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.
Praying and Mobilising Prayer for Your City — from Event to Posture
Mobilising prayer for a city can quietly become its own kind of performance — bigger gatherings, longer sessions — and still feel lifeless underneath.
This article shares four keys this team has found uncovered that keep prayer grounded and life-giving.
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.
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.
The Low-Hanging Goal: Cultivating a Culture of Mutual Blessing
Everyone loves the idea of unity, but the devil is often in the details.
Ryan suggests some ‘low hanging’ ways to move toward existing churches and harvest movements as teammates, each carrying a different part of the same assignment in our cities.
Perhaps living out unity can be simple.
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.
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.
Repenting on the Pavement: Finding a Mature Voice in Urban Mission
Can strong conviction become an obstacle to disciple-making movements? Might our tone and posture shut doors before relationships ever get a chance to open?
A practitioner reflects on his experiences in the urbanised west.
Losing The Fig Leaves - Leaning In To Relational Authenticity
Relational authenticity isn’t a performance. When leaders drop the fig leaves, something opens in community.
A practitioner reflects on what genuine honesty between generations actually builds.
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?
Feeding More With 5 Loaves and 2 Fishes: Urban Villages Can Help Your Team Focus
The urban harvest can seem overwhelming.
Where do we start? How do we offer our 2 fish and 5 loaves in a way that can have a meaningful impact on the brokenness and lostness we see in our cities?
Transparent Spirituality: Being Found By Kingdom Hunger
Engaging Urban Affinities - Part 8
Today we're going to dig a little deeper into a powerful concept - being found BY spiritual hunger. This dynamic can transform how we engage with our urban villages.
5 Questions to Ask as We Serve Hunger for Wholeness
Engaging Urban Affinities - Part 7
There are many ways to serve hunger for wholeness in an urban village. However, it's easy to create barriers to lasting spiritual fruit.
Here are five crucial questions for us to consider.
Finding Spiritual Hunger: The Art of Being Found
Engaging Urban Affinities - Part 6
In this article we will talk about looking for spiritual hunger in an urban village.
By “spiritual hunger” I mean a desire that relates specifically to spiritual life. It might be a desire to know God, to walk with Him more closely, to understand the Bible, to grow spiritually, or a desire for greater inner peace or self-control.
Finding Hunger for Wholeness in Your Urban Village
Engaging Urban Affinities - Part 5
So much in effective urban mission involves listening and discerning.
In this article, I'm going to zoom in on seeking out the hunger that He is stirring up within the affinity. How can we be confident there is hunger for God's Kingdom? What might that hunger look like?
Northern Lights: 9 Movement Lessons from a Finnish Network
"That might work in African or Asian villages, but it can't happen here."
Yet in Finland, one of Europe's most secular and individualistic nations, a different story is emerging.
Clues to Observing & Uncovering in Urban Villages
Engaging Urban Affinities - Part 4
In this series we're walking through a 4-step framework for engaging urban affinity groups.
This post continues “Step 2”. How do we discern how God is already at work in our urban villages? Observing and 'listening' are crucial steps before identifying how we might join Him and serve.
Urban Villages and Understanding Social Networks
Engaging Urban Affinities - Part 3
Identifying affinity groups helps us break the complexity of the city into bite-size chunks.
Understanding “Urban Villages” helps us take the next step in recognising the opportunities God has placed around us.
A Four-Step Framework for Engaging Urban Affinity Groups
Engaging Urban Affinities - Part 1
How do we practically engage affinity groups? Is there a reliable approach to engaging our cities with the Kingdom of God that is relational, natural and led by the Father rather than formulas or rules?