferable. You know, reproduction in some
ways is almost like a virus. It could just start to spread.
Jesus talks about the kingdom of God like yeast. And
what we often do is we often try to have an epidemic and
not a pandemic. An epidemic is when a disease can
transfer from one like body to another like body. A
pandemic is when it could transfer from one body to
another entirely different kind of body. That was what
Aids was. It went from animals to humans.

Well, the Gospel should be that way. It should not be

locked into a particular system that can only be done
with upper-middle class white people, or African-
American urban, or whatever. It needs to transfer to
every people group, to every part of the world.

When we started Soma we said, "Whatever we do, we

must do it in such a way that if we've been with people
long enough they could go to any part of the world and
do the very same things we taught them. They don't need

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our buildings. They don't need our programming. They
don't need our team. They don't need our staff. They
should be able to do it without us." So keep it
transferable.

I was with a bunch of guys the other day. We were

talking about a curriculum that's being developed to help
people multiply disciples and partway through it I said,
"Can I just ask you a question? Did you write this for
upper-middle class, highly educated people? Because my
guess is if you can't read, you can't use this stuff." And
everybody's like, "Whoa!" One of the guys said, "I'm
working in inner city, but the majority of people I'm
working with can't read. I can't even use this stuff in my
own context." I said, "Yeah, you need to understand 65%
of the country has a preferred style of learning, non-
literate learning. They're not going to read."

So if all we do is go, "Let's write another curriculum to

make disciples more effectively," guess what? They're not
gonna get it and they're not gonna transfer it. When was

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the last time you, just for a little test, read a book and
walked away after reading the book and went, "I can
probably tell someone everything that's in that book
now." You can't. You have to give them the book. But,
we're not about giving books. We're about giving our
lives.

So, if it can't be given through your life, it's not

transferable. So wrestle through that in the way you do
reproduction. Say, "Have we given somebody something
that they can just on the street give to someone else?"
And if they can't just give it to someone else on the street,
it's not transferable.

Step 3: Sow The Seeds of Multiplication Into Everything

Third. Do it in a continual manner. Another way I'd like
to say this is, "You're always sowing the seeds of
multiplication into everything."

Regularly I tell my son Caleb, "Hey buddy, one day you're

going to be leading your own home." Now he's eight now,

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but I've been telling him this since he was about three or
four.

I heard someone tweet yesterday like, "I would hate to

have Jeff as my Dad." I don't know who said that. But I
told him, I remember we were praying and he said, "Dad,
I don't want to pray." We do bedtime prayer. "I don't want
to pray." And I said, "Son, I just want to remind you
someday you're gonna have to teach your son and your
daughter how to pray." And see, the way I look at my kids
is I'm not raising kids. I'm raising adults. I'm not teaching
them how to be a kid. I'm training them to be an adult.
And in the church, we're not raising converts. We're
making disciples.

And so, when I first met my friend Clay, he was not yet a
believer. Very early on I knew that everything I was
doing with him he was going to have to learn to do with
someone else. So I knew from the moment my
relationship began with him, I was discipling him in how
to make a disciple. I wasn't just getting him to Jesus, I was

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showing him what life looks like with Jesus. And so, the
whole time I'm very mindful, I'm an example to him of
what it means to be a disciple maker. When I would have
a conversation with another person about Christ, I
wanted Clay to watch it, not even a believer yet, but I'm
like, "Someday, you're gonna do this."

I remember the conversation he and I had in the car one

day, I said, "Hey, brother. I don't know if you're ever
gonna believe what I'm telling you, but when you do,
you're gonna do the same things I'm doing." You see, I'm
not as concerned. I wasn't concerned about Clay just
being a convert. I'm training him how to be a disciple
maker even before he believes.

And it was amazing when he came to faith. He said, "Jeff,

can we meet at the community garden?" We hung out,
worked there a lot. And he showed up and he said, "Man,
I believe, man. I want Jesus to have my life. I want to
follow him." He said, "So, how much do I give now, and I
want to learn to read the Bible like you do. I know I need

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to tell my friends about Jesus now, so I want you do help
me more on that. Of course I want to serve. Man, we've
all ready been doing that."

He just lists everything that you and I would teach a new

believer in a new believer's class. I didn't have to take
him to a new believer's class because I was taking him
through a new believer's class before he was a believer,
in everyday life. Because in my mind I'm thinking,
"Someday he's going to believe and someday he's going to
do the very same things I'm doing with him."

"Follow me. I'll make you fishers of men," Jesus said. He

didn't hide it from them. People don't hide what Jesus is
saving them to. Put it right in front of them. We shouldn't
be shy about the life that we get to have. We should tell
them, "Guess what? When you come to believe these
things, this is what you're going to do. This is what your
life's gonna be like." Call them to it. It's a great life. Don't
hide it from them. Sow seeds of multiplication all the
way.

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Step 4: See Regeneration As the Spirit’s Commission
Next, see regeneration as the Spirit's commission. Seed
regeneration is the Spirit's commission. When we baptize
people, we say, "We baptize you in the name of the
Father because now you belong to his family, and you're
now going to love one another as brothers and sisters.
We're going to baptize you in the name of the Son,
because Jesus is now your king and you are to serve him
as he served you. And we baptize you in the name of the
Holy Spirit because the Holy Spirit has now, not only
given you new life through regeneration, but he’s going
to empower you to be his missionary to the world."

So we go, "Baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son,

and the Holy Spirit," take you out of the water and then
when we take them out of the water, we say, "And now
you're commissioned to the Great Commission to make
disciples to make disciples." That's what our baptism is.
It's not an introduction to Christianity. It's the

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commission from the Spirit to do the work of Jesus of
making disciples.

If we started at that point, I think it would change for a

lot of people. They'd be like, "I don't know if I want to get
baptized man. Like you're saying I'm going to have to do
the mission." That's what it means. You're not just being
inducted into a club. You're being inducted into the
mission of God.

Step 5: Have a Releasing Culture

Lastly, Church, see yourself as a releasing culture.
Churches, you should have a back door. People should be
leaving. If they're not, there's a problem. They should be
leaving because you're sending them to the ends of the
earth. That's what we're called to do. Don't measure how
many people stay. Measure how many people go in the
name of Jesus to make disciples who make disciples.

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 About the Author
As the visionary leader of the Soma
Family of Churches, Saturate and the
lead teaching pastor at Doxa Church
in Bellevue, WA, Jeff Vanderstelt gets
to spend his days doing what he
loves – training disciples of Jesus to
make more disciples of Jesus and
equipping the Church in the gospel
and missional living. Jeff is the author of Saturate, Saturate
Field Guide and Gospel Fluency. He and Jayne, his wife of
twenty-four years, have three children; Haylee, Caleb, and
Maggie. Connect with Jeff at saturatetheworld.com or on
twitter @JeffVanderstelt

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