“And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. 6 But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

7 “And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. 9 Pray then like this:

“Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
10 Your kingdom come,
your will be done,
    on earth as it is in heaven.
11 Give us this day our daily bread,
12 and forgive us our debts,
    as we also have forgiven our debtors.
13 And lead us not into temptation,
    but deliver us from evil.

14 For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, 15 but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

Matthew 6:5-15

Exactly what is a Disciple-Making Movement (DMM)? Why pray for one? There are a few different definitions of DMM, but they all fall somewhere in the range of the definition I will quote here from Jerry Trousdale and Glen Sunshine’s book, The Kingdom Unleashed. “Disciple Making Movement (DMM): a process of disciples making disciples, and churches planting at least 100 churches, with four or more generations of replication.”

Why is DMM necessary? Because if we continue to do what we have always done, we will get the same or similar results. Those results are insufficient to complete the Great Commission, which is the command given to every disciple of Jesus, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. ” We haven’t been doing a great job of this with our traditional methods.

Ideally, every disciple of Jesus will be equipped to not only be a disciple worth replicating, but each disciple will be intentionally discipling people into Christ and on to maturity in him. Only when this is happening will every nation, tribe, tongue, and people be reached with the gospel. Our historical methods of adding new believers one by one have proved inadequate. We must grow by multiplication, not by addition.

The goal of DMM is the Kingdom of God. Therefore, the prayer, Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven, is a DMM prayer. The goal of DMM is not just more disciples, nor just more churches, but more, the kingdom of God.

Points of prayer for DMM

  1. Pray for more laborers both from the existing churches and from the harvest. These prayer laborers will be what I call prayer missionaries and people who engage people far from God with God’s word.
  2. Pray for immediate obedience to God’s word. A DMM is based on obedience to God’s word more so than gaining more knowledge. This is not to say more knowledge is bad, but it is to say that more obedience is ideal and more important than more knowledge with minimal obedience.
  3. Pray for the release of ordinary believers to become disciple-makers. The Western church is hand-cuffed with a theology that limits ministry to professional Christians. Only the ordained are allowed to preach, baptize, share the Lord’s supper, and train new believers. Ordinary believers should be equipped, empowered, and released to do all of the above. It is essential to a disciple-making movement.
  4. Pray for God’s love to be manifest in all the disciple-making activity and God’s glory to be the motivating force in everything we do.
  5. Pray for repentance. We who have lived our lives not focused on the kingdom of God must repent. Ask God to convict us of our sins that hinder the advancement of God’s kingdom in our neighborhoods, sins of commission, and sins of omission. John the baptist’s message must ring true to us, “Repent for the kingdom of God is at hand.”

I believe it is the Father’s heart that DMM takes place throughout the earth.

After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”

Revelation 7:9-10

God promises that a great multitude from every nation, all tribes and peoples, and languages will be around the throne of God in heaven, giving him praise and worship. That will happen because of DMMs through history. Presently, extraordinary DMMs are taking place around the earth in Southeast Asia, India, Africa, the Middle East, and even Iran. Here in the United States, DMMs are infantile, just barely underway. But they are underway. Some say, “It can’t happen here.” That is what they said about India before the first modern DMM began to sweep what was once known as the Graveyard of Modern Missions. Now there are millions of Jesus followers. They said this about Iran, now the fastest growing church in the world. It is a DMM church. A traditional church is illegal. Believers put their lives in God’s hands daily in Iran. Therefore, great care must be exercised when baptizing new believers. If it becomes widely known that a person has been baptized, they may not live long.

I beg you, take these requests for prayer for DMM into your prayer closet. One common characteristic of every DMM in the world is extraordinary prayer and fasting. Join with Jesus to pursue DMM in the United States by praying and fasting for such a movement. Pray for a DMM in your neighborhood. God is delighted in such prayers because they respond to his command to pray for laborers and because they are prayed toward the fulfillment of God’s heart to bring all of his children home.