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.
How You Begin Shapes How You Continue - three ways discovery lays a strong foundation for discipleship
Discipleship pathways that rely on an expert often stall without one. This piece explores why a discovery-based start builds faith that replicates.
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.
Movement Is Not The Goal (but it might be the fruit)
If our goal is to produce a disciple-making movement, we are in trouble.
“Chasing the harvest” can quietly replace the people God actually gave us to love and to serve. This piece contemplates what is in the centre of what we do, why our goal is faithfulness, and movement is the fruit God sovereignly grows.
What Is Our Evangelism Inviting People Into?
The Pharisees were convinced that successful evangelism would result in people following their practices and rhythms. They were confused when they saw Jesus’ disciples doing something that looked different.
Jesus’ challenge to them should also challenge us. What does our evangelism invite people into?
The Question I Asked From A Grab Car
One Sunday morning taxi ride. A driver's simple question to migrant workers led to a year of discipleship.
What it reveals about trusting the Word to do the work, multiplication, and letting go.
How to Map the Spiritual Terrain of a People Group
Spiritual mapping helps build a picture of the spiritual terrain beneath a people group: the lies they believe, the wounds they carry, the patterns passing between generations.
When our prayer gets coordinates, we move from general intercession to strategic ground-taking.
A Cell Leader’s Journey - The Holy Discontent That Led Me Here
Years of faithful and fruitful cell leadership… and a long-running spiritual restlessness.
A cell leader reflects on how God used exposure to disciple-making movements to break her out of a 'maintenance paradigm' and into something new.
Where Multiplying Disciple-Making Actually Begins
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.
What Regenerative Farming Taught Me About Making Disciples
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.
You Have the Word. You Have the Holy Spirit. Go.
Maybe making disciples isn’t that complicated? Maybe we’re already qualified?
A practitioner shares his story and what he concluded.
When "Where Do You Go to Church?" Gets Complicated
“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.
4 Ways To “GO” Together In Cities
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.
The Fields Are Dead Because We Stopped Planting
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.
Field Notes From Asian Cities: Patterns in the Harvest
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?
Evaluate It
What else is left to do?
In the final article of this current series, David shares a critical step that sets up his team to keep learning and growing in effectiveness.
What If You Don't Need to Start Something New?
I need to tell you about something that shook me during our last gathering in our city.
What shook me was not someone sharing a revolutionary new strategy, but because I finally saw what was already there.
Coaching Keys to Developing Urban Leaders & Disciple-Makers
In the last blog we talked about adopting a coaching posture to empower urban mission. In this article we’ll dive into some practical ways our team is learning to do this.
“We Don't Want Your Baton”: Rethinking How We Release Workers & Leaders for Urban Mission
How can we best serve across contexts and between generations?
Here are three powerful principles that are catalytic and collaborative.