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.
From Destination to Journey: Rediscovering the Gospel as a Way of Life
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?
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.
The Missing Step Between Bible Study and Disciple-Making
Most of us know how to discuss a passage of Scripture. We're far less practiced at obeying it — and by Thursday, the Sunday sermon has often faded into good intention. What would it look like if ordinary believers, in ordinary places, were expected not just to understand God's word together, but to act on it before they met again?
How Your City's History Should Shape Your Prayer Strategy (and Your Team!)
Every people group carries a spiritual history — and that history is still shaping how they see God, themselves, and whether they'll come near Him at all. Spiritual mapping is how you read that terrain before you engage it. It gives your prayer coordinates. And it often starts not with the people you're praying for, but with you.
What is Water? Breaking the Spirit of Divisiveness for City-Wide Impact
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?
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?
Three Questions That Change Everything For Urban Discipleship
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.
Stretched By God’s Vision? Simplicity Is The Key To Saturation In Our Cities
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.
The Gospel as a Mosaic, Not a Single Message
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”.
Just Start Conversations: Three Things I've Learned About Evangelism
Evangelism may seem intimidating. But it doesn’t have to be. What if we just need to start conversations instead?
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.
“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.
Called to Serve? 5 Secrets to Starting and Finishing Well in Mission
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.
Catch It. Live It.
As we wrestle with the complexity of cities, what insights can we gain from the early Christians? What about other significant movements throughout church history?
What's Your Mission Assignment? 17 Questions to Help You Discern
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.
Three Powerful Questions That Unlock Urban Mission
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.
True Fruitfulness : Beyond the Numbers Game
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?
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?