How One Church Built a Disciple-Making Movement | Joey McLaughlin

0:00 Yeah, the first thing is that like I had to be able to answer the question, who am I discipling? And it needed to be names of people who were not just on my staff, right? That's good. And then I needed every person on my team to be able to answer the question, who are they discipling? And it needed to not just be their core volunteer ministry leaders who were pulling off kids ministry or worship ministry or production ministry, but what does it actually look like to make the core practice of your life sharing life with people in such a way that they're formed in the image of Jesus and then they can go and do with others what you've done with them?

0:38 Hey everybody, welcome back to the Disciple Makers Podcast. I am your host, Josh Howard, and I've got one of my incredibly good friends, Joey McLaughlin, here from Elevate City Church. Joey is actually in our book, The 7 Practices of Disciple Making, that Bobby Harrington and I, along with Mason Eagle, wrote. And your church is highlighted there as one of the 9 that we found that is actually full-on Level 5, which is awesome, dude. Like, and so congrats on that. Thanks, bud. And so what I'd love to do, man, honestly, for our listeners is really just unpack that. Like, unpack what it took as you guys planted Elevate City to actually build that culture, right? Because the reality is so many churches out there, we get emails all the time saying, hey, how do we actually

1:24 shift from where we're at to a true disciple-making culture. And man, I would love just to take the next 20, 30 minutes and just give some principles that you guys have used and even unpack some of your Equip practices as well and some of the pathways that you're using in order to really help our people just learn what it looks like to do that. Yeah, dude. But first, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself, man? Just family, background, all that good stuff so that our listeners can get to know you a little bit. Yeah, totally. From the Atlanta area originally.

1:57 Crazy family, broken home. My dad was super driven by success, wanted to build the tallest skyscraper in downtown Atlanta. It's kind of his ambition. Engineer. Is your dad Trump? Like, that is— yes, that is Daddy Trump. You call him Daddy Trump? I hope this makes the difference. We can cut that part. That's rich. Oh yeah, so that's my dad.

2:26 Papa. Papa. Yeah, so my dad is, he's an interesting guy, super driven. Today he's an airline pilot. But my parents got divorced young. So I grew up with a, I would say, a very dysfunctional vision of what love looks like. My mom was married multiple times, divorced. And so— You and I have a very similar story. Yeah, super similar story.

2:48 So really early on, I was probably desperate for like male influence in my life, for somebody to lead me, for somebody to show me what it looks like to be a man. A guy came along who like took interest in my life. He showed up at the student ministry that I was going to at the time. And he had like played college basketball and he like rapped his testimony because this is like— Oh, so he was like cool, cool. Yeah, I mean, at the time that was like hot, right? Like we're singing Waves of Mercy and he comes in and like raps his testimony.

3:17 I'm like enamored. And yeah, so this dude takes an interest in my life. And what I always say is he made John 10:10 come to life for me. John 10:10 says that the thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy. But Jesus says, I've come that you might have life and have it more abundantly. And I thought that I had to pick one or the other, that I was gonna follow Jesus into a life of boredom and morality, or I could follow the world and have a life full of joy and success.

3:38 And yeah, this guy just showed me like the convergence of those 2 ideas. And he didn't do anything systematic or mind-blowing, but he shared life with me, real life, and opened his home and showed up at my games and made following Jesus like so joyful. And yeah, that kind of set me on a trajectory. So I thought that I was going to go to an Ivy League school, play college basketball. I took an internship at a church the summer after my senior year of high school, and large church, about 10,000 people.

4:12 And at the end of that summer, they offered me a job. And because of my parents' divorce and life and all of that, I didn't grow up with a lot of money. So they offered me $27,000 and a parsonage. And I was like, I'm a millionaire. I'm in. I sign, you know. So this comes with a house? Yeah. Yeah. Ghetto house, if I can be honest, but a house nonetheless.

4:32 The Lord will provide. And, uh, awesome. So yeah, dude, I enrolled at Moody Bible out of Chicago, Illinois, pursuing biblical studies and theology. Um, worked on staff at a couple mega churches throughout the country. Um, church in Atlanta, church in Pennsylvania, back in Atlanta. And, uh, my wife and I were high school sweethearts. We've got 3 kids, uh, Raleigh, Haddon, Laney, 10, 6, 5. And we launched Elevate City on October 4th, 2020, right in the middle of the pandemic. So that's kind of— yeah, dude, that's awesome, dude. Well, I mean, honestly, it's, it's good that you share that because obviously you've had a passion for disciple-making for a long time. I mean, since the beginning of ministry. And it seems like that guy

5:13 that poured into you is kind of what lit that fire, right? Because he was— you may not have even known it at the time, but discipling you and walking with you and guiding you. And so it's cool to see that, you know, a lot of times the the passions and the fire that we have and the desires that we have in the future sometimes are actually ignited by one individual that is taking an interest. And so before we move on to some of the church corporate stuff, I mean, I just wanna encourage you guys. I mean, this guy had no idea what God's plans were for Joey, but saw something in him and began to pour his life into him. And what ends up happening now, 10, 20, 30 years later, is that God is radically using Joey at Elevate City and all

5:58 of their staff and church in order to actually see disciples made and multiplied. I mean, what an incredible impact that this guy had on your life and the trajectory that he put you on, that the Lord used him to put you on, right? And so anyway, be encouraged, guys, that sometimes we may not have a platform with hundreds of people. Sometimes we may not, but honestly, movements— One punk high school student. Yeah, dude, movements start with one person. Yeah, no doubt about it.

6:24 And so pick somebody, start pouring your life into them, and see what the Holy Spirit does. And so that's, yeah, just an encouragement and challenge. But let's, let's jump into Elevate City. So you guys started right in the middle of the pandemic. Yeah. From the beginning, did you have a desire to multiply disciples or did that come kind of later on as you worked through things? Like, what did that look like? Yeah, that's a great question. I would say, like, in theory, like, ambition, like our ambition would be to make disciples. If you ask us that, we would say that. But the truth is, the first 3 years of Elevate City was probably a masterclass on everything not to do when you plant a church, if I can be totally honest. That's great.

6:58 Don't start one during the middle of a global pandemic, maybe. But okay. Yeah, so the first 3 years, man, I think that we were using a lot of old methods, like attractional-based methods with— while trying to maybe make disciples at the same time. But it was get as many people to church on Sunday as we possibly can at all costs, do whatever we can week over week to make Sunday incrementally better, hoping that if we give a good enough product that the masses will come out and fall in love with my preaching or our style of worship or our unique branding. We're in Atlanta and outside of maybe Dallas, bro, it's like megachurch capital of the world.

7:37 And there's a lot of, you know, trying to brand or design or create your church experience that church people are gonna be attracted to. Right. So yeah, dude, I would say the first 3 years— Wait, are you trying to say that doesn't work? Is that what you're saying? I mean, maybe, maybe for people who are better preachers or have better branding or better worship than we do, I don't know. But it was a real, a really hard season of us, you know, just using those old attractional-based methods to try to get people to come to church. Yeah. So were you trying to build the biggest skyscraper in Atlanta at that point? Yeah, I was just following the steps of my dad. Yeah, right, right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, just the biggest,

8:16 the biggest and the best, right? That's it. Yeah, absolutely. That's it. Yeah, right. And then what shifted after those 3 years, dude? Yeah. So coming into 2023, getting close around that 2023 timeframe, there's an organization called Finish the Task that I think that they got put on my radar. And that idea started to like swirl in my mind that we're coming up on the 2,000-year anniversary of the Great Commission, right? Like if Jesus died in 33 AD, and then you're gonna flash forward 2,000 years, 2033, Whether or not it's historically accurate, I don't really care. It was this like cool conceptual idea of a rallying point around the 2,000-year anniversary of the Great Commission.

9:00 And I just started to evaluate like, what are we doing to actually make disciples, like true disciples in the way that Jesus made disciples to see the Great Commission fulfilled? And that started me down a road of like insane prayer and evaluation and book reading and looking at everything that we're doing and wondering if it's working.

9:19 Not just evaluating like numbers and metrics, but evaluating like true lasting fruit. And I just got really convicted by the moment that I was gonna stand before Jesus and he was gonna ask me about the disciples that I had personally made and that our church had made. And that started us on a journey of just re-envisioning things from the ground up and thinking more about spiritual formation, thinking more about multiplication, thinking more about movement, thinking less about the crowd, thinking less about the masses and more about doing ministry, Jesus's style of investing in the few, equipping the few to truly impact the many. And so we rebuilt a lot of what we did from the ground up. We stopped doing a lot

10:02 of things. We took some things that were maybe more on the peripheral and we made them more central. And we developed a true discipleship pathway. So a true process to not just get people involved in the life of the church, but to see people transformed into the image of Jesus in a way that then they could help other people become transformed. Let's pause there because that's— I think that's like, I don't want to gloss over that because the reality is, as we're talking here, right, like there's going to be people who, similar to you, that have an aspiration for this.

10:35 Like they feel a conviction, they feel a longing, but the only pathway they've ever seen is let's get as many people active, involved in the church as possible, right? So like every decision is where are you going to serve on Sunday mornings? Are you part of a small group? You know, like Which again, not that any of those are in and of themselves bad, but that pathway we've seen over and over again is not leading to actual disciples who multiply.

11:02 It's leading to good church people and it may lead to some good pieces of discipleship, but not the whole multiplication piece. And so can you unpack for us, like what does that practically look like when you said, you know what, rather than trying to get everybody involved in our church system, we're gonna actually shift to be disciples who make disciples? Yeah, like, what were some of those pieces or shifts that you guys saw that were just going to be massively important totally as you moved in that direction?

11:32 Yeah, the first thing is that, like, I had to be able to answer the question, who am I discipling? And it needed to be names of people who were not just on my staff, right? That's good. And then I needed every person on my team to be able to answer the question, who are they discipling? And it needed to not just be their core volunteer ministry leaders who were pulling off kids ministry or worship ministry or production ministry. But what does it actually look like to make the core practice of your life sharing life with people in such a way that they're formed in the image of Jesus, and then they can go and do with others what you've done with them? So I had to honestly sit down with my wife, sit down with my team, sit down with our elders, and like

12:05 take a fresh look at our schedule of what are we gonna take off the board? Because there's no way that you are going to actually do Jesus-style discipleship and continue to operate at the same pace that you are operating at. You're gonna have to say no to events and classes. Oh, tons of good stuff. Tons of good stuff. You're gonna have to kill some darlings, if you will, some things that you really, really— it's a writing phrase that kill your darlings, kill your darlings, kill your darlings. All these things that you think are so special and that are so unique and that are going to make it come to life, they're just, they're not core to what you're trying to do.

12:37 And so we had to kill a lot of darlings and get really serious first about the personal practice of disciple-making. And then second, we had to create a model that was simple enough to be repeatable, but robust enough to be impactful and unique enough to be adaptable. So can everybody do it? Does it actually change lives? And can it move from generation to generation, neighborhood to neighborhood, life stage to life stage? And so, yeah, man, we just went on the journey of honestly, as opposed to trying to flip the switch and change everything overnight, I'd really encourage you, don't just like overnight be like, we're going to become a disciple-making church because when you set your sails in this direction, I do

13:18 think that there's a moment for burning the ships. But it's going to require, like, you wanna know that this is what you wanna actually commit to, 'cause it is hard, brother. Like, I wake up a lot of mornings at 4:00 AM to go to discipleship meetings with guys, because that is the only time that I can make it work in the rhythm of American busyness chaos, when you're not just discipling people who you get paid to disciple.

13:41 Like, if I just disciple people on my staff, they get paid to work for me. I'm not discipling them, I'm leading them, you know? Yeah. Right. And I think that, yeah, I just, I got caught in the trap of leading the church but not being a part of the church, of focusing more on the organization than the multiplication of disciple makers. And yeah, so that shifted. We studied so many disciple-making pathways from antiquity throughout different movements. We learned a lot from you and things that you did in Ignite, Bobby Harrington.

14:09 I mean, dude, we just went on a journey. Ray VanderLaan was super influential in our understanding of first-century Jewish discipleship and what it looked like for, you know, a rabbi to have disciples, and then studying movements and multiplicative movements and Alan Hirsch. And so like, we spent years just taking the best practices that we could learn from those who've gone before us throughout the world and kind of, and throughout time and putting those ideas together to create this disciple-making ecosystem. So dude, that's like everything that you're saying. Let me pause and kind of talk directly to our listeners for a second to kind of pull a few things out of what he just said, and then we'll kind of unpack it a little bit. And so

14:52 number one, some of the stuff that Joey was just talking about, guys, are 2 of the main principles from the book, Seven Practices, which is, and these are the 2 main things I just heard you say. One is about convictional leadership. This is about us as leaders going first. Like it starts with the man in the mirror. Michael Jackson was right. Like it starts with us. And so we've gotta be men and women who actually live this out.

15:20 We can't just be preaching from the stage and talking about this without actually living it out. And so I love what you said, man. It started where Joey and his team said, okay, we've gotta name names, man. Like, we've gotta have people. I just heard a song recently that Josh sent me where the dude, I forget even the guy's name, but he sings this song that's like, show me your Pokédex.

15:42 And he talks about— What is a Pokédex? A Pokédex is from Pokémon and how you've caught different Pokémon. But his point is like, show me who you're discipling. Like that's our Pokédex as a leader. Anyway, so the point is like, are we, can we name names? Like are there people that aren't even on our staff that aren't paid to follow us, but actually that we're pouring into and giving our lives for?

16:07 And are we, do we believe enough in this that we're gonna lead from the front and see it happen? See, that's what Jesus did, guys, is he went first. Like he never asked his disciples to do something that he didn't first do. Do. And so when he says, hey, pick up your cross and follow me, he's got his cross and, and he's ready to lay down his life. He didn't say lay down your life for others without being willing to do it himself. He didn't say go out and cast out demons and heal the sick without showing them what that life looks like. And dude, I, I found myself in this so many times as a preacher where, dude, I'm preaching stuff with conviction and passion because the Holy Spirit is, you using that, but then when I actually look in the mirror,

16:50 I'm like, you know what? I'm kinda, you know how they say you're outpunching your weight class or you're outpunting your coverage? Like I'm outpreaching my obedience. And dude, that cannot be, like that can't be the type of leaders that we are. Dude, if we ever get to a point where we're consistently outpreaching our obedience, dude, something's gotta change. And so I love what you were saying, man, with just like, man, it started with you and your team.

17:17 And that's what convictional leadership looks like. It starts with the man and the woman in the mirror. Then secondly, Joey brought out that they had to have a simple, reproducible pathway that everybody could do. And man, so often what we found in the churches that we studied across the country is that so many of them that were not having true disciple-making culture, they ended up having like 4 or 5 pathways people could go down. And they've got this class here and this ministry here and this here. And what I love about Elevate City and every one of the 9 churches we found had one pathway that you went on. There weren't 10 options. It was, hey, this is how we make disciples. This is the path. If you're not on this path,

17:58 there's no other path. So this is how we do this. Like in first century, you know, Jesus-style disciple-making, if you wanted to be a disciple of Jesus, you followed him and that was the only way. Or if you were gonna be with Paul, you're gonna be with Paul and you're gonna go with him and that's the way. That's the path.

18:16 There weren't multiple options like that. And so right now, what does it look like, and can you as a church not only name people you're discipling, but can you in a simple, reproducible way explain your pathway to somebody and sit down with a new believer or a non-Christian or even a mature believer and say, here is your next step.

18:36 Here's what it looks like. Here's where you join. Here's the on-ramp, and this is what we're gonna do. And so, Joey, I'd love, man, for the next few minutes, let's just unpack that pathway. 'Cause I mean, I absolutely love Equip. That's what it's called, by the way. Their pathway is called Equip. When I visited Elevate City, I was so like pumped, which by the way, I've even got an Elevate City shirt on.

18:58 Repping it, come on now. Boom. It says on the back, what? Until the whole world hears. Boom. There you go. So with Equip, when I visited, I was so pumped impressed because every one of their volunteers and every one of their church staff, they've got lanyards on at church on Sunday morning, and literally on the back of their lanyard is their disciple-making pathway. Like, and so if anyone asks them a question, they can literally just flip around the lanyard and be like, hey, this— have you taken these steps? Where are you at in the journey? And let's help you take the next step. Yeah, absolutely. So it's, it's, it's so simple and easy. And so let's unpack, like, You guys did so much study. Totally.

19:38 For years, you said. What does that pathway look like, and can churches have access to it? What does that look like for them to learn from you guys? 'Cause, I mean, there's no reason to reinvent the wheel. If you guys are doing something that's working, well then let's, you know, open it up and see what other churches can learn from it. Yeah, most definitely. So I'll try to explain it as quick as I can at a high level, and then we can dig deep on whatever parts you want. So there are 3 words that shape the way that we think about forming disciples. Those words are know, follow, and lead. The only definition that the Bible gives for eternal life is in John 17:3, and this is eternal life, that they

20:13 know you, the one true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. We don't believe that eternal life is just the future destination of people who crown Jesus King. We believe that eternity is now in session and that it begins every moment that your understanding and revelation of who Jesus is deepens and that you experience gnosis, which is experiential relationship, an experiential knowing of Jesus in present relationship. And so The first step for any disciple is coming to know and then progressively knowing Jesus.

20:38 So we have 3 things that live in that, 3 things that we do to help make disciples. The first one is outreach, where we don't expect anybody to just come to us. Jesus did not just say, hey, come hear me preach at this place. No, Jesus left heaven and he came to earth. And so first and foremost, if you wanna make disciples, you've got to get everyone in your church to see their identity as a missionary.

20:59 And that's what, that's one of our first discipling principles is we are missionaries who are trying to go and reach other people. And that's a part of disciple-making. We want other people to come to know about Jesus, to know about what God's doing in the life of our church. So step number 1, outreach.

21:14 There's some shifts that we talk about at discipleship.org, and that shift, we call it from basically from come and see to go and tell. Totally got it. Like, hey, our doors are open on Sunday morning. Of course. Come and hang out, right? But that's not the heartbeat or the identity of our people. For sure. We want them to be like, hey, it's not just about inviting people to church. It's about us going out and actually representing him every day, Monday through Saturday. Right, and Sunday. Absolutely. What it looks like to be that.

21:38 Love that. Okay, what's next? So next is Sunday service plays a role in our discipleship. So there's always going to be that environment where people can increasingly come to know Jesus. And I think that this is important for you to name. Where does your Sunday gathering, if you've got that in your model, where does it fit in your discipleship of people and what is it for? Is it primarily for believers or unbelievers? Like, what is the function?

22:01 And so we've identified that our Sunday services are for equipping believers. The way that we talk about it, primarily is like Sunday gathering for us is like the halftime of a football game. So people who love the Lord are out there, you know, in the trenches of life trying to make disciples, proclaim the gospel, see the kingdom come near everywhere they go. And they come for Sabbath on Sunday to share stories, to celebrate baptism, to receive communion, to get a greater vision for who Jesus is, to bring their offering into His presence, to worship the living God, to let the presence of the living God fuel them to go back And so that's where it fits. It fits on helping believers come to more deeply know Jesus so that then

22:45 they can be missional disciples. Now, obviously, we know unbelievers are going to come to our services and we're aware of that, but we are very aware that it's first for believers and secondarily for unbelievers. And I think that if you read the New Testament epistles, it seems like Paul has that vision as well. Yeah, there you go. So then we have what's called Base Camp, which is like, this is the beginning of where people realize that, you know, we're maybe not a traditional church in the sense that most people in our culture context they've grown up with, that we want more for you than just coming to church on Sunday and maybe like being in a small group or a dinner club throughout the week. And so Basecamp happens following

23:21 all of our gatherings, and it's a 4-week journey. So when you come to the first week, it's like, hey, you're gonna be here 4 weeks. There's kind of 4 weeks of content, and this introduces you to the entire vision and DNA of our church, our core convictions, our theology. The discipleship pathway is the big one. And I'll be honest, the real design of Basecamp is just being able to build real relationship with people who might show up at the doors of— might show up at the gathering of your church beyond just like shaking their hand or like hoping that they respond to an email, you know? So this gets you relational proximity with these people and an opportunity to cast vision around discipleship.

23:57 So that's all in the know section, the things that we're doing to try to get people to know Jesus. We've got all these outreach initiatives, prayer walks, City Serve type events, wide gospel sowing. Like our team just goes out into the harvest to do spiritual surveys, helping people who don't know Jesus come to know Jesus.

24:14 Our Sunday gatherings are equipping our believers to live on mission everywhere that they go, falling more in love with Jesus, a progressive revelation of who he is. And then Base Camp is that like initial, like we want for you to know what Jesus has in store for your life, which is this idea of being a disciple. Who makes disciples. That's great, dude. And so then from there, we get into what's called Follow. So there are 9 steps, 3 big ideas, Know and then Follow. And Follow, the first step is what's called Equip.

24:38 And this is like the heartbeat, this sits at the heartbeat of so much of what we do. We want to give people from movemental— give people a vision for movemental thinking. Most Christians in the West have no idea about like multiplication. They only think addition. Can I bring a friend to church? Yeah, they that they could be used by God to form somebody into the image of Jesus, to see somebody cross from death to life, to baptize them into the kingdom, to give them the weapons of grace, and then push them out to go and do it with others. And there's no greater joy that we could give our people than to invite them into that, right? Like when somebody experiences life change for the first time, that like

25:15 when God uses them to transform somebody's life, it's addicting, man. Totally, bro. And life transformative, not just for the person that came to faith, but also the person that led them to faith. Bro, and we have seen that. This at our church. Like, when people go through this and then they lead others through this, and then they start to get a spiritual tree, they're like, this is insane. When they start baptizing people, it's just— it's really, really cool. So what Equip is, is it's a 20-week journey that's disguised as a 10-week journey. So you go through Equip, and it's 10 weeks that teaches you how to pray, read the Bible, and have gospel conversations. But the big thing, it's on every page, the mission is multiplication. The mission is multiplication.

25:51 So we teach you how to pray, read the Bible, and have gospel conversations in a way that you can teach others to do the So you don't actually finish Equip until you have led a group through Equip. So you go through it for 10 weeks. If you don't feel equipped to multiply, you go through Equip again until you multiply. And that's just— it's the secret sauce.

26:09 So for us, we've got 10+ strands of 10+ generations where someone led a group and then that group multiplied and then that group multiplied and then that group multiplied and then that group multiplied and then that group multiplied. And then it happened again and again and again and again and again. And this is the kind of movemental stuff that happens in India and in the underground church in China, but that you very rarely, rarely, almost never see in the West. It's, I mean, literally we have not so far, like when it comes to full-fledged movements, right? Like there's literally been one movement found in North America that is like the same rapid speed as maybe India or China or whatever. And so to see what

26:44 you're talking about, I mean, it's almost impossible to find in America. And so the fact that you guys are seeing so many generations over and over and over again, dude, Dude, it is, it blows my mind what God is doing. It's so awesome, dude. It's great. It's insane, dude. And the cool thing about Equip is it's done so many things, but it has led most of our baptisms, most of the people who get baptized at our church are baptized by their Equip leader. And most of the baptisms come from people who meet Jesus in Equip, 'cause they go through this and the first like 4 weeks is all about the gospel. And they're like, I don't know the gospel. I need to give my life to Jesus. And they become Christian. You learn how to share your story. And most people are like,

27:25 I don't have a story. And then they get a story because they have this encounter with Jesus. So produces baptisms. It takes people who think that they know spiritual disciplines. I think I know how to pray. I think I know how to read the Bible. I think I know how to share the gospel. Do you? Are you reading? Like, is your time in the secret place rich and consistent? Are you praying for people out like in the wild, in the harvest? And like, when's the last time you shared the gospel with somebody who does not know the good news of King Jesus and you got to see them crossed from death to life. We are going to give you the opportunity to do this. And then this story sharing component that's in Equip, it forges depth

27:59 of relationship, like in a way that you could be in a small group with somebody for 2 years and probably not feel the same depth of relationship as you would when you go through this Equip group. It's really, it's really, really powerful. So then you end up leading Equip. And so then after that, there are 2 kind of what I would say more traditional steps in our discipleship pathway.

28:19 After you've gone through Equip and led Equip, we want for you to take part in serving the life of the local church. Jesus did not come to serve, but— or did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. And one of the— he said, follow me and I will make you fishers of men. And then what do they do? They spend all this time picking up baskets of bread and serving people and organizing the crowds as they're learning how to be disciples. So we do think that service is a massive component of spiritual formation.

28:46 So we try to— we use something called It's a really, really cool tool developed by Allen Hirsch and his team. And it lets— so in Ephesians, Ephesians 4, Paul says, God has given us as a gift, as a grace, a grace gift, apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ. And it's interesting, the only part of the Bible where we get to see believers or the church reach full maturity, where it's no longer just leaders, but the church is starting to build itself up in love and fully mature everything God wants, is when apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, and teachers are all playing their part. So the way that we think about discipleship and service

29:34 is we really, really, really want you to know what your wiring is, what your gift set is, and then unleash you to play your unique part in the body. So that it's not just one guy using his gifts, but it's every person using their unique gift. And we try to do a lot of discipling people into the giftedness that God has for them to serve. Yeah, that's great, bro. And then finally in that follow section, we've got a small group culture where it's like house churches that meet throughout the week. They dialogue about the Sunday sermon. They're in these house churches for a year, and then those house churches multiply. It's probably, I'm just gonna be so honest, it's my least favorite thing that we do, but— Hey, you know.

30:11 We have found that in our context, in Metro Atlanta, there's such an expectation around connection and discipleship or connection in small groups and like people being able to meet friends and meet people, that it's a good incubator for us. It's a place that can be held where there is community and life together outside of the Sunday gathering, but it's not doing everything to form people into the image of Jesus. So we see it ends up being kind of like a holding place for people before they can get into the one thing that if I only did one thing with my life, this is the one thing that I would do, which is the next step. So we've got know, which is 3 steps, follow, which is 3 steps, and then lead. First step of that is what's called EquipX, and this is

30:49 a year-long spiritual formation journey that's designed to teach you to deeply know Jesus, passionately follow Jesus, consistently lead others to do the same. That's great. So in a normal model, it's 1 disciple maker, 3 disciples, you spend a year together, you meet every week. And you can't do EquipX unless you've gone through Equip and led Equip, right? So you can't like, so that 10-week or 20-week journey has to come prior to joining EquipX. Yeah, and let me tell you why, is because if I'm gonna invest a year of my life in 3 people but they've got no provenness to multiply, I'm really setting up the possibility of me wasting my life, of those guys not multiplying, going through the group, checking the box,

31:26 but then just going back to their normal lives after that. But if they've been through Equip and then they've actually multiplied Equip, there's some provenness. They also like, they're not coming as spiritual babies. They're coming in like knowing how to handle the Word a little bit. They're— they've got a clear understanding of what the gospel is. They know how to dialogue with the Lord.

31:43 They know their story. So, so that's really, really helpful. I mean, it's like a built-in filter, really. Exactly. Like you've got a filtering process throughout the whole pathway. Totally. Which is great. Yeah. Yep. So I love EquipX. It's what I've probably poured the last decade of my life into developing.

31:59 It's a very robust system that that once you go through, you get all of the tools that go with it to be able to have a simple, reproducible, robust model to disciple people the rest of their life. And it's so cool to think about, to be able to, like we cast vision for people of our church. So just tell me, how many disciples have you made so far? When you sit, you know, there's a lot of crickets. And okay, so I'm gonna give you a way where we're gonna walk together for a year, and then the year after that, you're gonna have 3. But then all those guys are gonna go and make disciples, and then you're gonna grab 3 more, and then all those guys are gonna, and then the next year you're gonna grab 3 more,

32:32 and then all those guys are gonna go. And like a year from now, you're gonna have discipled 30 people, but you are gonna actually be responsible for over a million people who got discipled, all connected up into your spiritual tree. Do you wanna like sign up for that? And people are like, what? Like, it's like mind-blowing to them.

32:49 So yeah, that's, and I could dig deeper on EquipX for sure. From there, we have like our membership, like our covenant kind of membership where people say that they're all in and they make a commitment to, And some people do this step out of order for sure, but they make a commitment to give sacrificially to the mission and vision of our church.

33:08 They've been baptized at this point. They commit to continue to serve and being in a discipling relationship, championing the overall vision of Elevate City. And then our like final one is that there's always a next step. And, you know, we've got a leadership development program for people who wanna go into vocational ministry. There's obviously mission trips. And all that kind of jazz. But built into this idea is you never, you never arrive, right? Like, we want to make it very clear from a vision perspective that the rest of our lives we are being discipled by the Holy Spirit, the great discipler, and being led into wherever he wants to lead us. Yeah, that's beautiful, man. That's our pathway. Know,

33:45 follow, lead. Dude, love it. So know Jesus with all that you got, right? Follow him, and then you're gonna lead others to do the same. Dude, love it. And honestly, guys, here's the cool thing. There are many pathways globally that people are using to see multiplication in places like India, China, Africa, things like that. The major issue has been when all you do is take a pathway or a model or a method and then bring it stateside into this culture and context and try to plug and play it, it usually doesn't work very well.

34:17 And so the cool thing is that Joey and his team have actually spent years developing and building this and actually putting it into practice. So now we have a culturally relevant tool that is a model and a method here in America that's actually leading to multiple generations of discipleship, which is hard to find.

34:35 And so if somebody would like to learn more, reach out, like, how do they get in touch with you about learning more about this pathway? Absolutely. I think you could email anyone on our team. Either Lewis or Thomas would probably be the 2 best people to email, but we are prepping to launch Equip Network in 2027.

34:53 So I would say stay tuned, but we have been working hard behind the scenes to get all of our resources together to be able to share them with the church at large. Lots of people started to reach out to us and wanting to learn more about how to implement that at our church. So we didn't know that God was going to do this. We didn't know that we were going to be in a position where we were going to try to serve other churches. And so Um, we've kind of been doing it, uh, just as the requests have come in, but we're, we're developing a system for any church who wants to transit— transition to being a disciple-making church for us to be able to walk that journey with them. That's awesome.

35:27 And what's your church website? Uh, elevatecc.church. Okay, awesome. elevatecc.church. Go check them out. You can find Thomas and Lewis's contact information there on that site if you want to email them. But guys, listen, here at the end, um, I just want to encourage you guys that Joey himself said those first 3, 4 years, I mean, it was more traditional methods and models. But then he went through a process of basically being committed to the mission that Jesus gave, pruning back everything else, and saying, what does this look like for us as a church to be laser-focused on making disciples who multiply? And honestly, guys, that is a major principle of movements across the world. Is a laser focus on the mission. Like, this mission

36:11 that Jesus gave has got to be first and foremost the priority of everything that we're doing. And if it doesn't lead to that, then it's— we've got to begin to prune back what other things are taking our time and energy to focus on the main mission Jesus gave. And here's the reality, guys. This isn't about choosing from between good and bad, right? Like, that's not usually the decision of a good Christian leader. A good Christian leader has to make a decision between good and best, and there's a lot of good stuff, the darlings that Joey talked about, that may have to be cut back so that we can become a true disciple-making people and a disciple-making culture.

36:49 And guys, those are hard decisions. It's not easy, but the fruit on the other side and the faithfulness to Jesus that's on the other side is incredible. And so I hope today, guys, that you've been challenged. I hope you've been convicted. I know I have. I mean, some of the stuff that you said, man, it is so inspiring in order to begin to just live this out more faithfully. And so if you guys need any help at all, reach out to Elevate City. You can also email us at discipleship.org. You can email me, josh@discipleship.org. We'd love to help you in any way that we can, uh, really develop disciple-making culture with you guys. And so Joey, thanks for being on, bro. So grateful for you.

37:29 Absolutely love what y'all building. Ah, no, we love you, bro. And, uh, guys, listen, until next time, let's go out there, let's live this out, let's be disciples who make disciples, and we'll see y'all next time.