November 23, 2023

One Way to Apply the Hybrid Approach to DMM Church Integration

Restoration Church, located in Denver, is just one fellowship using a hybrid approach to implement a disciple-making movement in their community. What can that look like, and how is it working at Restoration? 

In newcomers’ first interactions with the church on the website, their focus on discipleship multiplication is evident, and the Sunday services integrate the language and ideas of DMM. This fellowship equips their congregation to share Christ through many Zúme resources and tools. For example, “how we preach is kind of similar to doing a SOAPS, or even a 3/3 experience in a simple church,” Ron explains. “The weekend experience becomes the funnel, moving people into the movement.”

Restoration also moves people to movement through their connecting events. They have communities for youth, young married couples, families, “those in the prime of life (40+),” and young professionals. Participants “can build relationships that hopefully lead to conversations that hopefully lead to discipling. . . . and eventually to simple church involvement.”

“We’re up to 800 simple churches,” Ron shares, with baptisms “in bathtubs and hot tubs and swimming pools.” Immigrant congregants host Christmas parties and bring friends to Christ, while the young professionals’ connecting events continue to bring in many non-Christians. “The wind of the Spirit’s blowing,” says Ron. “We just happened to be at the right place at the right time. . . the people at Zúme . . . are the ones that taught us the sails to raise.” 

We encourage you to consider this and other ways to become more than a passive consumer. Can you gather 3–12 of your friends to take Zúme’s free training? Can you share Ron’s story and those of others around the world? Take your next step with the Spirit, raising your sails so he can move you forward. 

September 22, 2023

Zúme’s Tools Help Bring Colorado Community from Online to In Person

When Molly and her husband started The Brook, it stayed mostly online. Young professionals in the Denver area could connect with the couple through their ministry Instagram, and Molly would spend all day video calling with them. As The Brook has grown, they have expanded from the digital realm to the physical. “With The Brook,” Molly explains, “we use digital outreach, and then also in-person events to raise up leaders and start simple churches.” The ministry reaches out to people on Instagram and online, then connects them to simple churches and guides them through Zúme’s ten-session training.

One way that The Brook connects the community offline is through once-a-month Community Nights—the next step for people who have heard about the ministry to get connected. Every month, during the hour before the Community Night, The Brook’s leaders get together for dinner and continued training that they use to develop their simple churches. Participants get a refresher on helpful tools, like the cheat sheet from Zúme, as well as encouragement from other leaders. Every meeting includes an Everyday Disciple Spotlight, where a member of the community shares how they are applying the tools in their workplace and life. At the end of the hour, the leaders are encouraged to share and utilize the tools they’ve learned during the rest of the night: a social time for the wider community of young professionals.

Through empowering events like the Community Nights, Molly has seen the pace of multiplication increase. One leader caught the vision from the training and decided to start a simple church in her workplace, despite a work culture that seemed closed to the things of the Lord. In no time, 15 people had signed up and she was ready to start.

“I’m seeing people step up in their boldness,” says Molly. “I’m seeing young professionals realize that they have more to live for than what everyone else is living for, like the fun and the partying on the weekends. I’m seeing young professionals really take steps of faith and living as missionaries in their own city here in Denver.”

Molly says that the training offered by Zúme has changed the trajectory of The Brook and helped them manage their growth well. They continue to return to the resources, using them to strengthen their leaders and multiply disciples, bringing God’s community to the lonely, transient city of Denver.

September 15, 2023

The Brook – Denver Transplant sees Exponential Growth of Simple Churches

When Madison, a young nurse, moved to Denver from Texas, she was looking for connection and community. She was a new Christian, having come to know Christ a year before, with a huge passion and a desire to grow. A ministry called The Brook followed her on Instagram, so she decided to check it out. After filling out the “I’m New” form, a woman named Kira reached out to her from the team. Kira told Madison about different ways to get connected, including their simple church movement.

The Brook connects young professionals in Denver, named one of the “loneliest” cities in the country. 52% of this very transient city is between the ages of 20 and 40, and Madison’s experience of looking for connection soon after a move is not unfamiliar. “A lot of people move to Denver for fun and adventure and all these amazing experiences, but they end up feeling very isolated and lonely,” says The Brook founder, Molly.

Instead of floundering in isolation, Madison tried The Brook’s Intro to Simple Church program. The system connects new transplants without many connections into groups, giving them a six-week trial period to get to know one another and see if the group fits together. Through the process, Madison found her spiritual family. She joined a second-generation simple church, became involved in a great community of women, and began “growing like crazy.”

Before too long, Molly approached Madison to ask if she would help to start another group. Madison had gone through the Zúme 10-session training course and “had a heart to make disciples,” so she was “really excited” to lead a new group of women who wanted to get connected. When that third-generation group went so well, Madison helped find a new leader for it—a woman named Jules. Madison continues to disciple Jules as the second woman took over the leadership of the third-generation group.

Signups continued to come through The Brook, so Molly went to Jules. “Hey, Jules,” she asked, “is there anyone in your group who you think would want to help start another simple church?”

“Well, actually, yeah!” Jules responded. “There’s a girl named Addy and she’s just growing like crazy. She’s been through the training, and she’s actually expressed that she wants to help multiply, but she’s just trying to figure out how.”

Addy is now leading a fourth-generation simple church, and the pattern continues to replicate. The whole process—from Madison arriving in Denver to the planting of a fourth-generation church—took place in just over a year.

The Brook is filling a need in Denver for heart connections. As more and more lonely people move to the city, the ministry connects them with others and provides them with tools like Zúme’s free, 10-session online course to equip them and send them out to start new churches. If you want to start your own group of disciples who make disciples, sign up for the course and witness God’s investment in His church.

September 8, 2023

In the Midst of Lockdown, Breakthrough Came to Burmese Believer

When Jacob,* an American who had travelled back and forth to Myanmar for years, returned to the Southeast Asian country, he found that much had changed. The military coup in February of 2021 had arrested medical professionals and monopolized medical supplies, contributing to one of the highest rates of deaths from Covid in the region. Ongoing military control restricted movement and closed the border to foreign visas for two years. Some of Jacob’s friends died from Covid without funerals, and his remaining friends’ lives are constantly affected by the junta’s oppressive regime.

“It’s hard to understand that this is part of the King’s plan,” Jacob admits. Jesus says that “You will hear of wars and rumors of wars . . . Such things must happen . . . There will be famines and earthquakes” (Matt. 24:6–7). But He also says, “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). His presence is keenly felt in Myanmar in the midst of the crisis. Jacob’s Burmese brother says that, while he has seen many challenges in his home country, “we see the glory of God in Myanmar in many places.” Many “wonderful, glorious” things are happening there.

“Everybody seems to be questioning their faith, and in a predominantly Buddhist environment, suddenly, there’s a tremendous interest in looking for hope,” Jacob shares. His Burmese brother affirms, “this is God’s glory. God has been working in Myanmar.” Many of these new believers come out of a synchronist Buddhist background and have a family shrine of altar in their home, at which they worship Buddha and ancestors. After these new believers read Scripture in three-thirds groups and on their own, “it’s usually just a matter of time” before they decide to remove the idols—a tricky endeavor that can create strong family tension.

Normally, the evangelists would help new believers to remove their shrine, conducting a prayer ceremony with their Buddhist families and mediating some of the tension that comes from stopping the veneration of the ancestors. But in the midst of the Covid lockdown, the junta imposed martial law and restricted people to go to market for a set two hours every day. Since many people lived without refrigeration, they had no choice but to go every day to get the food they needed. As a result, the evangelists had to use the time they were allowed outside their homes to go to the market and do other critical tasks for their families, with no time left over to help dismantle shrines.

Evangelists still reached out over the phone and online, but new believers got frustrated that the evangelists couldn’t physically come and remove the shrines. Instead, new believers decided to take down their own shrines rather than wait for restrictions to end. They began to take ownership and action, praying the prayers themselves and sharing their faith through Bible study with the family members who protested. “In some ways,” Jacob says, “crisis brings breakthrough. It’s an exciting thing to watch. . . the priesthood of all believers feeling empowered to share the gospel, even though they don’t necessarily feel that they have all the training and equipping that they want.”

Find more stories of God’s provision in hard circumstances on our podcast, where our host, Mary Roberts, interviews people all over the world who have been blessed by Zúme’s resources and use those resources to multiply disciples.

*Name changed for security.

August 27, 2023

How Zúme’s 43 Languages Strengthen Outreach to Refugees 

Doug Lucas, president of Team Expansion, was introduced to Zúme by some enthusiastic field workers and has been growing more and more involved ever since. He has helped with early beta test sessions, helped develop the 3/3 groups, facilitated 16 different courses, and wrote a companion book called More Disciples

One recent project that gets Doug excited allows users to download material to use it in places without internet. They started using it to bring Zúme sessions to a refugee camp with 3,000 people and no Wi-Fi. “You could see right away how captivating it was” to have the material in their languages, says Doug. Zúme has now been translated into 43 languages—typically trade or shared languages—and that enables many more people to do Zúme sessions in either their heart language or a language that is easier for them to understand. Through that, “God was speaking to their hearts.” 

In one Middle Eastern country, Doug and his team challenged a worker to utilize the Zúme approach with refugees, leading to 35 people finding Christ. Most of those connections occurred one-on-one, like his contact with 19-year-old Nahim.* Nahim was immersed in Quranic study from a young age, even more deeply because his lineage could be traced back to Mohammed. While he had questions and concerns about some Muslim teachings, it was Nahim’s dialogue with the field worker that “prompted Nahim to realize that there was another book. He decided to give this new book a chance—this Injeel: the New Testament and especially the Gospels.”

After the field worker’s engagement with Nahim through Zúme lessons, Nahim “made it clear that he believes that Jesus was sacrificed for our sins, and that now God’s will is for us to be children of God that can try to bring all others into his kingdom.” His life has changed. 

You don’t need to understand a refugee or immigrant’s language to share Christ with them. They can engage with Zúme lessons in a language closer to their hearts, then dialogue with you about it in whatever fragments of language that you share. “Zúme gives us a great infrastructure,” Doug says, not only because of its range of available languages bus also because it “gives an outline to follow and it works whether the person is a seeker or whether they’re a longtime elder in a church. . . . Zúme is actually a prime candidate for every single worker.” 

If you want to start using Zúme lessons to engage with immigrants or refugees in your area, check out our course and select your desired language from the drop-down menu in the top banner. Continue to reach out to the people in your communities and being faithful where God puts you. We welcome you into the Zúme community, multiplying disciples in our generation. 

* Name changed for security. 

August 20, 2023

Never Miss a Chance to See the Power of Specific Prayers

What is the key to the best outreach or missions work you can do? How do we spread the gospel in the most effective way? When we get caught up in questions like these, we may lose perspective and miss the power of a simple, but remarkable, gift that God has given us: the ability to speak directly to Him. We can “approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need” (Heb. 4:16). This is no small blessing, and it speaks loudly to those who have not experienced God’s presence. 

Tim* encourages us to always “continue to ask people what you can be praying for them about.” He shares the story of God freeing his neighbor from demonic influence through prayer, and that is not the only incident where specific requests led to impactful results. Whenever Tim and his wife practice hospitality in inviting their neighbors to their apartment, they always say, “Whatever’s going on in your life, we’d like to pray.’ . . . When we’ve gotten those chances to ask people specific prayers, I’ve seen God answer so much.” 

What kind of specific prayers do they hear? Well, they’ve “had a sister who wanted to pray for her husband to get a different rotation in his job.” When Tim’s lease was coming up, his family prayed, “God, if you want us [to stay in this apartment], don’t raise our rent.” These prayers may seem small or too specific, but we find throughout Scripture that God wants us to “cast all [our] anxiety on him because he cares for [us]” (1 Peter 5:7). Tim has found that “when we’ve gotten those chances to ask people specific prayers, I’ve seen God answer those so much. He’s so good about showing his power to people, showing his reality.”

When Tim’s Muslim friends told him that they had been praying for years to get their visa, or they’d be forced to return to their country. “We were on a walk,” Tim shares, “and I said, ‘I’m going to pray in Jesus’s name that you get that visa by the end of this month.’ [My Muslim neighbor] kind of laughed, but he was grateful. I prayed and my wife prayed, my mom prayed. The end of the month happened. They didn’t get the visa. But about a week later in the mail, they got their visa and it was backdated to that final day of the month.” Those friends said in amazement, “We’ve never seen God answer prayers like that.” 

“If I could encourage anyone,” Tim says, he would say, “just ask people what they really need prayer for. Because when God shows up, and when he answers that prayer, those people are interested. . . . As human beings, we can’t replicate that kind of power, nor can people deny the reality of God when He answers those things. When we give God the opportunity to show his power, he draws people to himself so much better than I think we ever could.” 

So don’t be shy. Ask the people around you, in your network, how you can pray for them, and let God show his power through his response. If you want to hear more stories and advice like Tim’s from the Zúme community, check out Multiplying Disciples wherever you listen to podcasts. 

*Name changed for security.

May 25, 2023

How God is Moving in the Prisons, the Workplace, and the Refugee Community of Kentucky 

Every person working with Zúme has their own story of how it has spread to the people around them, and we love nothing more than hearing those stories! Chad Rehnburg recently shared some of his own stories on our Multiplying Disciples Podcast, which you can check out here or wherever you find your podcasts. 

Chad works with Team Expansion by day and supervises at UPS at night. One night, a young, engaged couple at his job overheard Chad talking with some other employees about Zúme and mission work. It piqued their interest, and Chad soon met up with the couple to get them started on Zúme and hopefully begin a group in their home. These young people are only one of the most recent and local connections that Chad has made. 

Many Somali refugees have found their way to Chad’s home city in Kentucky. One of them, Chad’s good friend and a determined advocate of the Gospel, has started a few Zúme groups in East Africa. Chad continues to maintain contact with him over Messenger, fostering their friendship and encouraging one another to continue in Christ. 

Another friend, Tony, Chad describes as a “person of peace” in his city. Tony spent 36 years in prison, 20 of which in solitary confinement. In that dark and isolated place, he met the God who is the light in the darkness. “And in the last couple years,” Chad shares with pride, “he’s baptized over 400 men out of the prison system.” Tony now serves as chaplain at the same work release house where he used to be an inmate, discipling a dorm of 20 men deep in his former situation and showing them the changing power of God. He continues to make disciples despite enduring persecution. “It’s simple, but it’s not easy,” Chad says. “It’s just amazing watching what God can do when ordinary people say, “I’m in. Sign me up! I wanna live my life on mission.” 

Zúme can connect you to people across the street or around the world, all from your computer at home. If you want to be a small part in the bigger picture of the expansion of God’s kingdom, find out more at Zúme.Training. Add your stories to the dozens we hear every day of the small and remarkable ways that God works through His people. 

March 10, 2023

Two Inspiring Stories of Disciple Multiplication with Zúme.Training

Just a few weeks ago, Hamza,* a Middle Eastern gentleman about sixty years old, sat at a checkered orange table and added a few more names to the list in his little notebook. Hamza confessed faith in Christ in December, was baptized in January, and by February was taking part in a Zúme.Training group, learning to make disciples and share the good news of his newfound Savior. He, another believer from a Muslim background, and a foreign worker were on session two of ten, writing 100 names of people in their lives in order to pray for them and steward those relationships well. 

One name stood out to Hamza—a neighbor who happens to be from another people group. Hamza believed the Lord was leading him to share Jesus with this neighbor, so on Wednesday he went and visited the neighbor and his wife. He shared about his new belief in Jesus and reported that the family was favorable to his story.

All three members of the Zúme group went back to visit Hamza’s neighbor’s family on Thursday. After listening to more of Hamza’s testimony and hearing an excellent presentation of the gospel from the other believer in the Zúme group, the neighbor, his wife, and her brother (who showed up out of nowhere during the visit) confessed faith and received Christ on the spot! All three of them renounced any belief that there was another prophet that came after Christ.

During the visit, the neighbor’s wife shared that Jesus had appeared to her long ago in a vision, dressed in dazzling white and looking intently at her with love and kindness in His eyes.

Hamza’s story is just one example of how the free Zúme.Training is being put into effect all over the world. Zúme (which means “yeast” in Greek) uses an online training platform to equip small, in-person groups to follow the Great Commission. Each participant learns how to be the yeast mixed into the flour of the world (Matt. 13:33), saturating the world with the teaching and healing of Jesus. 

Today, believers from 123 countries and 31 languages are learning from Zúme.Training how to spread the Good News to their neighbors and begin simple churches. 

A group in East Asia recently reported that they have so far offered 300+ Zúme classes training over 30,000 people. The training has iterated to 5 generations of teachers, exponentially spreading from class sizes of 10-40 people to sizes as large as 300 people, subdivided under many small group leaders. 

Since the launch of Zúme in 2017, it has come far in its vision to multiply disciples under the instructions and example of Christ. If you want to learn more about Zúme, or maybe sign up with a group of your friends, check our website

Continue to pray for new believers like Hamza and his neighbor, who live in crippling poverty and still continue to multiply disciples. Pray continually that no seed that has been sown will be choked out (Matt. 13:7), but that the seeds will “produce a crop—a hundred, sixty, or thirty times what was sown.”

*Not his real name

November 15, 2022

Zúme practitioner shares an update in his own words

Thanks for putting together this great tool for multiplying disciples. Not only is the curriculum just what we need, the action plans (obey, share, train) each week really integrate what we are learning immediately into real life. 

We started with 11 people. 2 dropped out before session one when they read the guidebook ahead of time. One dropped out when they realized there was “homework” for each session. We added 1 more who started later and “doubled up” on the lessons to catch up with the class. It looks like we will have 9 to complete the course and I think we will have enough people continue on beyond that to start a 3/3s group. 

Zume was the final step to get me to encourage our small church to make it a goal to transform our church into a Disciple Making Movement. It is something I have been praying about for years and Zume has been a great tool to help bring the church along to owning that goal also.

Since Lesson 3, I have increased my prayer life and we have seen 3 baptisms. More are on the way! I am now making it a goal to pray 2 hours a day and I can’t wait to see what God will do in me and through our church with more abundant prayer.

August 15, 2022

Eyo’s story

“Eyo’s” father carried his fully grown, adult son to the bathroom again. Doctors did not know what was wrong, but Eyo did. When I visited their house four years ago, I offered to pray that Jesus would heal him. But Eyo resisted, saying the evil inside him was too strong. For years he laid in bed depending on his elderly parents, becoming weaker day after day…until THE day came. One of our local ministry partners visited Eyo and something changed. Eyo allowed others to pray for him and even began to pray to Jesus himself. The next time I visited their house I was shocked to recognize the man who was walking to greet me and firmly shake my hand. Jesus had healed Eyo’s body and spirit. He welcomed us to lead his extended family in a Bible story group and was willing to pray with boldness for others. 

Recently I have been meeting with Eyo to disciple and train him so that he has become fully confident leading groups that study God’s Word. Eyo now goes to other villages to share his testimony with people who are hearing the Jesus Stories for the first time. Some of the training that helped me most was previously only available in English. I have been working for years to get it available in Indonesian. This prepares people like Eyo to be fully equipped to represent Jesus to those who may not have another chance. (See www.zume.traning and now www.zume.training/id/ ) Recently Eyo said that his goal for the week is to baptize someone who has just come to follow Jesus. Will you join us in praying that Eyo is the first of many locals who boldly share what Jesus did in their lives with all those they have relationships with?

– written by a Zume practitioner