Starfish Movement 1

Introduction

Biography

Dan Grider is the founding architect of IgniteDiscipleship.com. Dan is the co-author of the bestseller The God Questions (300,000 copies). He has authored 5 other books. In 1990 he planted his first Church in southern California called Daybreak. That church grew to over 1,500 in attendance and launched nine church plants and three campuses. The next five years were spent repositioning Beach Church in Myrtle Beach, SC to be a reproducing discipleship-making environment. That church grew to 2,000 in attendance. The past seven years the Ignite Network has launched over 100 churches in 14 states. Dan has trained and assisted over 700 churches to launch and begin a church planting movement.

Read opening story

How starfish reproduce

Coastal fishing village in Australia attempted to remedy a coral reef crisis

300 years prior to Constantine

decentralized nature

No central leader

Explosive growth

Jesus’ intent

Who did Jesus use to start His church (12 disciples)

What did they believe/know about Jesus?

How did Jesus use them initially to get people to follow Him?

“Jesus established the Church to be a Starfish Movement from the beginning. This season of growth saw a motley band of peasants reproduce until approximately half the known world had become Christ followers.”

Catalyst

Every Starfish Movement must have a catalyst

Catalysts can only grow into a movement when there is a reproducible process that is not dependent on one single person

Leadership bottlenecks occur when one person is essential to every decision and all forward movement.

Question: If I were to leave, die or get to where I could net effectively lead the church, what would happen?

Goal: There are enough people trained to take on the mission and vision of the church and run with it

Wednesdays will be partially used to get us from nothing happens unless one person acts to decentralized ministry

Note: What happened when the Sanhedrin and Roman Government

removed Jesus as the central leader?

Simple Church

Starfish are simple

Decentralized and simple churches can reproduce rapidly

Complex church culture usually cannot

Persecution is often a catalyst for church growth (China and book of Acts)

Elements that results in rapid discipleship multiplication

Starfish Movement Version One

ἐκκλησία

gathering together (Acts 19:32)

Israelites Hebrews 2:12

Christian Congregations 1 Cor. 11:18

Church in one place (city) 1 Corinthians 4:17

Need for directional leadership and decentralized leadership

Vision for NLB

Simple Church

Simple leadership structure

Simple discipleship program

Minimal ministry activities

Small groups (NLG) - lead the charge in ministry

Pipeline leadership

Clothing Closet as main church-wide ministry (do these three well)

Traditional Youth and Children’s ministry

Focus on personal evangelism and one-on-one discipleship