Urban DMM Research Report: Multiplication from the Margins

Multiplying disciples often begins not with the capable and connected, but among the broken and overlooked. The margins are not just a place to serve. They may be where everything starts.

Monoculture’s biggest advantage is high efficiency and scale. But did we know that it is also very fragile?

One practitioner discusses the insights to disciple-making that were hidden in a farming documentary and what happens when harvest workers embrace complexity.

Maybe making disciples isn’t that complicated? Maybe we’re already qualified?

A practitioner shares his story and what he concluded.

“Where do you go to church?” A simple, straightforward question for many Christians, but the assumptions it contains make it awkward for disciples whose ministry means that their community doesn’t fit the traditional mould.

One harvest worker shares how God shaped him through his wrestle with this question.

Cities scatter us. The communal heart of the Great Commission may feel out of reach. But what if the problem isn't commitment — it's that we're holding a fixed picture of what "going together" has to look like?

Four approaches from Asian cities suggest there may be more options than we think.

Most of us were invited to a destination. But the earliest followers of Jesus were called people of the Way.

What does it mean to recover a gospel that is less transaction and more way of life — and what does that demand of those of us asking others to follow?

A young man stranded in Kabul told the missionary who'd spent weeks with him: "I really like your Jesus, but I can't stand you."

That line has stayed with Marko for years — and it gets at a potentially uncomfortable reality. The lack of harvest in our cities may not be from a lack of care or vision. It may be because we never stopped to ask what we needed to become.

The water we swim in shapes us in ways we rarely notice. For those of us in Western Protestant traditions, that water is often individualism — and it runs deep enough to blind us to the New Testament's relentless emphasis on unity. What does it cost the cities we serve when the movements and churches within them remain scattered and competitive? And what becomes possible when they don't?

The same Spirit, working across wildly different cities. Practitioners from East Asia to Central Asia keep reporting the same patterns — brokenness opening doors, simple obedience producing fruit, youth moving without waiting for permission.

These aren't coincidences, and they aren't models to copy. They're fingerprints. What does it mean when God's methods look this consistent across such diverse contexts?

Most disciplemakers are wrestling with two hard questions: what stops people from engaging with those far from Jesus, and what stops discipleship from taking root?

But there's a third question that most practitioners never ask — and it transforms the other two. If discipleship can't replicate without you, you may have built dependence, not disciples.

The gap between God's vision for our cities and the reality in front of us is vast — and it refuses to close no matter how much we programme, engineer, or expertise our way toward it.

Sixty urban disciple-makers across Asian cities sat with that tension together, and what emerged wasn't a better strategy. It was a return to something far simpler — and far more reproducible.

Have you ever felt the pressure to pack the entire gospel into one coffee session? Let’s look more closely at the message that Jesus asked the disciples to share and how “showing” one bit at a time could be more powerful than “telling”.

We know that it doesn’t have to be all work and no joy. But how do we “get” or “find” joy? There is a reliable pathway. Join me on this journey… joy is just down the road.

The joy was drying up… there was a disconnect between what David and his team were living and what they were trying to sow.

They needed to take stock and recalibrate. What did they learn?

What are the things we can cultivate now that will serve and sustain us in the long race of life and ministry?

Our posture could be more important than what we do or where we go.

We’re surrounded by infinite possibilities to join in what God is doing. So what is that unique assignment that God has given us for this season?

Here are some questions that will give you greater clarity as you discern.

Our cities are huge. Where do we begin? 

Urban leaders in Asia are discovering the ability of powerful questions to open up fresh perspectives and possibilities.

What is the Bible talking about when it talks about fruitfulness?

Is it the same thing that WE are talking about? How did Jesus define it?