Urban Discipleship Articles

Practical, field-tested thinking and experience on discipleship, mission, and what it means to partner with God in the city. Written by practitioners from across the global learning community focussed on the unique challenges of the urban harvest field.



Leading & Serving, Discipleship & Outreach Michael Sherwin Leading & Serving, Discipleship & Outreach Michael Sherwin

Tables, Not Stages: Reaching a City Through the Few

A city of five million will never be reached by one leader being everywhere, however large or healthy his church becomes.

Bruce did the math and made an uncomfortable decision: give most of his time to twelve people nobody has heard of.

What if the way to reach the many is to become more deeply present to the few?

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Discipleship & Outreach C. Lee Discipleship & Outreach C. Lee

What a Kettlebell Class Taught Me About Making Disciples

The opportunity to connect with strangers conquered the writer’s unwillingness to join an exercise class.

What began as a Monday morning kettlebell class in one home became a space where some ladies found community, wholeness, and unexpected encounters with God — a rhythm that then followed its host across an ocean and took root again in a whole new city.

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Leading & Serving David Broodryk Leading & Serving David Broodryk

Fractals and Faith: Why Your Leadership DNA Matters

Humans build hierarchically — different rules for the street sweeper, the middle manager, the executive. But that's not how movements grow.

In nature and in the kingdom, the pattern repeats at every scale: the same rhythms of life for the newest disciple and the most seasoned leader. So which are we nurturing — a hierarchy, or a fractal?

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Discipleship & Outreach Younoussa Djao Discipleship & Outreach Younoussa Djao

I Thought This Wouldn't Work Here

A movement leader and catalyst confesses how he initially dismissed movement principles that he felt would not work in his context, and how God proved him wrong.

He then shares a key principle - how asking for help can open the door to disciple-making - and how Jesus’ choices at a well in Samaria reshaped how he approaches the harvest.

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What Can Happen When You Stay With One Person (even when you keep leaving)

We sometimes assume more ground covered means more fruit. But what if the pattern — the biblical pattern — is the opposite?

This is the story of one week in one village, one couple, and what grew from staying rather than moving on. Not a method. Not a programme. Just presence, Word, and Spirit — and then getting out of the way.

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The Urban Challenge Marko Pretorius The Urban Challenge Marko Pretorius

How to See What God Is Doing in Your City

You move into a city carrying a burden for the harvest — and almost immediately the scale overwhelms you. Where do you start?

Ecosystem mapping is one team's answer: a practice of drawing an honest circle around the relationships, spaces, and rhythms where God has currently given you influence, and asking what He is doing there.

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