4 generations of disciples, 1.000 people involved, with 60+ meeting points, in… 15 years! This is the profile of a small discipleship movement in the Western European context. The density of Western life does not prevent the development of a genuine discipleship movement, but it does slow the rate of growth considerably. Keywords: perseverance, simplicity, determination, dedication.
Region:
Western Switzerland
Start:
2006
Municipalities:
60+
converts:
+8-10% / year
Website:
region & vision
The region where the @home movement is currently developing is French-speaking Switzerland with its seven very different cantons. Deliberately without a strategy to multiply regions, @home has been able to expand its network through relationship building with strategic individuals. @home sees its mission as close by, in the neighborhood and therefore reaches people from very different backgrounds, including people without any Christian roots. The vision God has entrusted to @home is to grow through the multiplication of generations of disciples, in the form of a spiritual family, with a focus on spiritual parents caring for their spiritual children. Discipleship is mostly lived 1:1, but regular meetings in the houses complement these multiplicative processes. This well-organized organism can grow endlessly, and currently, in addition to the four main regions, each with a team (Eph. 4:11), eight pioneer regions are in the process of “opening up,” including German-speaking contexts.
Strategy & Fruit
We proceeded in several steps: 1. Establishing our common values, which became our “DNA trail”. 2. Definition of our movement vision. 3. Identifying our missional sources of inspiration. 4. Identifying the paradigm shifts underlying our movement compared to what already exists in the evangelical environment. 5. Definition and implementation of the simple, normal, and everyday functioning of a disciple seeking to multiply in other disciples. 6. Establish a spiritual parenting learning community to serve all of our mature disciples. 7. Formation of regional ministry teams to support spiritual parents in the regions.
What has emerged after 18 years is a simple, rather slow, but solid and continuously growing discipleship movement. Since the beginning, over 2.000 people have been able to plug into our context and experience discipleship multiplication. We regularly “lose” people, but the growth remains constant.
Key Findings
A key finding is that it is not essential to work with the temporal definitions of an Asian or South American discipleship movement. In our context, we went through a "slow" propagation route that resulted in the same numerical results, but in 15 instead of 5 years.
Another major discovery lies in the explicit use of the biblical image of the spiritual family. This analogy aids in the development of a well-organized, self-replicating organism rather than a strategic organization, and dozens of analogies to the natural family aid in one-to-one or one-to-many discipleship in everyday life.
