Mountains, Maps, and MicroGroups in Ukraine and Romania: The Strategy Behind a Disciplemaking Movement
Understanding the geography and the focus in Ukraine and Romania changes our perspective of how to get from here to there, from vision to reality. This map of Ukraine is decentralized leadership that makes a disciplemaking movement successful, as Jesus did over 2000 years ago. Multiplication matters.
From Local Churches to National Networks: The Growth of Disciplemaking Leaders
Phases of change create multiplication of MicroGroups. Intentionally reaching out to invite potential leaders into the disciplemaking pipeline for leadership development is a step-by-step process. In Medias, Romania, the same strategy is being followed to make disciples who make disciples.
Ukraine and Romania are teaching us how disciplemaking movements actually multiply. Gigi Dobrin met Greg Ogden in 2015 at our first Global Discipleship Summit in Camarillo, California. Our GDI team with Ralph Rittenhouse had met with 11 pastors from Romania in 2013, and then we stayed in Romania in 2014 and 2016 to spread the movement of MicroGroups to other churches. We traveled to where he was a professor at Emanuel University of Oradea in 2016.
There he introduced MicroGroups (the way Jesus built his church) to his students. The change was radical and unexpected as the hunger was there in relational discipleship more than programmatic classrooms. Gigi has expanded and multiplied MicroGroups over the past 10 years to invite 265 churches with 165 pastors and 104 lay leaders to see the results!
What Happens When Pastors Stop Doing Ministry Alone
This is why disciplemaking movements thrive when leadership is decentralized.
When the "repenters" (as they are called in Romania) begin to thrive, with the leadership decentralized, pastors see their burdens of being "all things to all people" with cultural expectations removed. They begin equipping people to do the work of ministry as Ephesians 4:11-12 explains.
Paul writes that Christ gave the church various leaders—including apostles, prophets, evangelists, and pastor-teachers. Their primary purpose is not to do all the ministry themselves, but to equip believers to do it, ultimately building up the body of Christ into maturity.
What God Is Building Through Romania and Ukraine
In war-torn Ukraine, they cling to FAITH. God continues to grow people, the church, through it all.
Igor Fedorovych and Michael Feyer request your prayers for the challenges Ukranians face to be faithful.
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