After I stammered out a very sophisticated, “huh?”, he continued, “When I look at Jesus’ life he was never about making individual disciples. He was intentionally creating a movement of disciple makers.”

I’d never looked at it that way, but he was right.

Jesus’ goal wasn’t twelve disciple makers. It was a movement of disciple makers. It was a culture developed among those twelve that would be a catalytic force strong enough to transform everything it touched. It was a big goal and to the amazement of historians and social scientists, it worked.

As I work with pastors and churches in Dayton, Ohio, individual disciple makers aren’t the goal. The goal is a disciple making culture, a movement of disciple makers within a local church. It’s the goal because a disciple making culture will spin outward, casting out disciple makers into all sectors of Dayton’s – neighborhoods, workplaces, and associations. A disciple making culture will impact not only a city, but over time it will impact a region, a country, and eventually the whole world. This isn’t hyperbole, Jesus’ disciples, The Navigators, and other movements have proven it.

I’ve written previously about how disciple making cultures have God-sized vision, are relationally driven, intentionally focused, and are aimed at the lost, but there’s more; all disciple making cultures have a team of disciple makers at its core.

This probably isn’t a surprise to you. After all Jesus’ core team was the twelve. Paul’s core team was Barnabas, Silas, and Timothy. On some level all pastors understand that teaming together is important and lone-ranger Christians are routinely lifted up as an example of what not to be.

Still, most pastors and churches don’t understand what it takes to build a core team or what characteristics such a team possesses. The result is frustration and failure in their quest to build a disciple making culture.

So what does a core team look like in the wild? To function as a powerful disciple making force a core team must be aligned in at least four commitments: