The Myth That’s Quietly Stalling Your Disciple-Making with Vick Green

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Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Vick Green, CEO of Replicate Ministries and co-author of Movement Ready Church. Replicate helps churches across denominations and sizes strengthen their disciple-making culture, clarify their vision, and mobilize people to make disciples where they live, work, and play.

Is your church busy but unsure whether people are actually being transformed? Do you have a clear pathway for discipleship but struggle to see multiplication happen outside your programs? Tune in as Vick challenges several common assumptions about disciple-making and offers practical ways to measure transformation, mobilize people, and create a culture where ministry extends beyond the walls of the church.

• Activity does not equal transformation. // One of the most common myths Vick sees is the belief that participation automatically produces spiritual growth. Attendance, serving, small groups, and classes are all easy to measure, but they only tell part of the story. A person can be highly engaged in church activity and still experience little personal transformation. Churches need to keep measuring participation while also asking whether people are actually becoming more like Jesus.
• Build a clearer scoreboard. // Vick compares church metrics to baseball. If you only measured hits, you would miss the point of the game: scoring runs. In the same way, churches can overvalue attendance and engagement because those numbers are easy to track. Vick encourages leaders to develop a transformation scoreboard that measures not only what people are doing but who they are becoming. Incomplete scoreboards tend to produce incomplete disciples.
• Define your dream disciple. // Every church should be able to describe the kind of disciple it hopes to develop. Vick calls this the “dream disciple.” Rather than relying only on pathway language that tells people what to do, churches should paint a vivid picture of what transformed lives look like. One church describes disciples as having a mind of truth, a voice of hope, a heart of compassion, hands of service, and feet of purpose. That language gives people something meaningful to pursue.
• Focus on what you want for people. // Churches can unintentionally communicate that they primarily want something from people: attendance, volunteering, giving, or participation. Vick challenges leaders to shift toward communicating what they want for people. A healthy discipleship strategy should help people become better spouses, parents, coworkers, neighbors, and followers of Jesus. When people understand why transformation matters, they become more motivated to engage with the pathway that supports it.
• Let your discipleship picture shape the culture. // A dream disciple should not live on a poster or disappear after a leadership retreat. It should show up in sermons, kids ministry, membership classes, assessments, volunteer training, and everyday language. Vick highlights churches that use their disciple profile to guide sermon planning, build personalized follow-up, equip parents, and help people identify specific areas where they want to grow.
• Help people name their kingdom circle. // Vick’s second major metric is whether people can identify the individuals God has placed within their sphere of influence. Every person has a “kingdom circle”—neighbors, coworkers, friends, and family members where they can bring the kingdom of God. The goal is not simply deeper program engagement but helping people take ownership of disciple-making in ordinary life.
• Equip people for ministry outside the church. // Vick shares the story of a man named Austin who began gathering non-Christian neighbors around a backyard firepit. The church provided simple questions, encouragement, and resources, but Austin led the ministry himself. Eventually those men began attending church, growing in faith, and multiplying into further discipleship relationships. The church’s role was not to replace Austin’s influence but to equip and support him in using it.
• Clarify leadership and partnership. // To measure ministry beyond church programs, leaders need clarity around three questions: What do we consider a disciple-making leader? How will we equip them? And how will we partner with them? Without shared definitions and a unified approach, every ministry ends up operating differently. Clear expectations make it easier for people to take responsibility for disciple-making in their own context.
• Challenge the myths beneath your ministry. // Replicate’s Ministry Myths resource helps churches identify faulty beliefs that quietly shape behavior. These myths can create a gap between good intentions and actual impact. By naming assumptions like the engagement myth, teams can begin honest conversations about why multiplication is not happening and what needs to change. Download the free resource Ministry Myths: The 5 Assumptions that Stall Disciple-Making Movements here.

Learn more about Vick Green and Replicate by visiting replicate.org. You can also explore the book Movement Ready Church and additional free resources at movementreadychurch.com.

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Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: TouchPoint

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Episode Transcript

Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary Podcast. Super excited for you today because you’re going to get front seat with a leader who interacts with literally hundreds, maybe thousands of churches across the country every single year. And we’re going to take advantage of the fact that we got an expert on the line today and try to peel back and help you in an area in your church, which I think will help accelerate your mission as we round out here in 2026 and look into 2027.

Rich Birch — Excited to have Vick Green with us. He is the CEO of Replicate Ministry, where he leads a team of coaches and consultants who work with churches every year all across the country in their particular, their disciple-making vision and strategy.

Rich Birch — Before Replicate, he served on staff at a fantastic church, Long Hollow Church in Hendersonville and The Chapel in Baton Rouge. He holds, if I’ve got all the numbers and letters correct, an MDiv from New Orleans Baptist and lives in the Nashville area with his wife, Sophie, and their three kids.

Rich Birch — He’s the co-author of a great new book that I want to expose you to with Robby, who’s been on the podcast before called Movement Ready Church. Welcome to the podcast, Vick. Glad you’re here.

Vick Green — Dude, thanks so much for having me. And what an intro, man. Down to my seminary degree. Wow. Like, that’s impressive. And.

Rich Birch — People like that, you know, people like those things. So you’re an expert.

Vick Green — There you go.

Rich Birch — I just play one on the internet, but you’re like an actual expert.

Vick Green — Hey, I appreciate it, Richie. I’ve been following the unSeminary Podcast since those Chapel days, like early on, trying to figure things out. And your podcasts, your books have been a gift. So fun to be on this side of the conversation with you.

Rich Birch — I’m honored that that you would do this and really looking forward to expose what you do at Replicate and particularly this book and the kind of the work around that to folks. But why don’t you tell us about Replicate. For folks that are unaware, kind of talk to us about the kinds of churches that you’re interacting with week in, week out.

Vick Green — Yeah, so Replicate was started in 2008 by Robby Gallaty. And so Replicate exists to help churches activate their unique disciple-making movement. And so since 2008, we’ve had a burden to see ministry get beyond the walls of the church, beyond the church’s programming. How do we see every person in our church to see themselves as a disciple-maker? And what does it look like to see ministry happening through our people as they make disciples? where they live, work, and play. And so that’s really been our passion since ’08. I joined in 2020. Replicate helped me down in Baton Rouge. I joined in 2020 and we get to work with churches across all denominations, all church sizes in helping them with their culture, vision, and strategy around disciple-making. I think to date, I think we’re over 4,000 now. I think actually closer to 4,500 churches that we’ve trained in that span.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Vick Green — And so, yeah, every year we’re getting to see around 700, 800 churches a year at this point that we get to work with and and help kind of further the mission of what they do. And so it’s a blast. I spend each week somewhere with a church. I’m heading to Chicago today and we’ll be somewhere next next week, but get to see a lot of different contexts and be with a lot of great leaders.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s really the heart of why I wanted to have you on, to take advantage of the fact that you interact with so many churches, and have a really unique vantage point seeing so many churches and um I’d love to try to draw out some of those learnings for our listeners that are pulling in today.

Rich Birch — When someone gives you a call for the first time, they pick up the phone, they say, okay, we got a problem and I need the folks at Replicate to help us. What do they say? Like, hey, here’s the thing that’s gone wrong. Here’s the thing, the pain that they feel. Help us understand that.

Vick Green — Yeah, often whenever churches are reaching out to us, they want help with disciple-making, they want help with multiplication. You know, we hear that in a lot of ways. And that multiplication takes a couple of different expressions. Sometimes it’s, man, we need better discipleship. Sometimes it’s we need more leadership development, our leadership pipeline. Sometimes it we need ministry outside the walls of the church happening. All of that is usually what is starting the conversation.

Vick Green — What is often holding them back, that problem is they don’t know how to help the light bulb go off for their people. There’s this disconnect. The staff wants their people to be to really embrace this disciple-making lifestyle, to be out in the community, doing ministry and sharing their faith and helping others, but they can’t quite figure out how to get it to their people.

Vick Green — And so there’s this gap that they consistently feel. And so typically we’re trying to figure out, okay, why are we not seeing that multiplication, that disciple-making culture? And then ah we’re identifying what is what are those things holding back the culture?

Vick Green — And so one of those two that just kind of typically always comes up, most of them most of our leaders, they have a vision for multiplication, but they don’t necessarily know how to measure it. They don’t know how to measure disciple-making or are we developing the right disciples? And then they don’t necessarily know how to get ministries and lead in a way that their people actually will start living it outside of the walls of the church.

Vick Green — And so those are two of the typical tensions that people are feeling. And what they’re looking for is that multiplication and mobilization.

Rich Birch — Well, when I hear you say, you know there’s this idea that like, hey, we we want the light bulb to go off in our people. We really want them to. Um, you know, want to engage in this, but we’re feeling a certain amount of frustration. To me, that feels like there’s an assumption or there’s some underlying assumptions that you must run across…

Vick Green — Yeah.

Rich Birch — …that you see inside of us as church leaders that that it’s kind of holding us back or holding back our leadership. What are some of those assumptions that you keep running across that are in our heads…

Vick Green — Yeah.

Rich Birch — …as church leaders that are holding our people back or potentially holding our churches back?

Vick Green — Yeah, we actually, we talk about it from the idea of myths. Do you remember the show Mythbusters growing up?

Rich Birch — Oh yeah. I love that show. That was fun.

Vick Green — Loved that show. We have so much fun on that. And so we will riff off that idea of Mythbusters. And one of the myths that we see the most in churches. This is the number one is something that we call the engagement myth.

Rich Birch — Okay.

Vick Green — And it’s the belief that activity equals transformation. It’s the belief that activity equals transformation. And so the reason that we really figured this out or we kind of stumbled across it, we jokingly say like, the we’ve paid the dumb tax for you. Like after doing this for 18 years and most of our coaches are pastors in the trenches right now. And so a lot of times what we’re working with through are stuff that we figured out the hard way.

Vick Green — And the way that we figured this out is we actually had a guy in our church—his name was Scotty. And Scotty is the most active person in our church. He was coming to worship service. He’s coming to small groups. he’s coming he’s volunteering on Sundays. He’s listened to every podcast of Robby’s. He is, I mean, he’s coming to the prayer gathering. That’s how you know he’s committed.

Vick Green — And so, all metrics that we’re measuring, he’s at the top. Like, if you want to put out our database, he he is number one, Scotty. But here’s the problem. When Scotty introduces himself, he introduces himself and he says, Hi, my name’s Scotty. And I’m an atheist.

Rich Birch — Interesting.

Vick Green — The number one most active person in our church is an atheist.

Rich Birch — Right.

Vick Green — And I think on one side, I love that he feels safe enough to explore his faith in our community is that is welcoming.

Rich Birch — Right.

Vick Green — That’s fantastic. And if that is our metric for maturity and an atheist is at the top, we have a problem.

Vick Green — And it exposed this gap for us that program activity is not the same as personal transformation.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Vick Green — And I think that right there is the number one…angst that I see leaders feel. Every leader, when I, as soon as I say, activity equals transformation, they say. Yes. But then when I asked them, okay, now tell me. What is the picture of a disciple that you’re developing? What’s that picture of transformation?

Vick Green — They can’t say it back.

Rich Birch — Right. We can’t articulate those two things.

Rich Birch — Well, and I’m having a hard time. Yeah. It’s like one of those, I had that same, exactly the same feeling inside of me when we started talking about that. I was like, yeah, that is true. But I’m like, okay, so if we aren’t measuring, because a part of what got my attention early is like, hey, we want to measure things. We want to have good metrics.

Vick Green — Yeah.

Rich Birch — And activity is very measurable. Someone either walked into the room or they didn’t, they joined the class or they didn’t.

Vick Green — That’s right.

Rich Birch — They registered and then so and then actually showed up. All of those things are the kinds of things that we can we can measure. But talk me through how do we how should we be thinking about this myth? How should we be thinking differently, if we really actually want to measure transformation or push towards transformation, really?

Vick Green — Yeah, and and the thing about it is activity and measuring that, it’s not bad. It’s just incomplete. it’s only telling you half the picture. And so to give you that idea here is like, Think about baseball for a second. If you play, what if you measured who won the game by who got the most hits?

Vick Green — Okay. There’s plenty of times where hits does lead to runs and there’s a correlation. But there’s also plenty of times where it doesn’t.

Rich Birch — Right.

Vick Green — And a team with the most hits loses the game. But here’s the bigger picture. How much does that change the game for those that are playing?

Vick Green — If hits is all you measure, a home run has no value. You would never run past first base. That right there is the impact that happens if all we measure is activity. And so it shapes how people interact with you. And because here’s the big idea is your people play where the scoreboard is the clearest.

Rich Birch — Yeah. True True.

Vick Green — And so if our scoreboard is all about activity at best, it’s an uninspiring invitation. I would say at worst, it promotes a work-based theology.

Rich Birch — Oh wow.

Vick Green — And I think that’s what’s at risk here.

Rich Birch — Right. That’s good.

Vick Green — And so ultimately, incomplete scoreboards create incomplete disciples.

Vick Green — And so we just have to look and say, okay, we let’s not stop measuring activity. Now, let’s but let’s also measure something else. Let’s make sure our transformation scoreboard is as clear as our activity scoreboard.

Rich Birch — Okay, that’s good. I like that. And I i think that’s vivid you know the the hits versus ah you know runs is a great example. Yeah, you know, and that I can see actually in our church world, how and there’s metrics I know that are incomplete, but you’re like, okay, but we use, it’s at least measurable. So we put it down on a piece of paper.

Vick Green — Yeah.

Rich Birch — So what should we be measuring then? What should we be paying attention to to help us get a better handle on this.

Vick Green — Yeah, I’ll give you two metrics and we’ll tackle the first one and however much time we have for the second, we’ll tackle the second.

Vick Green — The first one that I would that you need to measure is what is your, we call it a dream disciple. And that’s more a term from us to the church. The church tweaks that and adjusts that into their language.

Vick Green — But tell me the picture of the disciples that you’re developing. And then how can we build our metrics of success off of those traits?

Vick Green — And so this looks different because ultimately we’re not looking for activity. We’re looking for life change here. And so… What we’ll do, I’ll give you I’ll give you a a story and and of somebody who created one and how they now use it.

Rich Birch — Okay.

Vick Green — And so we’re working with a friend of mine. You may know Chris Vaught. I don’t know if you know Chris Vaught.

Rich Birch — Oh yeah, yeah.

Vick Green — And so, yeah, he’s with Connection Point. And so they’re one of like and they’re an outreach church, had an unbelievable success… But whenever he called and reached out, he said, man, we’re growing super fast. But I don’t think we’re making disciples. And so we had to really go in there and say, man, what does that look like?

Vick Green — We developed with this team their dream disciple. And I love in it because again if if people are listening just in audio, you won’t see this, but you can easily imagine it. They call their disciple, they say that they have a mind of truth. They have a voice of hope, a heart of compassion, hands of service, and feet of purpose.

Rich Birch — I love it.

Vick Green — And so it’s like head, shoulders, knees, and toes right now. Like you know, and so you’re you’re doing it, you can’t help but but but do it.

Vick Green — But they got five roles that they want their people to live into. And then they built assessments and metrics and things around each of those roles. But then come back to the idea of how do we make the scoreboard clearer that, you know, they are sharing more about the roles of their disciple than their pathway. Because their pathway just says what you want someone to do. This tells you who you want them to become.

Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.

Vick Green — And that that piece there are so often, and here’s how you know you have this problem is a lot of times with pathway language, it’s all verbs. And you just tell me what you want me to do.

Rich Birch — Do this, do this, do this.

Vick Green — And… and exactly. And but your dream disciple is using nouns, adjectives, adverbs. It’s painting a picture of transformation.

Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good.

Vick Green — And here’s the reminder that none of us need, but I’ll give it anyways, no one joins your church for a busier calendar.

Rich Birch — True.

Vick Green — Like nobody’s joining it to go to the net these four programs for the program’s sake. They’re joining it to become a better people.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Vick Green — And so what they did is they they got a picture of that for their people, but not just that, down to their kids’ ministry. That tactile thing, I mean, it is a dance that they do for all their kids. It was in VBS. The other piece, it’s a blessing that they pray over a kid during in child dedication, during a baby…

Rich Birch — Oh wow.

Vick Green — …and then equip parents to pray it over their kids every night.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Vick Green — Now think of that. compounding effect from zero years old, all the way to the oldest person in your congregation. You’ve given this vision and this language that is is directing people’s attention. And then they built in assessments to measure: How well are we becoming this type of person?

Rich Birch — I love that. And I think that’s such a key insight I think you just rolled out there that I want to double click and underline and highlight for folks that.

Vick Green — Yeah.

Rich Birch — Too many times, I think our pathways, our discipleship stuff is, or any really anything in our church, but we’re talking about discipleship specifically today, is us-centric rather than our people-centric. It’s all about, hey, will you jump through these hoops, which like you said earlier, is there’s a real danger there that it can be, could even be like a you didn’t say this, I said it, like an abusive kind of thing. Like, hey, you got to check this stuff off. It can lean to, yeah, in the wrong way, as opposed to, hey, how do we make this about you? Which I think that’s a key insight. You gave a good, vivid example there with Chris’s church.

Rich Birch — When a church works with you and helps narrow down, define—I love the crystallization of the movements, all of that—

Vick Green — Yeah.

Rich Birch — Where does this start showing up? Their dream disciple? What are some other areas that you start seeing? Or maybe you do you have some recommended like, hey, here are the ways to start talking about it because I’ll give you this this my my skepticism…

Vick Green — Yeah.

Rich Birch — …although I’m not really a skeptic person, is I wonder if this work is is like the we went away to the vision retreat, came up with a new vision, put it on the wall. How do we ensure it doesn’t become that, but it actually gets worked through our culture? What are some of the places that you see the dream disciple really showing up…

Vick Green — Yeah.

Rich Birch — …in interactions in the church?

Vick Green — Yeah, and I’ll connect too to that last piece that you just said as I share it. Like because I think that is huge, what you just mentioned, Rich, is that I think so often we don’t mean to. But we don’t realize that we communicate a message that says we want something from you. And so we share our mission statement. Here’s who we are. Then we share our pathway, which says, here’s how you get involved. So here’s who we are and do these four things to help us. And we miss the opportunity to say, hey, here’s what we want for you, not from you.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Vick Green — When you step in and you’re a part of us, here is who how we’re going to help you be a better spouse, a better parent, better coworker. So much of this, what it does is it helps the church move from a vision that is from people to for people. And so with that in mind, what I’m always pushing our churches to is your pathway lives in your new membership class or in your Discover class. And so because at that point, they have decided, hey, I I want to i want to be a part of this. How? Your pathway tells them how.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Vick Green — Your dream discipleship is telling them why it matters. And so people don’t join your church for how, they join it for a why. So…

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Vick Green — I’m encouraging them that dream disciple, like, I don’t I’m not worried about the lead pastor communicating their pathway. Like I’m worried about, tell me why your pathway matters, tells me who you want your people to become.

Vick Green — And so where that where that shows up is you will see it visibly shown in places. You’re going to, like, I would rather that in your bumper reels in the beginning. I’d rather that in on the walls. I would rather that in your resourcing to it.

Vick Green — And then beyond that, just talking about some fun ways where you actually like move this beyond just cute language, you know, like, I mean, the language is great, but if it just lives on the walls, then like. I mean no one no one is is wanting something that just makes the walls add more language. We want something that’s actually shaping our culture.

Vick Green — So another great example of how I’ve seen this done is my friends at New Beginnings do it really well. And they’ll go and they’ll preach this sermon series. And then they will ask at the end of it, they’ll say, hey, which of these roles are you doing best in, which do you need to most grow in?

Vick Green — Just, hey, real quick, give us 60 seconds. What do you need to grow in in the days ahead?

Vick Green — But here’s what they do with it. Now they have thousands of people telling them, here’s where I’m at. Here’s where I need to grow. First off, that data alone, how much that shapes their sermon series. They’re resourcing because now they’re seeing our people are doing well at this role that deals with reading their Bible, but they’re doing really poor at sharing their faith.

Vick Green — Okay, we need to we need to lean into this role in how we preach. But here’s the other thing that they do. They put in personalized drip campaigns based off your responses.

Rich Birch — Oh, that’s great.

Vick Green — So if you look, again, just using a Connection Point, let’s say they say A Voice of Hope is their lowest. Okay, that’s that’s their evangelism idea. So now they’re going to follow up with emails of like, hey, here’s a couple of books we really like. Hey, we have a new class that we start in two weeks around evangelism. You said you wanted to grow in this. We would love to help.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Vick Green — That language is so targeted, but it also, I want something for you, not, hey, I want you to sign up for one of our classes. And so that’s some of the practical ways that people take this and actually get it moving.

Rich Birch — That’s good. I love that as so I’m a full-time coach now. And one of the things that’s been a little bit shocker, I probably shouldn’t because I’ve been in ministry a long time, is how much people are not willing to change and to and and unless they clearly see the why, and unless they’re ready for it, like unless they come to the place of saying, hey ah this is an area I want to grow in.

Rich Birch — And so even I love that of like, hey what if you’ve got five different areas in this, which of these five do you want to grow in? Rather than saying, hey here’s you should grow one of these.

Vick Green — That’s right.

Rich Birch — I think we’ll set people up in a way better spot to then be open to conversation around that area rather than us being prescriptive. That’s so good.

Vick Green — And I would I would add too to that idea of of how to get people to change, like in that paradigm piece to it is every, ever you know, you and I have been to many of these conferences. The idea of define your disciple, get a disciple definition is like all over the place.

Rich Birch — Right.

Vick Green — I think that’s a good starting line. I just think it’s a poor finish line. Because the definition aims at the head. I think your dream is how it needs to aim at the heart.

Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.

Vick Green — It needs to paint a picture for people. And so like a great example, you can feel the difference in this statement. Like I was working with Harvest Bible in Chicago and they were and we were looking at their roles and they picked up on this agrarian Psalms 1 imagery. But what they said, we want our disciples to be uniquely planted, deeply rooted, carefully pruned, and persistently fruitful.

Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.

Vick Green — That’s right. Everybody does, but you can feel when it hits at the heart level.

Rich Birch — Right. Right.

Vick Green — And I think at the end of the day, that is ultimately where so much of the change is needed for our people. And you know Jesus didn’t just give us a different way. He showed us how that different way was a better way.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Vick Green — And you need to paint that picture that people look and say, I need that in my life. And so I think you’re, don’t stop at the definition level. Paint the picture that your people look and say, I want that in my life.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. I love it. So you had mentioned there is a second area. We could cover that even just quickly…

Vick Green — Sure.

Rich Birch — …just to kind of give it ah some context. What was the second area that you think we should be thinking about?

Vick Green — So if that’s the other metric, if dream disciple is one of those, the second is—and this is, again, kind of our term, but it’s it’s easy to connect on—is this idea of every person needs to be able to name and reach their kingdom circle.

Rich Birch — Okay.

Vick Green — And here’s the idea is that every person in your church has a circle of influence that they’re called to bring the kingdom of God into. And you can call that whatever you want and and find what fits your culture. I’ve named it several different things at this point. But it’s just this idea that often, you know, before before covid—we’ll just kind of use covid it that was such a defining mark—before covid, whenever churches were working on strategy, though they wouldn’t say it, their end goal was often to just get deeper program engagement. And so, okay, let’s get them further engaged in what we’re doing and giving us more hours of their time.

Vick Green — But here’s the problem is like program engagement is is really important. But it’s a byproduct, not the purpose. That’s again, that engagement myth slipping in there. It’s like, it’s good. It’s important. Let’s measure it. But what we realized is that covid was a nationwide disciple-making test. And by and large, the local church failed.

Vick Green — And and and we were part of that where we looked in the people who were in our church who were always in who were in the church building every time we opened it. The moment they couldn’t get to the church building. They didn’t know what to do with their faith. Their faith crumbled in it. And and and and what it began to show us, it asked one big question: if we took away the church’s programming, would the people own the mission?

Vick Green — And our people had yet to get to a place where they had owned what it meant for their faith and to be a disciple-maker. And we see it still. Like, I can’t tell you how many times I start working with churches and we start them through a through one of our discipleship group ministries. And people come back and they say, our our deacons, our elders, our key leaders. I can’t believe how few of them had a consistent time in the word.

Vick Green — And so all I say all that to say this is we’ve we’ve changed now post COVID to say, hey, program engagement is a byproduct, but the end goal? It has to be, are they are they a disciple-maker? Are they investing in others now? And so that’s that idea of, in your life, in your circle of influence, whether that’s in the church. But maybe it’s in your workplace. Maybe it’s in your neighborhood. Who are you bringing the kingdom of God to? And that may be more evangelistic, may be more discipleship focused. But that right there is that second metric. I want to know how many disciple-makers are actively investing in others in your church.

Vick Green — And if we can’t get really clear on how we measure that, we need to recalibrate. And it’s ultimately that right there is filling out that scoreboard. We’re still measuring activity, but now we know are they living this lifestyle and where are they actively investing in someone right now

Rich Birch — Yeah. How so I think that’s like that’s a super noble idea. I love it.

Vick Green — Yeah.

Rich Birch — I understand what you’re talking about, I think, if if I’m grasping it correctly.

Vick Green — Yeah. Sure.

Rich Birch — But a part of what you’re trying to do there is measure, by definition, things that are outside of the building or outside of the program that you’re you’re doing, I feel like we have a hard time understanding what’s happening even inside our buildings or inside our programs. So how do you help a church? How did how do we get our handle on ow many of these sidebar…I’ll give you an example.

Vick Green — Sure.

Rich Birch — I was talking to my brother-in-law—he attends our church—and he was talking to and a guy who also attends our church. And they had like a great engagement around prayer. Aand there was like this really cool outcome that had um you know that, but it really, none of this interaction had really anything to do with the church. It wasn’t in our in our programs. It all sidebar to what we’re doing.

Rich Birch — How do we try to get our handle on those these things that are outside of our buildings, outside of our programs to measure them to say, hey, this is is this actually having an impact or not?

Vick Green — Yeah, I think first off is what do we consider to be, in this instance, a kingdom circle? Or what do we consider to be a disciple-making leader?

Rich Birch — Good.

Vick Green — What we often find is that when we get to leadership, it’s usually fuzzy. Every ministry area has their own definition of it. We measure it differently. Okay, what if it’s outside of the walls versus inside? So first off, it’s just getting clear on what do we consider to be a leader?

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Vick Green — Then, what is our plan to equip them? And then what is our plan to partner with them? So you got to have those three things. And what is the leader? How do we equip them? How do we partner? Most of the time, there’s not a unified approach in those three instances.

Vick Green — And so what we’re doing with churches is, hey, we have a kingdom circle training that they can they can use and they can go through that helps them create a personalized disciple-making plan. And it and it lets them say, based off of what I feel like God’s calling me to, the people in my life, here’s who I’m investing in. Here’s how I’m going to do it. And then those churches saying, great. Here are here are different resources that you can use to do that.

Rich Birch — Okay.

Vick Green — And here’s how we’re going to walk with you. And so just to give like a practical visualization of that. It was actually one of the guys that I had our discipleship group, which again, our Replicate has its model. It’s like a three to five, gender specific, you meet for a season and then you multiply out. I’m trying to like get Austin out of the out of the nest, if you want to think about it that way. It’s time for you to go invest in someone else.

Vick Green — Okay, here’s the thing that you need to know about Austin. I jokingly say this, but you didn’t know Fred Flintstone still exists? But like, it’s Austin. Like I came from Louisiana dude. I didn’t even know quarries were like still alive and well.

Rich Birch — A thing, yeah.

Vick Green — Yeah, like I was like, oh wow. This dude is a fourth generation quarry worker.

Rich Birch — Okay.

Vick Green — And we start working together and I’m like encouraging him on, hey, you need to step out and start a D group. And he he every time said, I don’t know, I don’t know. Finally, I just said, hey. Who in your life could you invest in? And we always do our D group around a fire pit. And so as we were around the fire pit, he goes, you know, I don’t have any of other believers in my life. But the people in my life that don’t know Jesus don’t have this. They don’t have a fire pit.

Vick Green — And so he then starts to identify people in the neighborhood, and men who don’t go to church that are in our neighborhood. And he just, he has them over and he’s he around the firepit. He said, guys, we’re going to gather here every Wednesday night talk to talk about, um he just said, we’re going to talk about life and dude stuff. Like, that was his pitch.

Rich Birch — I love it.

Vick Green — But they like loved it. You know, like, it yeah, it was just, it was, but all of us were like, yeah. I watched a man a man ah every Wednesday that did not know Jesus, that did not go to church, walk past my house to go to Austin’s.

Rich Birch — That’s great.

Vick Green — And what he did to that, the church gave him, hey, here’s four or five really easy questions to help you figure out what that hour with those men are going to look like. And so he ran that based off the church. The church has encouraged him. Again, the church ah the the church, they don’t know the church yet. They eventually, these men all start coming to church with Austin. Their wives start coming.

Vick Green — And then eventually he looks and says, hey, Vick, I’m going to take that D group guide that our church gave us. He says, I’m going to start doing what you did with me with them. They’re all now coming to church and want to grow in their faith.

Vick Green — And so he took another resource of the church. Did it. And then eventually they multiplied out. And the story continues.

Vick Green — And so, but but there were a couple of resources the church gave. The church partnered in prayer and encouragement of him. And they helped him figure out what’s God doing in his circle of influence. And how do we help equip and empower Austin to be plan A for his circle of influence, not the church’s event or program.

Rich Birch — That’s good That’s great. Well, we we’ve got this. A resource I want to point people towards, it’s or you’ve got a resource that we want to point people towards, is the Ministry Myths download. We’ve been kind of talking about one part of it, the engagement myth. There’s you lift these five different, we don’t need to get into all of them, but talk to me about this resource. We’ll link to it in the show notes so people can, can pick it up and all that, but talk to me about this tool and how can it help and, and that sort of thing.

Vick Green — Yeah, so this is, administering myths is probably our most popular tool, and it’s the five most common myths that are stalling your disciple-making culture. So if you’re not seeing leadership development or mobilization or if you’re not seeing that, often it’s coming back to a myth.

Vick Green — And what’s fun, you know, we we just use it as a personal assessment here. but this The myths idea, what myths are they’re faulty beliefs that are driving your behavior, and you don’t even know it.

Rich Birch — Right, right.

Vick Green — And it’s what severs good intentions from good impact. And so what happens in our church is there’s these myths that we’re just kind of running on autopilot. So you’ve already heard the engagement myth. There’s four other ones in there. But this is not only going to introduce you to the myths. It’ll give you an assessment and then help you begin to kind of see and name some of the tensions that you’ve been feeling.

Vick Green — And so that right there is one of our most popular resources that helps churches kind of get the conversation started on, hey, why aren’t we seeing disciples being made like we want to?

Rich Birch — Love it. I think this would be a great place for everybody that’s listening in as a starting point out of today’s podcast You know, you’ve listened in here, you’re half an hour in, and this could be a great next step for you is to click that link, take the assessment. It’ll give you some good practical next steps and stuff to think about. Wrestle through with your team. Good conversation started there.

Rich Birch — Also, talk to me about “Movement Ready Church”. This is a ah book that you and Robby have put together. Kind of give us an overview of it. How does it connect with what we’ve been talking about today?

Vick Green — Yeah, absolutely. So the “Movement Ready Church” is a book that Robby Gallaty and I released in March. And it is it is our toolkit kind of in a book, if you want to think about it that way. And so it is really, we started to ask after working with thousands of churches, what are the essential elements that must be true for a church to see a disciple-making movement?

Vick Green — And so it is going to show those and it’s going to really help you not just identify those myths, but then we bust each of those myths in the book.

Rich Birch — Okay, great.

Vick Green — And so it’s going to that book’s really going to be almost like the solution side of the ministry myth assessment. But then it also, we when we work with churches, step one is we work through what does it take to be ah or to do a movement ready, to create your movement ready plan. And so we’ll go in and work with teams, one days, or do digital cohorts all around that book. And it’s helping churches get all the things that we’ve been talking about. So everything we talked about in here is going to be that and much more in the book.

Rich Birch — That’s great. And you can pick that up at Amazon, I’m assuming, where finer books are sold. But anywhere else we want to send them to to grab copies of that?

Vick Green — Sure, anywhere where books are sold, but then also if you go to movementreadychurch.com, you’ll see it there as well as a ton of free resources. We love, like our goal is to be as practical as possible. And so you’ll see a lot of resources there that help you take these principles and start having conversations and start putting them into practice. So movementreadychurch.com.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I think that’d be a great place as well to check out and you know follow along with the story, the Replicate story. You guys are doing such great work and with so many churches. And you know I’m an honored that you guys would want to come on and talk about this stuff. So I really do think, friends, it’s a great starting point for you.

Rich Birch — Well, just as we wrap up today’s conversation, any kind of final thoughts for us as we’re wrapping up today’s discussion?

Vick Green — Yeah, thanks so much for having us. And my encouragement for it is that as you look towards, we talked about the getting your disciple-making culture. We talk about it as make Jesus’ final words your first work. And I think the opportunity and why I love what we do is that these principles are all just getting back. We call it ancient innovation. Like it sometimes feels like new insights and new ways of doing ministry. Like how you said about the kingdom circle. Let me wrap my mind around this. And so it feels new, but it’s just a return to something old.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Vick Green — It’s a return to what Jesus has called the church to do. And so just to encourage any leader, this is not just about getting better. And it is about getting back to the heart of what we’ve ah we’re called to do from the beginning and making disciples. And so my hope is that this is a resource that helps helps you not just be a better leader. But what I love is every time I’m with a team, somebody comes back and says, man, like I’m getting back to why I got into ministry in the first place. And so it’s our prayer that it would be that for you as well.

Rich Birch — Good stuff. Well, we’re cheering for you, Vick. Appreciate your work and how you help so many churches. If people want to track with you or with Replicate, where do we want to send them online?

Vick Green — Yeah, so you can follow me on social media. There’s not a lot of Vick Greens out there, so you’ll you’ll find me pretty quickly. And so vickgreen.com as well, or replicate.org is our our ministry and what we do. And so if there’s any way that Replicate, we can partner with you, we sure would love to meet you, connect, and see what ways we can serve your church.

Rich Birch — That’s great. Thanks so much, sir. Appreciate you being here today.

Vick Green — Thanks so much, Rich. It’s great to be with you. And thanks for all that you do with unSeminary Podcast. Longtime listener, still continue. So really grateful for you.

Rich Birch — Thank you.