Global Discipleship Principles and the Future of the Church with Cory Hartman

What if the best-kept secret in global missions could transform your church?

In our recent Nexus webinar, I sat down with Cory Hartman—co-author of Future Church with Will Mancini and global voice developer for New Generations—to talk about what God is doing around the world through disciple making movements (DMMs) and why these principles matter for pastors in the West.

When Programs Fall Short

Cory spent 13 years as a small-church pastor in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Like so many of us, he worked hard to grow a healthy church—preaching the Word faithfully, reforming outreach, improving hospitality, refining worship. And yet, like countless leaders across North America, he ran into the same wall: participation decline, dwindling volunteer energy, and the sense that more programs weren’t producing more disciples.

He came to a painful conclusion: “I haven’t really made disciples.”

That crisis, combined with exposure to global disciple making movements, reshaped Cory’s ministry trajectory and eventually led him to New Generations, where he now helps resource and train leaders catalyzing movements across Africa and Asia.

What Is a Disciple Making Movement?

Toward the end of our conversation, Cory gave perhaps the clearest definition I’ve heard yet:

“A disciple making movement is first and foremost a chain reaction. It is a chain reaction of ordinary people who are making disciples who obey everything Jesus commands through their natural social networks, resulting in generations of gatherings spawning gatherings. And this chain reaction maintains its quality without depending on the people who started it.”

Notice the difference: this isn’t about building one big church, but about unleashing a multiplying movement of disciples who make disciples through their everyday relationships.

Why It Matters for the West

In much of the Global South, the gospel still spreads through extended families—whole households (oikos) turning to Christ together. In the West, our social structure looks different. We’re more fragmented, more individualistic, with circles of friends, co-workers, sports teams, and online communities instead of large family clans.

But the principle still applies: discipleship spreads best through natural networks of trust. That means your people don’t just need better Sunday programming. They need to be equipped to make disciples in the circles they already live in.

Rethinking the Person of Peace

Cory reframed another concept pastors often talk about—the person of peace. He defined it this way:

“A person of peace has two things: spiritual interest and community influence.”

In other words, it’s not just someone who’s curious about faith, but someone who can open a whole circle of relationships to the gospel. In the West, that might be a small-business owner, a sports coach, or simply the relational “glue” in a friend group.

Global Discipleship Principles for Training: Flipping the Formation Sequence

Most churches instinctively operate from this sequence:

Lost people found → found people formed → formed people sent.

It makes sense on the surface. We want new believers to be discipled, grounded in the Word, and prepared before we “release” them. But the unintended effect is a long delay between conversion and mission. People spend years in Bible studies and classes without ever being given responsibility. Formation becomes the bottleneck, and the mission stalls.

Cory Hartman challenged that default by flipping the order:

Lost people found → found people sent → sent people formed.

In a disciple-making movement, people are sent out right away. They’re trained in the field while the Bible itself remains the teacher. As Cory put it, the goal is not to have experts dispensing content but ordinary believers facilitating a simple, replicable process—like Discovery Bible Study. In this approach, training doesn’t precede mission; training happens through mission.

This shift removes the ceiling that our program-heavy discipleship models often create. Instead of trying to perfect someone before they’re trusted, we trust them as they grow. Mission becomes the classroom, the Spirit and Scripture become the instructors, and the result is faster, deeper formation that actually multiplies.

From Church Programs to Replication

Cory also challenged us with a subtle but powerful shift:

• Programs invite people to our circle.

• Movements release people to reach their circles.

That’s why tools like Discovery Bible Study are so effective—they put Scripture at the center, empower ordinary people to facilitate, and build replication into the process. Every story studied ends with the question: “Who will you tell?”

Replication, not just addition, is what turns discipleship into a movement.

A Call for Church Leaders

Pastors, here’s the challenge:

• Stop underestimating what your people are capable of.

• Equip them to be disciple makers, not just church attenders.

• Measure success not by how many you gather, but by how many you release.

The global church is showing us what’s possible. Now it’s our turn to apply those global discipleship principles here at home.

AI assisted in adapting this interview to a blog