In this book, Steve Smith tells the story of Ying Kai and his church-building experience in the closed countries of Asia and how God grew a church planting movement through discipleship. Discipleship is not new, in fact Steve Smith calls it a "forgotten precedent".
Smith presents the material in 3 sections: Foundations, Process, and Application. Together, they share Ying Kai's successes (and failures) over his years of church planting. He talks about building a movement "through the 20%". This is not the 20/80 leadership rule that you might be familiar with, not the 20% who leads people to faith, and not the 20% who starts new groups. It is the 20% who leads people to faith, starts new groups and trains believers to disciple others.
Although there are 21 chapters, a big focus of the book is on vision casting and passing on the discipleship process as the DNA of any new groups that form, witnessing through bridge-building, and reproducing leaders.
One of my favourite chapters is T4T for the Churched and Post-churched in which Steve Smith addresses the success of church planting movements through discipleship in "churched cultures" like USA, New Zealand, Australia and Europe and counters arguments from sceptics who say it can only happen in Asia, India and Africa.
A challenging and unique component of the T4T process involves a three-thirds approach to discipleship training meetings: Looking Back, Looking Up, and Looking Ahead. I won't spoil the book for you by giving any more detail about this three-thirds process except to say that it makes a lot of sense. You might already use this structure informally or incidentally, but Smith shows why it works when it is intentionally incorporated into the DNA of a new church. As a friend of mine says: "people don't become disciples of Jesus by osmosis"; it is a result of intentional mission.
Smith uses the parable of the four soils to demonstrate the value of discipleship and gives account of Ying Kai's experience. He says, "trainers are the 30, 60 and 100-fold people of the four soils parable", but their experience is that 30 and 60-fold growth is more unusual; it is usually 100-fold! I love the story of the Asian farmer who was saved, then witnessed and discipled the new believers, and in the first year, started over 110 small groups.
Jesus tells us to look for people of peace, but we don't know how to identify those people without sowing the seed. Smith says, "In the old days of sailing when no wind was blowing, ships went nowhere. One thing sailors did in times of calm was to take every square inch of sailcloth and hang it from as many yardarms as possible. They could not make the wind blow, but they could be ready for the wind when it did blow. The Spirit of God is blowing throughout the world! He waits for us to align ourselves to move with Him." I love the story of the 14 year old who became a trainer (of disciples) and led entire villages to Jesus.
T4T is about intentionally growing a movement through discipleship. Why T4T? You'll have to read the book to answer that question ...!
T4T is published by WIGTake Resources, Monument, Colorado. I read the digital book version which I downloaded from Amazon. At the time of publishing this article, it was on Amazon.com.au for $10.42