Disciple-making is not merely about transferring knowledge. It’s about fostering transformation, forming faithful followers of Christ, and equipping them to multiply. To do this well, disciple-makers must intentionally integrate the WHAT, HOW, and WHY of discipleship. These three components create a holistic process that provides clarity, fosters engagement, and inspires lasting impact.
The WHAT is the foundation of disciple-making. It answers the question: What are we teaching? For the disciple-maker, this means discerning and clearly articulating the core truths, principles, and practices that learners need to understand and embody.
Purpose: Establish clarity and focus by defining the content of disciple-making.
Key Question: What central truth(s) must disciples grasp and pass on?
Role of the Disciple-Maker: A steward of truth—curating and communicating what is essential while stripping away distractions. The what should be Jesus-centered, identity-rooted, and gospel-shaped.
Clarity enables learners to anchor their understanding and grow progressively. Truth must not remain abstract; it must be framed in ways that directly connect to life, mission, and multiplication.
The HOW bridges the gap between knowledge and action. It addresses the strategies, methods, and steps through which disciples engage the message.
For the disciple-maker, this means creatively presenting truth in ways that are memorable, relatable, and reproducible, while ensuring that learning is interactive, experiential, and adaptable to different learners.
Purpose: Equip disciples with spiritual, relational, emotional, and practical tools to live out truth daily.
Key Question: How can this teaching be applied in ways that transform and can be passed on?
Role of the Disciple-Maker: Both teacher and model—facilitating environments where disciples learn, practice, and then reproduce.
Core Elements of the HOW Include:
Interactive and discovery-based learning: Disciples extract truth directly from Scripture.
Experiential practice: Prayer, mission, service, hospitality, confession, worship.
Simple and reproducible tools: Easy to pass on (DBS, 3/3rds, MAWL).
Story and testimony: Anchoring truth in real-life narratives.
Multi-sensory engagement: Connecting head, heart, and hands/feet for all learners.
Self-reflection and review: Integrating past experiences and revisiting key truths for retention and maturity.
The HOW aligns belief, affection, motive, and practice (orthodoxy, orthopathos, orthoprothesis, orthopraxis), ensuring discipleship shapes the whole person—not just the head.
The WHY provides the deeper purpose and motivation of disciple-making. It connects the WHAT and HOW to God’s greater story.
Purpose: Inspire and sustain engagement by showing how discipleship fits into God’s eternal mission.
Key Question: Why does this truth matter for God’s plan and my life?
Role of the Disciple-Maker: To awaken intrinsic motivation by connecting every teaching to God’s redemptive purposes and kingdom vision.
When disciples see WHY it matters, they are moved not by duty but by love and joy, sustaining their growth even in difficulty.
When the WHAT, HOW, and WHY are integrated, disciple-making becomes a dynamic process that forms whole-life followers of Christ:
WHAT — Understand core truths (Jesus-centered, identity-rooted, gospel-shaped).
HOW — Engage through effective, reproducible practices that embody truth.
WHY — Embrace God’s purposes, sustaining motivation and perspective.
This integration ensures that discipleship is not reduced to information, inspiration, or activity alone—but becomes a holistic formation into Christlikeness.
The ultimate goal of disciple-making is not merely informing disciples but equipping disciple-makers. Multiplication is the true measure of success.
Plan intentionally: Identify the core truths, methods, and motivations that form disciples who can form others.
Model first: Live rhythms worth imitating—be with Jesus, become like Him, and do what He did.
Equip purposefully: Provide tools, strategies, and practices that are simple, memorable, and reproducible.
Release strategically: Empower disciples to practice, lead, and disciple others with growing responsibility (model, assist, watch, launch).
Celebrate reproduction: Affirm and highlight every step where disciples begin to disciple others, creating momentum and vision.
A disciple-making movement gains traction when every disciple sees themselves not just as a follower of Jesus, but as a follower who makes followers—a disciple makers who makes disciple makers. This is how the gospel multiplies from one life to another, and from one generation to the next.