Zúme - Multiplying Disciples: Recent Episodes
Mary Roberts
Zúme is a community of practice for those who want to see disciple making movements. Our vision is to saturate the world with multiplying disciples in our generation. This podcast interviews the practitioners of the community around the world. Learn more at Zume.Vision and be equipped at Zume.Training.
The Salvation Poem Project has launched a New Believer Course online among their efforts to find people hungry for God across the internet. As people begin and grow their beginnings of a relationship with Jesus, the next step of the course is to connect them in Zúme for discipleship! Happening in over a dozen languages and growing, the course is being connected to Zúme’s 45+ languages to disciple and multiply across the nations online. Check out the three resource links below:
https://newbelievercourse.com/
https://salvationpoem.com/
https://salvationpoem.com/overview/
As a Zúme coach, Richard did not let the fact that he was 79 years old and in a wheelchair keep him from expanding the kingdom!
As Richard’s health was failing, he gathered his family, friends, coworkers, and other contacts to share with them the vision of Zúme. Coming from a successful government job, Richard said, “If I can do this in my professional capacity, why can’t I do something similar for the Lord.”
Hear inspiring stories about Richards’s loving legacy, creative ideas, and encouraging perseverance. As Tim shares of his coaching journey with Richard and others continue across nations and generations, the multiplication of disciples and churches has no limits with Jesus!
Growing up in Ghana, Isaac lived for years without hearing the gospel. Then, God changed his life and connected him with Terry and Amy. Together, they coached him to coach others in multiplying disciples and churches through Zúme.
As Isaac and his friends went through Zúme, they began to “actually understand the scriptures they were reading.” As they began to put it into action and share it with others, God multiplied movements across the region.
Multiplying without the internet, and coaching over WhatsApp with people in distant villages, Zúme has primarily been used offline to fuel the movement. Also available as an offline app on the phone, printed book, and other formats, Zúme offline has shaped this local village believer’s life unto thousands.
Hear from Isaac as he shares from Ghana with his coaches, Terry and Amy. Stories, challenges, and ways that God has made a way with Zúme!
As a pastor who has planted several other prevailing model churches and multi-site churches, Ron and his team at Restoration Church have shifted to multiplying hundreds of simple churches across Denver!
After negative experiences with house church, Ron was not sure about Zúme at first. In the last few years, it has become a part of their church life, locally and globally! Hundreds of baptisms have happened in homes across the city this year. God is blessing them with answered prayers as they hear God, obey, and pass it on.
Leading a hybrid model, Ron shares about several leadership experiences that has shaped his movement journey. From pastoring a church that meets in a building, mentoring dozens of other pastors, and coaching simple churches, Ron has seen the difference Zúme has made!
From suburban families to low-income internationals, Zúme has been used to cast vision and equip believers. Disciples are multiplying inside and outside the building.
Mobilization moves the vision forward! Eric Derry and Doug Lucas share inspirational testimonies from decades of mobilization. Hear their pivot points and key insights to mobilizing the church to multiply disciples and churches locally, regionally, and globally! Right now, there are thousands of people around the world using Zúme, check out this LIVE 100 Hours Map. Learn from Eric and Doug how to use many of Zúme’s tools to mobilize, train, coach, and obey Jesus.
After Zúme training changed the trajectory of their ministry, Molly and her team began using Instagram to reach young professionals across Denver. To reach their audience, they created The Brook and Intro to Simple Church as their expressions of using the Zúme training to multiply, from social media to in-person events to gathering in simple churches. A year and a half later, several generations are continuing to multiply, with testimonies flowing constantly! Hear some of the stories, ideas, and creative access ways that God is leading them to apply the Zúme principles among young adults in an urban setting!
In the midst of the crisis in Myanmar, God has been using disciples, churches, and Zúme tools to multiply! By using Zúme over zoom in Myanmar when there was no access to travel in or around, the disciples saw Zúme groups continue to put it into practice and pass it on during the crisis. Hear from local leaders and their coaches how breakthroughs happened during lockdowns, including the impact of Zúme to shift follow-up to evangelism by forming discipleship groups. The context of crisis has changed how the church has multiplied. Zúme has helped them make the most of the opportunity through this change!
Zúme’s 43+ languages are being used to engage refugees in several nations, including in the United States. Hear Doug Lucas, founder and president of Team Expansion, share how he is reaching refugees around him and in other nations using Zúme Multiplying Disciples Training!
There are many ways to interact with the Zúme team and content to multiply disciples and simple churches! Hear Chad share about numerous avenues leading to fruitful stories and even ways you can get involved! From recent experiments of using TikTok to YouVersion Bible plans reaching hundreds of thousands of people and the NEW live chat option on the www.zume.training website with some incredible testimonies already! Have ideas or want to help out? Email podcast@zume.vision
TranscriptHost:
Welcome back to the Zúme Multiplying Disciples Podcast, where we’re on a journey to saturate the world with multiplying disciples in our generation.
Chad, it’s sweet to be with you, fellow teammate on the Zúme team, and man there’s so much that we could talk about but we’re gonna try and just squeeze in some snapshots in these next 20 minutes. And so, um – A couple of things that I would love to just highlight as we kick off, Chad, and maybe then you could tell a little bit about yourself. But you’ve been involved in seeing these Zúme tools and principles be actually created into YouVersion Bible studies, like the devotions on the YouVersion app that people could click on. And if I remember the last stats I saw, it was over a quarter million people [who] were engaging on Zúme through the YouVersion Bible app, and that is something that anyone can access and hop on. And then, on top of that, we all know social media but good old TikTok and exploring Zúme videos and sharing on TikTok.
And – really stoked about this announcement – if you guys haven’t checked out the Zúme.vision website lately, there is a new feature and it is the live chat box! And so when you go to Zúme, to the website, you’ll see a live chat box that you can actually, right there, click to be able to talk to someone from the Zúme team, from coaches from volunteers, on Zúme.training. And so it’s been an exciting — Chad, like you have been a part of helping pioneer that. And so, man! YouVersion, TikTok, live chat box, and so much more.
And so, Chad, why don’t you just tell us a little bit about yourself and then we can dig into some of just the stories of what God’s doing and some of these cool resource access points.
Chad:
Absolutely, Mary! I was hanging out with the guy that was discipling me, Eric Dairy, and he said, “Man, you should come into this meeting!” And it was a Zúme meeting and they were like, “Man, we really need somebody to help with social media.” And I raised my hand and said, “Well, I – I like playing around on Facebook and stuff, and and um, and actually have like two Facebook accounts that are kind of maxed out, but really enjoy, um, the social media world.” And so they were like, “Oh, that’s great!” And so we started with a Facebook page and then an Instagram page and then a Twitter page, and now we’ve got a LinkedIn page and a TikTok page and the YouVersion stuff is my favorite social media. So, with YouVersion, you can go to Plans, in Search, type in Zúme, and you can see all of the different plans and different things that are up. Um. That would be the one social media tool that I would like to sink my time and stuff into.
But we are actively looking for other people that might be interested in helping us figure out how to get more people engaging and kind of just spreading the word. In the training cycle, you know, we pass this stuff on to people by modeling, assisting, watching, and then leaving. And so, with social media we can do a ton of modeling and, and kind of showing people the ropes and how to get started with this stuff. And that stuff is really exciting to me, and if that’s exciting to you, the — My kids were giving me the hardest time about being on TikTok because I’m an old guy, and. And we just need some, some other people that would be interested in saying, “Yeah! Um, I’m in! I’d love to, to help run the Twitter page, I’m on Twitter all the time,” or whatever, you know? Uh. We just really need a ton of help.
New Live Chat FeatureAnd one of the coolest things that’s happening right now with the, with the live chat feature on the website— So, if you go to Zúme.vision or Zúme.training, you’ll see the little Messenger icon pop up. If you click on that, uh, you can ask a question. Some of the coolest questions have been coming in. The challenge is, sometimes they’re in other languages. So we’ve been having to use Google Translate and all this different stuff, so. Um. Hopefully we’ll get more traffic than our current team can handle, and we’ll need to be able to add some more people to respond to some of those questions like that.
Some people have been responding, saying, “Man, I just really want to get to know God better.” And, um, and so that was actually a French speaker in Quebec, that– If anybody that’s listening to this call right now and you speak French, and/or are in Quebec, there’s somebody right now saying that they really want to get to know God better. And with the language barrier, and Google Translate, and geographically being very far away from them, it has been hard for me to follow up with them, and I currently don’t have any contacts in that region that are willing and able to help. So if that’s you and [you want to get] to know God better, man, we would love to get you connected. So message us– in fact, you could go to the website right now, click on the little Message bot, and me and Mary and Tim and Gus are gonna be– one of us will be the responders.
And then, as this thing gets going in more and more languages, um. Man, we’re gonna need more and more workers. So. The harvest is plentiful, the workers are few, and I’m putting out an ask to anybody that loves Jesus and multiplying disciples and social media. If you’d like to jump on and help us out, send us a message on the live chat feature.
Host:
Amen! So yeah— So that messenger is tied to Facebook Messenger so it’s the same little icon, and if you’re on Facebook you can like the Zúme page and be able to share it and connect with others.
And so, yeah, Chad, so many opportunities: YouVersion, TikTok, this live chat box from the website, and—
Chad:
We’ve got LinkedIn, too! LinkedIn!
Host:
Oh yeah! And it’s— there’s Instagram and Facebook and Twitter, and you know, just so many, so many things that are happening.
So even in the midst of all of these different resources, and just ways that people can access Zúme, and even just— what I love about the live chat box is: it is quicker to be able to have person-to-person conversations. And so people can sign up for a coach anytime, they can sign up — you know, you can use Zúme without signing up, but you can also sign up for a coach that we highly, highly encourage, um, because it is a huge game changer. But, to just be able to ask simple questions, um, right away and be able to talk with someone.
Chad’s Personal Zúme StoriesAnd so, even in the midst of all these things, Chad, you’re also a local practitioner right at home. And so, what have been some of the stories that you are seeing God do as you live out the Zúme vision and principles right, right at home?
Chad:
Well, um. I am a missionary with Team Expansion by day and a part-time supervisor with UPS at night to help get insurance and stuff for my kiddos. And, um. Just last night, we’ve got these two workers, a young engaged couple, and they had overheard me talking to some other employees about being a missionary and about what we do, and they said, “Uh, hey, um. We wanna, we want to be trained, we want to become missionaries, we want to live lives on mission. Um. What do we do?” And so, we’re meeting up and we’re— I’m going to walk them through Zúme. We’re going to get a group started in their home, um. I’m just super excited about how God’s working and all the different things that are going on. Um.
One of the places that we’re seeing the most fruit in our city is that we met a person of peace — actually, he kind of met us and found us — and he is amazing and loves Jesus like crazy. But he had spent 36 years in prison and 20 of that was in solitary confinement, and that’s where he met the Lord. And in the last couple years he’s baptized over 400 men out of the prison system. And the same halfway house or, um — it’s kind of like you get to go out on work release kind of a, kind of a lockdown where you’re still a ward of the state — he used to be an inmate in there and now he’s got keys to the place. He’s the chaplain on call. He’s got a dorm full of 20 men that he’s been deeply investing in and discipling, and it’s just amazing watching what God can do when ordinary people say, “I’m in. Sign me up! I wanna, I wanna live my life on mission.”
So God’s a missionary God and He loves us and has called us to join Him on this great adventure. And man, I wish I could say that it was easy. It is not. It’s simple, but it is not easy, and uh, watching my friend Tony in the prison system endure all the persecution that he’s had to go through, it’s just been amazing and he’s responded well and continues to to make disciples that make disciples in that place, in space, right here in our city. Um. God’s doing some cool things here and there, uh, we just — Man, I could go on forever! What uh, what specifically do you want to hear about, Mary?
Host:
I know — the same! There’s so many different stories that we could talk about, but I remember one you recently mentioned, I think about some Somali refugees?
Chad:
Yes! Man, there are so many Somalis that are, um — they’ve had to flee from their country and, and come to other places and a bunch of them have found their way here, to Louisville, Kentucky. And, um, I’ve got a really good Somali friend who’s a really good multiplier, and he’s got a couple of groups going over in another country in East Africa — pretty close to Somalia, but I’m not going to mention it just to keep my buddy safe out there. And, uh. So God’s doing great things here in our city in Louisville and around the world, so. My, my Somali, uh, disciple maker, he called me two days ago and we had a really fun chat on Messenger, and, um. And then, uh, things are blowing up right now with Zú[me in] Asia. And, um, there’s a really awesome guy that is in the middle of that, uh, pulling people together, training local leaders, um, so.
God is on the move and good things are happening all around the world and right here in our own backyard, so let’s keep up that good work and just keep loving God, loving others, and making disciples that do the same.
Host:
It’s incredible how we can use Zúme, you know, right at home, you know, at home with family, you know, at home on the computer on Zoom, you know, [with] the neighbors across the street, with people in across the ocean in other countries, and it’s the same thing here as there — the same thing in God’s word. And so, one of the things you mentioned was just these opportunities to get to, to serve and to be a part, and so. You know, the first step in that is really just getting to walk through the Zúme journey and, even better, to get to do that with a coach or with a cohort of a group of people who are doing the same thing together, learning and figuring out— And as you do that, getting to explore other ways of serving in Zúme. So you can reach out at— you can email us at podcast@zúme.vision is the email, podcast@zúme.vision, or message us! Use Messenger and just send us a message, uh, on what’s happening there.
Zúme YouVersion Bible PlansAnd so it’s really cool to see how Zúme is expanding and— you know ways that you can find it on YouVersion, why don’t you, you know, for people who might not be familiar [with] you know, the Bible app, You Version, how do they hop on there and find the Zúme plans? I know one of my favorite[s] is honestly the “Enduring Through Suffering” plan that is on there, but I know there’s literally dozens of Bible reading and devotion plans on there that, you know, as a Zúme team have created, and so how do people find that, Chad?
Chad:
If you go to Zúme and go to “Find Plans,” and, um, and then in that search bar just type in z-u-m-e, all of the Zúme plans will come up.
You’ll have to scroll down through all the different accountability groups. Those are designed for, um, two to four people of the same gender to jump in and you agree to read the same Scriptures, you do a daily SOAPS, you’re confessing sin to each other, and you’re praying for each other’s lost friends. And each of those accountability group, uh, pieces can walk you through the entire Bible so you and your accountability partner could be like, “Yeah, let’s do James!” [or] “Yeah, let’s do—” You know. And you can pick from, from all the Scriptures and they have it set up throughout the week to where you’re reading about three to five chapters a day, and you’re doing it with your accountability partner. It’s absolutely fantastic.
But once you scroll past all of those groups, those uh accountability groups, you’ll see things like “Kingdom Prayers.” And that’s actually from the appendix of Curtis’s book, The Only One, and it’s 30 different prayers that are just super powerful. And me and my buddy William Sawyer are doing that together right now, um. It’s so fun to do these plans individually, but also to do them with friends.
There’s one called “The Commands of Christ,” and it’s the, the 94 commands that as Curtis was seeing God move and was spending time in the Word and spending time looking at everything that Jesus said and commanded us—since we’re supposed to teach people everything that Jesus commanded us—he said, “Well, we should have a list of all those commands.” And it’s just a powerful, powerful list. It’s a little devotional relating to each one, and I highly recommend the “Commands of Christ.” Uh.
“Enduring Through Suffering” is something that, if you want to live a godly life, you’re going to be persecuted, and so we’ve got to train up our disciples to be able to endure through suffering. So the “Enduring Through Suffering” [study] is every Scripture in the Bible stacked up that says how God is going to make us more like Him and more mature in Christ through suffering. Yes, there are Bible verses that talk about how He uses prayer in reading the Bible and going to church, but if you stack up all of the verses and Scriptures that talk about how he’s gonna use suffering, there’s just way more of those. And that reading plan, “Enduring Through Suffering,” walks you through all of those Scriptures and our responsibility and then God’s blessing when we choose to respond to suffering the way that God designed. And that reading plan, if I was going to pick just one, has been probably the most personally life-changing for me. So, um, “Enduring Through Suffering” and the Zúme plan, it’s absolutely fantastic.
There are some others about how to share your testimony. Um. There’s one called, um, “Come, Let’s Go,” and it’s discipleship and evangelism and it’s basically a week-long college course which is a lot of the big nuggets that Curtis trains in his Metacamp course that Team Expansion and um some other organizations called “Jonathan Training.” It’s a whole Jonathan Training packed into one week. Now, it’s super intensive and really, really, uh, great to go through. [If you’re] curious about this and want, like, a college-level course on it and it’s got little teasers and tasters and even some of the Zúme videos included in that plan, you’ll want to look at the YouVersion plan “Come, Let’s Go.” And Jesus invites us to come to Him and He equips us and empowers us to go to the uttermost ends of the Earth. And that’s a really great plan.
Host:
That’s awesome.
Chad:
I could go on and on, there’s like 50 plans on the thing and you got me started, so I’m sorry!
Host:
I’m not! It’s great! I know, especially when you’re just so invested in having created it and hearing so many testimonies of how God is using it, it’s hard to not want to just tell people, you know, just all the different things that are happening! And thanks for making time to just give this snapshot. I know it’s not even comprehensive of the testimonies of even just the resources to strengthen and encourage and equip, but it’s a snapshot into all that’s happening.
And yeah, I can say that that, “Enduring Through Suffering,” if you go into [the] YouVersion app and you search “Plans,” you type in Zúme or you type in, you know, “Enduring Through Suffering,” which is one of the Zúme plans on there— A friend shared me—shared that with me last year on the YouVersion— like, I had seen that resource before, and, um, it’s one of my all-time favorite resources I try to tell every single person about! [Laughs] It’s because just like you said, Chad, like we have to be ready and we have to be able to walk. How do we walk faithfully through times of suffering? And— but I love, on the YouVersion app, it already breaks down like each day it has the passages right there that you can read and then like just the word of teaching there, and so, yeah. I just opened up my phone back and hit “Start” again, like so like, we’re going through it again! And so, you know, share it with some friends right now.
But Chad, as we wrap up—
Chad:
Take somebody with you, Mary, take somebody with you!
Host:
Amen, amen! Yep, just just texting three right now.
And so, as we kind of wrap up, I know there’s stories at home and, and abroad, but is there anything else that you’d like to share just in these last couple minutes together?
Spreading to Every LanguageChad:
Well, I think, um, one of the most challenging, uh, thoughts as, as we think about, like, all the social media stuff here for English speakers, like, we don’t even have the team built out for that, yet. And then Zúme is already available in 42 other languages, including sign language, and so we really have a big problem in that we need to figure out a way to be able to reproduce this kind of social media teams in all those different languages that we currently have — And those are the most-spoken languages, but we’d love for Zúme to be able to be available in every language.
And um, and so, I don’t know if you’ve looked at the Strategic Plan and how that was going about, but we’re almost done with that first phase of getting Zúme available in the, in the 40, uh, most-spoken languages. There’s still a couple that haven’t crossed the finish line and a couple that are just under that top 40 that we got off the ground and were completed first, and, uh, but that’s almost done. And then we’d like it to get spread out to all, um, the other main languages and, and then every language. If you, if you— there’s like 3,000 and some languages now, uh, if you go into every tribe and, and you want to reach every tongue, which I know is God’s heart. Um, so, um.
As Zúme gets translated into those languages, we need language champions that would want to take on that challenge of like, “Yeah, I’d be willing to, to help promote Zúme among, uh, French speakers,” or, “I’d love to help model these different tools, um, among, um uh, Mandarin speakers.” There’s— if you go to the Zúme website and you click on Languages, you can see the ones that are available now and know that it’s our hearts desire to be able to get it to every language. So, maybe there’s a language not on there yet and you’ve got some translation skills or a team of people that would like to know what it would take to get it into your language. Man, we’d love to talk to you!
So uh that would be kind of my last push and challenge is, man, do you have a heart for a part of the world that um might speak a certain language, and would you be willing to invest um to help get multiplying disciples and churches going among those people in those places?
Google Grant Ads: Call to ActionHost:
Yeah, that reminds me just, even this morning, we were talking about the testimony as a team of how, um you know, we’ve been using these Google ad grants, which, you know, anyone who is a part of a church or non-profit has access to these Google ad grants. And if you’re not using them and you would love to donate that to Zúme, it’s no cost to you because it’s just a resource that it’s available to you and you can pass that on to Zúme to be able to use those Google ad grants to do ads to these different languages.
Chad:
It’s like 10 thousand dollars a month in Google ads!
Host:
Yeah, it’s not a small penny! Yeah, and so this 10 grand a month can literally be used by Zúme to have the ads in several different languages happening around the world. But, you know, there’s a little mishap that happened, but it’s so cool the outcome! But, um, there was a paid advertising that happened in Indonesia, and through that there have been literally over 100 people an hour engaging on Zúme in Indonesia in a place that is full of unreached people—unreached unengaged peoples. And to see how it is spiking, literally, um, when you go onto the Zúme map which is one of my favorite parts of the website, but, zúme.vision/100—just the numbers, one-zero-zero—and you can literally see this map that has everyone that is on Zúme right now and around the world. Like, literally Google can’t even keep up with the traffic that is happening with Zúme. And so, there are like in the last 24 hours, over 5,000 people in Indonesia that have been engaging in Zúme because of these paid ads.
And so, the opportunity to donate Google ad grants, the opportunity to, even if you have a passion as Chad’s talking about to see a certain language either be created in Zúme into that language or to even see an existing language have paid advertising on social media, it is tremendous the fruit and the outcome that we are seeing literally day in day out happen just through that one avenue, you know? And so—
Chad:
I think they said that the paid advertising has gotten twice as much traffic as the free Google ad advertising, which is still great.
Host:
I know! It’s incredible. We can do both!
Chad:
If people wanted to give, like, big time money to doing some of this stuff, like, that would be fantastic.
Host:
Yeah. It really is incredible. And so, Chad, thank you so much for all that you do in several years of serving on the Zúme lead team. And a blessing to get to serve with you, brother, and thank you so much for taking time to share some of the stories, the opportunities, and the different resources that are out there! And so, have a great one!
Chad:
You too! Let’s go make disciples.
Host:
Woohoo!
Thanks for listening. To learn more, go to www.zume.vision, and to be equipped, go to www.zume.training. Have questions for the podcast? You can email them to podcast@zúme.vision.
A mother and son journey of learning and living out the Zúme principles to disciple their neighbors, church, and the diversity of nations around them. Regina learned about Zúme through her son and has combined it with her passion for the nations and culture to disciple people across several of the 42+ languages that Zúme is available in.
After doing Zume over zoom and coaching at a distance, this disciple moved overseas to continue working with the local leaders he met through Zúme! Then, miracles of provision begin happening, and even miracles of life itself! Listen to hear more of the stories from people from other religions who helped a local disciple in medical need because of the love and care he had shown people as he followed Jesus, to how God brought him back to life. The local disciple continues to multiply Zúme after beating all medical odds.
Zúme Training Multiplying Disciples is now available as a published book! The entire training is in this printed book with interactive QR codes and other engaging features to use with people, with or without internet access! Order your books today at https://missionbooks.org/products/zume-training (use code ZUMEPREORDER for 40% before July 15, 2022). If you would like to help with translations into other languages, you can email us at: podcast@zume.vision
In this episode, we interview a couple who has been sharing their experiences with Zúme and how they can reach people worldwide. William and Beth Sawyer have been involved in ministry for several years. They were first introduced to Zúme about 10 years ago by Curtis Sergeant, but they did not explore its potential for reaching the lost until recently when they began using Zúme Training to coach disciples to lead their discipleship groups. In the last 3 months, they have coached Christians in North America, Africa, and Asia. One of the primary tools they have used in the training resources is the S.O.A.P.S program which familiarizes new Christians with the scriptures and the disciplines of Christianity.
Actively reaching disciples for Christ over the last six years, it is exciting to hear how this guest uses Zúme Training to mentor new disciples with minimal background in the Bible. He describes some interesting life experiences that took him to a foreign mission field briefly before COVID. While returning to the U.S. was disheartening, God opened multiple doors through active prayer and evangelism to reach his neighbors from the nations. Then a minor setback became a major outreach opportunity through online and international avenues. One of the primary online tools being used for disciples, no matter the background, is called “3/3’s.” This tool walks new disciples through the process of sharing their testimony with others, acknowledging God’s role in our lives and leading to making disciples who make disciples.
Michael has used the “Pray4Movement” as a platform to involve others in regular and deliberate prayer for target areas. This tool enables a untied effort to focus on a county, state, country, or larger area such as North America, and can be used by others in any nation. Michael has a goal to set up 1,000 prayer focus groups within Maryland, addressing each of the state’s 24 counties and covering its communities. Prayer teams go out within the community and pray for each home, and distribute door knockers to let residence know they are being prayed for. This has proven to be greatly effective and has yielded a wonderful response with people in the community. Not only does prayer work to enhance evangelism, but it also helps each believer’s relationship grow deeper with God. The power of prayer becomes evident when evangelists work in unison with God.
Michael is involved with outreach ministry in Maryland, and he actively uses the Zúme tools and “Pray 4 Movement” to evangelize and impact the world for Christ. He fervently believes that prayer is the foundation of any productive discipleship effort, and he gives tips and experiences that can help others reach the lost. Michael encourages a strengthening of individual prayer life as well as joining with others locally and globally in corporate prayer to break down barriers to evangelism.
Resources:
https://pray4movement.org/
https://pray4movement.org/ramadan/
https://pray4movement.org/
Show Description:
Marlene serves as a leader and resources for Christian work in South African and many African countries. She was one of the early adopters and has seen Zúme create vision and clarity among nationals and expatriates in her organization.
She seen surprising responses among even administrative personnel from sending home offices, who find that they can be part of disciple making in ways that they did not expect.
In the early days, she asked teams to just "check out" the training, but she would not do that again. She found that she would approach teams to not come to Zúme in an evaluation mode, but rather with a commitment to do it and experience the fruit of action.
Show Description:
Eric Derry reflects on the origins of Zúme from the first prayer meeting, and his first steps in engaging with the regional leadership around Kentucky, and the challenges of growing the tool.
It's amazing to see the width and reach of the training now. Especially, with the innovation of the online training ... Zúme on Zoom.
Show Notes:
Zúme on Zoom Playbook : https://zume.vision/playbook/zume-training-on-zoom/
https://zume.vision/playbook/zume-training-on-zoom/
Song Cao and his team have led hundreds of trainings in Mandarin Chinese among people in mainland China. He shares some of his top stories, some of the big challenges that face the ordinary person getting trained, and some of the amazing hunger and surprising growth for these trainings.
Episode Description
Doug Lucas, president of Team Expansion and an active movement practitioner, reflects on the blessing and value Zúme has been on his personal journey of disciple making and its contribution in the global movement of the Kingdom.
Episode Notes
Team Expansionhttps://teamexpansion.org
More Discipleshttps://moredisciples.com
Episode Transcription
Narrator: I'm excited to talk with you, Doug and to see what God is doing in the ways that you are seeing Zúme and using it, but also creating these alternative ways to mix and match it. I would just love to hear your vision.
Doug: Thanks so much, Mary. It's an honor to be asked. I'm delighted anytime anybody asks anything about Zúme, so I'm I'm happy to respond. Zúme to me is a kind of dream come true in a way. I have to confess, Mary, I had trouble getting my arms around what DMMs are. But when Zúme rolled out I finally had a set of, I don't know what you call, hat hooks or coat hooks to be able to hang ideas on. I could finally fashion the answer I was gonna give if somebody asked what are disciple making movements. I finally had a way to describe it.
Narrator: So good. How are you seeing Zúme work in existing churches?
Doug: It's a hassle or a challenge for existing churches because they pretty much want to maintain their flock. I don't want to lump all of the existing church leaders together in one place because I know that everybody's different. But it seems like a lot of churches are worried about losing control, identity, or their brand.
So when they're doing these new congregations it's like they roll out these box churches, these alternative sites. And they try to make them all look alike. They've all got to have the same screen and they have to have the same projection of the same preacher. They build these 30 foot tall screens so that he stands there in front of the congregation and looks identical.
That's why it's really hard to to introduce something like Zúme which is so different. One of the things we've looked for is churches that have a high value on multiplication of disciples and if they care about that then they should care about Zúme. One of the things we volunteered for them is that they tell us what they need Zúme to be like.
I'll give you a concrete example. We worked with a church up in southwestern Ohio. They basically said that they didn't have a single meeting ever anytime in their church that was 2 hours long so. They wanted to know how they do Zúme so that it would be shorter.
When they first rolled out Zúme it was basically packaged as a two-hour identity feature and if you didn't do the two hours then you just couldn't do the discipleship course. But I'm so grateful to the developers of Zúme and to the thought leaders that they've now opened that up so we can now take the individual components and help a local church like this one in southwestern Ohio. They've designed their Zúme course so that it fits their culture and it's 1 hour long. This way it'll fit into their existing components.
That's one of the things that we see a church do a lot of times. They restack the components so they don't leave anything out but so that it fits within a length of meeting. For instance, the format that they already have is just one idea.
Narrator: So great. It's amazing how in Zúme you can use the tools and the sessions as it is on the website but you can also just pull them out and do them in a different order or a different timeline. The creative possibilities without losing the depth of content and wisdom are amazing. Curtis talked about this a little bit in one of our episodes together.
Doug: You're hitting the nail on the head. Can I tell you a quick little background story on Zúme?
Narrator: Please do!
Doug: I was on the nine person team for like the first year that it was rolling out. And I remember the meeting in which they brought us session 6,
Episode Description Terry and Amy Ruff have a long history of movement leadership in West Africa. Their leadership team has been training Zúme before it was Zúme, but now with Zúme they overcome the challenges of illiteracy, poverty of media or internet access, and other challenges to see fruitful multiplication.
People who do not read and write can be underestimated regarding what they can do as disciples. But Terry and Amy are seeing these oral learners succeed in faithfulness and disciple-making, if time is taken to serve them in ways they can access the training.
Training cross-culturally requires patience and discernment and ends up meaning investing in the few.
Episode Transcription Narrator: Let’s kick it off by hearing what you are excited about right now in your Zúme ministry.
Terry: Well, about the time COVID hit a year ago, or a little over a year ago, I was wondering when we would come to the US. Because of health issues I have to come every 6 months to have the doctor checks and stuff. What we were going to do? I knew we could do some meetings with Zoom. But I immediately found out that with Zúme coaching I was coaching people all over the continent of Africa. The excitement we’re both having is those that are committed and get it and implement it. And you have to sometimes train and coach a lot of people before you find those but that’s what I’m most excited about. What about you?
Amy: I just finished a session with 4 ladies in Kenya and they had already started some simple churches. Like a DBS. We trained in the tools in Zúme, they were very excited and started implementing them right away. They’ve already started training several of their leaders and multiplying the simple churches there in their area in Kenya. Really exciting stories of transformation. It’s pretty exciting.
Narrator: That’s great!
Terry: There’s about 7 people that are implementing of the ones that I’ve been coaching. The one I’m most excited about already has a district set up in Rwanda where he has leaders in those areas. He said he’s like to the second or third generation and some of them are going to third generation. He’s just a young kid but he does everything that Zúme says to do. He’s just so excited that he’s seeing results like that.
Narrator: Amen! So how did you all first connect to Zúme?
Amy: Well, we were trained in February of 2015 with Curtis Sergeant in Burkina Faso. We took two of our main leaders and they were just super excited developed their vision and went back to implement it. We’ve been connected with Curtis, Eric Darry, and different people with Zúme. Zúme incorporates all of the tools that we use in our disciple making movement but we don’t use Zúme on the field per se.
It’s all oral so we’re not using the the app or the online training but we are using all the same tools. So they started doing that and
then Terry and I got connected to being Zúme coaches. That’s when we got involved, when Zúme came online.
Terry: The thing that’s hard for a lot of people to understand is that, particularly in our context where it’s a village context where 80% of the people can’t read so it’s a totally oral culture, people know several languages so they’re very intelligent. It’s not an issue of whether or not they can do it, it’s an issue of they didn’t know they had permission. So when you approach a Muslim background person and they’re living in a village, they just want whatever help they can get to survive. Because where we live the poverty situation is pretty extreme as well. Mud huts and thatched roofs are very common. And they’ll have phones but they don’t have smartphones, so all of our key leaders in the different countries that we’re in have basically memorized Zúme by listening to it over, and over, and over. Then they repeat it with with the people they’re training until they have it memorized. Sometimes that’ll take a while. You have to have monthly meetings and use a tool called the coaching checklist to see how they’re doing and also different tools. But what we’re finding is they just run with it and when they find out that they can baptize people, they have tools to lead someone to Christ, to facilitate a discipleship group, etc. then they go out and share it with their friends. So it’s pretty neat to watch that at work.
Narrator: Amazing. So how has it gone from you all having the training before Zúme existed and you were putting it into practice by sharing with others and then Zúme came online and you all have been running with it and coaching others? How has it spread, like you said, all over Africa? How did that happen?
Terry: Well, when the Zúme coaching started and we went back home to the US because of COVID over a year and a half ago or whenever COVID first hit, we came not knowing exactly what was going to happen. And in that process they started assigning me people that they had in Africa. They run ads and people check that they’re interested in a coach and if they’re in Africa, they send them to Amy and I. Amy’s approach is different than mine, but I personally I like the one-on-one. So I have one-on-one appointments once a week to go through the 10 lessons. Then I go to a monthly coaching after that. I encourage them to follow up on the the 3 month plan that they’re to do at the end of the training. To those that implement, I continue to pour my life into but to those that don’t I tell them “sorry”. From the beginning I tell them “if you don’t implement then I will not waste my time or your time”.
I mean, I’m at an age where I could care less if they don’t agree with that because we got to get the job done. That is, reach all of the continent of Africa and africans, and finish the Great Commission. I think that they’re very capable of doing that.
Narrator: Amen. How about for you Amy? What’s been your approach?
Amy: Well, I like the class with the group. I like the interaction between the participants when we go through the discipleship training. It is difficult sometimes to find implementers, but everyone really appreciates the training. So if they’re implementing their 3 month plan at the end then I’ll follow up with them on monthly coaching like Terry does. Terry also gives them a lot of extra tools too. He really helps them because most of the africans are working in oral cultures. So he’ll give them downloads of languages for all the different tools that are out there like the the audio Bibles, the Jesus film, lumo and whatever he has. He’s made a collection of a lot of languages and a lot of oral tools.
Terry: I have them on my Dropbox and I just give them a link to the specific language in their area that they can download (if they have Internet bundles to do that). It’s a challenge, but for the most part our experience has been that most people underestimate somebody that can’t read and write. So why try to help them understand the Bible because they’re not qualified? That really is the belief of the traditional church in Ghana. I think most people would think you’d have to have somebody that at least can read and write. Well, tell that to Jesus! I mean, Peter, James, and John, his inner circle were unknown fishermen. He lived in an oral culture as well and it was a real privilege if you had education like Matthew, Luke, Paul… but the majority of the people were just like the people living in Africa. They had no access to education.
So I spent a lot of time emphasizing playing their strengths. They’re oral learners. If they can hear the Bible they’ll listen to 25 chapters a week if you tell them to. If they’re muslim background believers, they ask “What am I supposed to do?”, and you tell them and they do it. It doesn’t always work that way with church people in Ghana because we have a lot of traditional churches that meet right there where we live.
But there’s no unreached people going to them. Members are all from tribes that have a high percentage of Christians and are open to Christianity. However, if you’re from like a tribe like the Gonja which is the tribe we’ve been focusing on, they resist. I mean, they will reject you from the family if you go to a church building.
It’s been interesting seeing how things work. The focus is on the many unreached people that are in the same position where they can’t read and write, also there are so many ministries that have spent decades creating oral materials. They can listen with their ears in their mother tongue and they understand it instantly.
So I spend a lot of time making sure that people I coach have access to those languages in their mother tongue so they can help people that are oral learners.
Narrator: That’s so cool! So you look at Zúme and there are words involved either in the videos or in the text pieces. But what I’m hearing you say is that they’re getting to see the videos because they can listen to them. And so the Zúme biblical discipleship course even works for those who aren’t able to read and write. And it’s being just as effective.
Terry: Yeah, I mean that’s the beauty of Zúme. It’s in 40 languages now and they’re going to keep adding more languages. That increases the access for people to listen to it for themselves in their mother tongue.
I’ve been coaching some people from Somalia and how would I ever do that? That’s a very dangerous place for somebody like me to go to. But here I am coaching people from that culture over the Internet that know that language. They’re Christians, they’ve already accepted Christ, and they found Zúme online. So I’ve been able to coach them. There’s a lady in a hotel that one of the people that I coached met with and she wanted to start training so that’s how I that’s how I started training her. So, who knows? I mean, it really feels like you’re a part of God moving the pieces and connecting the players to get the job done. That’s another exciting component about this, because then God connects you with who he wants reached and who he wants trained. He even has connected us to organizations that are have representatives in all of Africa that we can say, “This person is implementing, do you have somebody there that you could send and would you go, model it, observe them doing it, see where they are and how we can take them to the next level?”
So in all of that, God does the arranging. It’s not any of my ideas. I’m sitting here just responding to what God wants me to do. It’s pretty neat.
Narrator: I think that’s awesome. What cross-culturally people coaching tips would you give? Or what are some helpful things that you’ve learned?
Terry: [to Amy] Go ahead, your turn. [laughs]
Amy: I think patience and finding the people that are truly sincere is important. That is, people that are not just looking to get another training or people who are looking to connect with a westerner or whatever other motive. But investing in the few that really implement. Just being patient and understanding Internet issues and language issues. They can speak English but it sometimes requires a bit more patience to truly understand what they’re saying.
Terry: Also reflective listening or asking them to repeat what you just said. Because if they can’t repeat it then they didn’t hear it. But in their culture they won’t admit they didn’t hear it. So you gotta you gotta think in terms of “how can I make sure they heard it” and, like Amy said, have patience.
In our culture in in in Ghana they’re always 10 to 20 minutes late for an appointment. Well, we’re living there and that’s them. Also, africans many times (at least Ghanaians) say they’re on their way or they’re coming. That means that sometime over the next day or two they’ll be there. [Laughter]
Because it’s a relational culture. They may run across somebody they have to help or they have to talk to and socialize with on the way. So if they say that they’re on their way or that they’re coming, usually that means they will be there shortly, but it still can be an hour or two late.
That’s the thing. Whatever culture you’re in, you just have to move with that with that culture. From an American perspective with my time consciousness I would look at that as almost a negative intake that requires a lot of patience.
But Africans, on the other side, they’ll drink the water, they’ll eat whatever’s put before them, they know 5 to 7 languages, they’ll go without being paid, they have what it takes, and they pray beyond whatever I’ve ever known as prayer. They have what it takes to finish the task.
It’s worth figuring out how you can invest into African people so that you’ll get the fruit of the the the Kingdom God and the Great Commission finally finished. And that’s what we’re shooting for.
Narrator: Amen. Something fun is that you both are getting to do this as a married couple. Both of you are engaging in Zúme and are seeing God use it and multiply it, not only across a city or country but a continent. I would love to hear about what that has been like; the highs and the lows.
Amy: [Laughter] Well, Terry’s really hard of hearing and when he starts coaching and he gets excited and gets passionate he gets louder and louder and louder.
Terry: She has to move to another room.
Amy: Yeah, we can’t coach in the same room because we can’t coach have coaching sessions at the same time. But he’s very
passionate about about this discipleship coaching and helping people who really want to finish the Great Commission.
It’s been good. It’s good that we can do Zúme coaching because we’re aging and it’s something that we can continue to do as long as we’re up right. It’s a good feeling to know that we can still have some some usefulness in the Kingdom.
Terry: With the original training by Curtis Sergeant from that point until now we have around 4000 discipleship groups with about 25000 people attending those groups in a Muslim context. The two of us have been able to watch that. At first we were very much involved and now at this point nobody hardly even know knows. There’s many of the new people that don’t even know we exist, which is what we want because we want it nationally led, we don’t want it led by foreigners.
Amy and I have watched that process and I think that’s helped in the in the coaching process too because we have watched even though we are now not on the ground necessarily in the bush. We have listened to the stories and we know what works and what doesn’t work, at least in an oral context.
There’s been a lot of things we’ve watched happen and then we feel God brought the discipleship coaching as an opportunity to expand without having to go anywhere. We could continue being where we’re at there in Ghana or if we’re in the US. And we could continue impacting Ghana and that has worked out beautifully.
Narrator: So good. What has surprised you or maybe shocked you or what aw something unexpected on this journey of getting to use Zúme?
Terry: The first thing that I would say surprised me the most was that when we first started working with churches trying to train pastors, but that’s a different model than what Zúme is talking about. How to do church doesn’t with Zúme doesn’t require Bible college trained pastors, doesn’t require buildings, doesn’t require a ton of stuff. If you’re from a traditional mode, and especially in Africa they’re even more traditional than the United States, if you don’t have a Bible college trained pastor, then it’s not legit. So that surprised me.
I remember the there was a great guy named Nathan; he’s a trainer for Big Life. And we said we needed the second
module of the of the the Zúme training. So he offered to come he paid his own way and everything and trained our guys. When he got there he asked us how many of all the pastors we had trained. It was literally hundreds. And it was also very expensive because it included transportation, feeding them while were there, giving them diplomas at the end (they’re all big on these diplomas).
Nathan asked us how many were implementers. Isaac, the main Ghanaian that is head over all the the movement, and I looked at each other and we couldn’t think of one person that implemented. Not one person. Because after the training was through, they went back to doing things as normal.
If you’re from some churches, you can’t serve communion unless you’re a pastor, you can’t baptize unless you’re a pastor, etc. So a lot of the things in traditional churches by some denominations (because we work across the nominations) you couldn’t do. That really surprised us.
We thought this wouldn’t be like this since they live in an oral culture. We though it would be something that they would really latch onto. But there are lot of the traditional church people. We bless and want them to continue doing what they’re doing, but it’s not going to finish the Great Commission. This is because the “legacy approach” is not multiplying quick enough. My focus is we’ve got to figure out ways of multiplying at a rate that exceeds population growth. And what Zúme does is it gives an opportunity to do that.
That’s what surprised me. I thought that the local pastors would be really excited, and a lot of times they are at first. But then when they start thinking that they have to go check with their district superintendent and then they say “no, you can’t do that.” You have all this red tape. Then you have to decide you’re not trying to proselytize them or steal them; you don’t want to do that ever. So we just focus more with Muslims. They have no background and they seem to be wide open to doing whatever they’re taught to do.
What would you say surprises you, Amy?
Amy: Something that’s a joy it hearing the stories of transformation. That’s what I get excited about. For example, a life that got changed because they prayer walked and met a person of peace. So that’s exciting to me.
Terry: Yeah, when one of our main leaders, Moses… Isaac and Moses are like the two main leaders over the movements. Moses just last year started a full-blown disciple making movement in Burkina Faso, Benin, and Togo. In one year. During COVID. [Laughter]
And when you listen to them… When they get back we have them come and just talk and then Amy types and I read it. And when I read it, I go “Wow! This is like reading a book of Acts!” All these people that they meet, all the miracles that happen along the way, the people that come to Christ, the groups that spawn immediately once they find the people or person of peace. And they just focus on helping that person peace reach their household, which is a natural connection.
It’s not like going to every house and knocking on every door. Actually, in Luke 10 and Matthew 10, where it talks about the person of peace it says “don’t go from house to house”. I actually left out those two passages as applicable to us when I lived in the United States. But they’re all about everything we do now. So it’s just been neat watching and reading what looks a lot like stories you read in the book of Acts or in the in the Bible.
Narrator: What do you wish more people knew or understood about Zúme?
Terry: I feel like I’m talking too much.
Amy: No, that’s alright. I wish that they knew how simple and how important it is for every believer to be a disciple maker. That it’s simple it’s just a matter of doing it. And the enemy doesn’t want it done so there’ll be lots of excuses why not to do it. And so I wish that they could grasp the transformation that happens with Zúme and get excited about the
advancement of the Kingdom.
Terry: Yeah, I think the biggest criticism I get about Zúme is always from traditional church people. Because it’s so different. “You mean I have to make disciples? I thought that’s what I paid the pastor to do.”
And really, they’ve been faithful. “I was told to come to church every week, faithfully hear the sermon, implement it as much as I can but there’s nobody to hold me accountable. So I can implement or I can not implement. I was told to give an offering, I was told…” And they’ve done all those things! They’re doing everything they were told to do but nobody’s ever told them how to go and make disciples, how to win somebody to Jesus and how to teach them to win people to Jesus, lead discipleship groups that make disciples, groups multiplying groups, forming movements that multiply movements and the Great Commission is done! In our generation!
But the Great Comission won’t be done if people said “that’s not my job, that’s the master job”.
So a lot of people look at Zúme from traditional churches and they just don’t see how it works because it’s expecting things that we’ve never expected before. And to me, in a big way, that’s the downside. I mean I’ve served in megachurches for over 25 years. I’m not trying to say that megachurches and traditional churches are bad it’s just that we’re not finishing the Great Commission. 2000 years have passed and we’re further behind because the population is growing way faster than we are growing.
So it’s going to take everybody to be in love with Jesus so much that if he said go and make disciples of all nations that we’re going to learn how to do it and do it. Everybody. Every Christian. And if we can’t get that done to the magnitude that we’ll get it done it means the Great Commission will not get done either.
And that breaks my heart because God deserves so much more than what the Church is doing as far as obeying his Great Commission. So our retirement is to finish the Great Commission and to die doing it.
I and look at a lot of the people that I’ve worked with in traditional churches that reached retirement, they go golfing all the time, they come to church weekly to pay their dues to God but they don’t really get it.
God intended every person that goes to hell to be around his throne receiving his glory and sharing in his glory for eternity. So we’re cheating God! How can we say we love God and let that happen? So we can go golf?
The older I get, the more passionate I get and the more vocal I get trying to challenge people, you know? And that’s why I’m in Ghana, because I work with people that are open to this more. I love the people here and I’m utterly amazed what people that can’t read and write are doing in comparison to the megachurch experiences I’ve had in the US. I mean, so what if you have 5000 attend? COVID shuts it down and you can’t even go in to the church building.
For like a year everything was shut down yet during that time we kept meeting in groups. They were all meeting outside under a mango tree with social distancing, so things kept multiplying.
Some people will be frustrated with what I just said but in reality it’s not going to get done with one approach. It’s going to take something that multiplies like crazy. Curtis has done it in India, he’s done it in China… He’s trained people all over.
Right now I have a guy that I’ve been coaching that’s not that well. I’m not going to mention the country but he’s in a very closed country. He’s a retired guy paying his own, he’s using retirement to go. And it’s beautiful watching how God prepared him since and to think that I had anything to do with encouraging him… I sent him to Curtis’s MetaCamp training. That was a huge impact on him and then this guy came to Africa and spent a few months with us there and that’s where I started coaching him on Zúme.
Then he started using it online with people in that area, and boom! He has a whole team! He goes there, and I hope it all works. Hopefully he didn’t get put in jail because he could if they find out what he’s actually doing. All of that because God wants it more than I do. So He opens up the doors, makes the connections, and boom! That’s what’s most exciting about this thing. Just watching all the things that God’s doing.
Narrator: What would you say to encourage and strengthen those that are using Zúme but maybe going through a rough season or just having a hard time and feeling discouraged?
Amy: Keep going. Keep coaching. In the parable of the sower there were four seeds and only one of them produced fruit. If people implement, work with them. If they don’t, keep looking for more people to train. Don’t get discouraged with those who don’t implement, but focus and pour into those who do.
Terry: Yeah, those that are teachable and you can see they’re trying are the ones that will produce fruit. It’s almost like the “person of peace” concept where it applies to everything, even those you coach. Even if they accept Jesus and all that stuff but when it comes to it they don’t make disciples, well then at a point… I love that in the training, Curtis emphasizes a lot that you’re actually causing more judgment to come down on them the more you pour into them and they don’t obey. So it’s better for you to stop than to fill them with so much knowledge that God will judge more harshly
for their disobedience. Focus on those that are obedient and realize that you can’t make people obey. So work with those that will, basically. That’s the bottom line: work with those that obey.
Amy: And keep casting the seeds.
Terry: Yeah. I’ve had some people that I have been coaching that went through lulls too, but then all of a sudden I stopped coaching them. Then all of a sudden they got a call and they had a breakthrough. So then we started back up again. The ingredient is, if they’re excited and obeying then continue to pour into them. But just leave it to God; be faithful training those that are obeying and invest in them. Curtis always says, “invest in the few”.
We have two people, Isaac and Moses, that are overseeing all of what I talked about. I’ve trained hundreds but those two were able to get nationals to buy into it much better than I was. Now they’re in like 8 other countries and working with even other organizations, helping them in disciple making movement stuff because they want to reach the whole continent of Africa.
So that’s our goal is that we’ll have DMMs in every country in Africa and Africans will finish the great commission in our lifetime. I didn’t write in a strategic plan, “meet with this organization and recruit them” to let Isaac train up their people. They met Isaac because they were invited I mean, it was a God invitation.
Through all that we watched how it blossomed into where now he can see very easily how that happened. With my coaching I’m always connecting him and this organization with people that I coach in various countries. I think it’s like 17 countries were I’m coaching people. So watch God do it; it’s just amazing. Be faithful though, if he gives you an open door; walk through it.
That’s worked for us so far. We’ve been super excited about it.
Narrator: So good. So as we wrap up, are there any last moments that you’d like to share?
Amy: Just implement, you know? Be a practitioner. Don’t give up. God is in this; we’ve seen God do amazing things through the Zúme. Just be patient with yourself and with Him. He’ll open the doors, you walk through them as as he opens them and you’ll see amazing things happen.
Terry: Yeah. To me it keeps coming back to: “God wants this more than we want it”. So be available and then he will use you to accomplish the task. Don’t take yourself too seriously. If you have to wait a month longer or two months where it seems like a dry season and nothing’s happening, trust that God wants this more than you do. When the time is right He’ll open the door and you walk through it. That’s what you have to focus on. That’s our focus totally.
Episode Description Hear from Curtis Sergeant about the origins, the vision, and the current progress of Zúme’s training of multiplying disciples.
Curtis reflects on the origins of movement approaches in international missions, but generally not in the United States. He discusses how this gap of adoption of movement thinking in the United States and the failing strength of the U.S. church was an early motivator for Zúme.
Within a small group of movement practitioners, known as the Jonathan Project, the idea began to form around the need for an online way to train effectively. This project was leading the ambitious effort to see 1 million new Christian groups and 1000 people groups engaged in 10 years.
As this project concluded, the group realized that they needed some online options for training. The issue of accessibility regarding different languages was a top motivation. There were many languages that did not have good trainers available.
Zúme was also conceived as a way to filter for active practitioners. The reality facing trainers is that even after the investment of months into individuals and good portion of those trained do not continue as faithful movement practitioners.
Curtis led the original subteam that began working on Zúme. It has become a community of volunteers building, coaching, and funding this training and global coaching effort.
Episode Transcription Narrator: Curtis, can you just tell us a little bit about the history of Zúme? I know it’s a big question. So much has happened just in the last few years but where did this idea even start?
Curtis: First of all, maybe from a conceptual standpoint or motivational standpoint. This whole idea of movements, church planting movements or disciple making movements really started overseas in various countries in Asia back around the very early 90s.
Breakthrough started to happen and then it started to be used in other countries. It notably jumped over to Africa in addition to other places in Asia. A lot of new things were happening sort of in the missions world and it didn’t really impact the United States first of all.
The approaches were developed for very unreached areas and there also wasn’t as much in the US. As time went on, movements continued to make a big impact in more and more places all around the world.
It sort of became obvious that this could be helpful for work in the US because generally the churches are stagnated or declining. There was a need for that, so that was part of what led to the development of Zúme.
In terms of specifics, there was a group of about a half a dozen people who were church planting movement practitioners. These people were meeting together. It was called the Jonathan Project.
The goal of the Jonathan Project was to start church planting efforts using movement approaches among a thousand people groups within a 10 year period that planted at least a million new congregations.
That small group of us we would meet together usually once a year live and then in between virtually. A number of us were from the United States originally, so we started talking about how we were feeling a bit of a burden for our home country as we were pursuing this project.
Just as a point of interest, with that group we met our goals a couple of years early. So we officially disbanded.
I’m thinking and this is embarrassing, but I don’t remember the year we officially launched. Maybe it was 2017, but I do know the date was February 14th. We picked Valentine’s Day as the launch date because of the whole “love God, love others” emphasis within Zúme.
So February 14th, Valentine’s Day, is the birthday and I’m thinking it was 2017 but we officially launched when the idea came up. One of the factors that led to Zúme being online was the sense that we needed some online options and that was related to several factors…
One factor was accessibility because we knew that we wanted it in a number of different languages. In some of those languages there weren’t a lot of good trainers who could train live at least at the scale that would be needed within those languages.
So part of it was just accessibility. Part of it also was actually because it would provide a way to filter people who were trained. So all over the world people who train in these topics in live settings discover that not every person who goes through training will then follow through as a committed and dedicated practitioner of the things that they’ve been trained in.
So what typically happens is, I’ll just make up some numbers to give a sense of scale, but maybe you train 20 people and you invest significantly in those 20 people for several months. Post training, before it becomes apparent that 15 of them aren’t going to continue as faithful or committed practitioners of what you’ve trained them in. So in a sense you’ve wasted a lot of time and effort investing deeply into those other 15 people for over a period of several months. That just gets frustrating after a while. So Zúme a in a sense provides an opportunity for people to self filter. If they go through the entire training course and they’re faithful in doing that and applying that and so on then they’re wanting more coaching or mentoring or training, you can be confident that they know what they’re asking for and they’re much more likely to use it. So that was another big factor.
All of those were sort of pieces in the thinking behind the establishment of Zúme. I sort of volunteered from within the group to be the point person for developing Zúme. I provided the leadership to pull together a team of people, including some of those that were in the Jonathan Project, to work together on developing Zúme.
We have continued to meet regularly since then and as we’ve developed it. It’s been interesting. We don’t have a 501c3, we don’t have an organization, we don’t have a bank account. It’s just purely a network of people who are committed to doing this who are working together to provide funds to provide the work and whatever needs to happen to develop it.
All of us are doing other things full-time but volunteer our efforts towards Zúme and so developing this project or this tool has become a community effort.
I’m not sure where to go from there, do you have any other specific questions that you want me to dig into further?
Narrator: Super helpful just what you’re sharing. It’s amazing looking at this timeline on zume.vision/roots and just to think as you talked about it being on Valentine’s Day 2017. That’s not even five years ago! But it’s great to see all that is happening through Zúme in the US and globally.
It has here on the timeline that around April 2015 “the project was envisioned”. What was happening then? Was there anything significant? Why is that moment marked on this timeline?
Curtis: That was one of our face-to-face meetings for that Jonathan project group. It just came up that we were seeing that we would probably meet our goals in terms of the global impact. But we were expressing concerns for the fate of the church in the United States.
So I had this idea for an online expression of a training and got up and sketched it out. I felt like i had a download from the Lord on what it would look like. And it’s very much what it is today. I just kind of sketched all that out on the board.
Of course, you can’t launch it just from having the concept. We had to meet together, form a team, start doing some of the initial website development, things like that, before we could launch. That’s what happened in the gap between the envisioning and the February 2017 launch.
Narrator: From a download to an upload!
Curtis: Yeah, exactly.
Narrator: As I look through this timeline, I see a couple of patterns. There are a few different launches like “relaunches” that happened… like the latest of a most recent version from October 2019. What’s that process been like? Just in having relaunches and improving, different tweaks, etc? What’s been helpful in those relaunches?
Curtis: Some of those relaunches revolved around figuring out how the website worked, what it looked like, and things like that. It was tied to figuring out better ways to present the content of the course.
On that timeline it also mentions the first efforts in using different approaches. For example, the Somali training effort was our first use of putting it on SD cards for distribution in highly persecuted, low-tech
environments.
Then you see that the Maryland saturation effort was just to get people trained in every county in the state. Also to see what trying to get geographic distribution looks like because a lot of the goals on Zúme are tied to geographic saturation at some level. For the US, for example, we break it down into census tracts which are 5000 people. So essentially for every 5000 people we’re wanting to have training groups and simple churches planted out of that. Maryland was just an example of what it looks like practically at least at initial saturation levels.
Narrator: Let’s talk about the name Zúme. How did that happen?
Curtis: I don’t even remember for sure who it was; it might have been Eric Derry. But I’m not sure somebody in that Jonathan Project group threw that out as we were just talking about names. And we liked it so we took it. Zúme is the Greek word for “leaven”. The idea is referencing the Kingdom parable where Jesus said the Kingdom of Heaven is like a woman who took yeast and mixed it into a large amount of flour until it was all leavened. So this idea of simple people with simple tools but having a major saturating impact and was what we were going for.
Narrator: When we go through more episodes of this podcast we’ll get to see a glimpse of some of the incredible ways that God is using the Zúme Discipleship Training to see disciples and churches multiply across the globe.
What is the big vision for Zúme? If dreams could come true, what would be happening?
Curtis: The dream is saturating the globe with multiplying disciples and multiplying churches. That’s what it’s really about. We have specific goals related to different population groups. If you go to the zume.vision site that you referenced where that history is overviewed, you can look at some maps on there. As you zoom in on the maps you’ll notice that you can currently get down to county levels globally or whether whatever those are called in each country. Very soon we’ll launch what you might determine as village level units globally. So it goes all the way down to communities in the cities and villages. So that’s in a sense the smallest unit. And you can configure those maps so that you can look at progress towards saturation. So that idea of saturating the globe just like that Zúme saturated the flour and leavened all of it, that’s the vision we’re after.
Narrator: Amen! There are so many stories that are coming out from using Zúme so I won’t ask you for your favorite one. But, what are some of the first stories that come to mind? Or what are some quick glimpses of how God has been using Zúme over the last few years?
Curtis: It’s the simple things that bring me joy a lot of the time. For instance, you’ll hear stories about some kid or some housewife or whatever in some random place that goes through the discipleship course and they get confidence. They’ve never shared their faith before but now they’re sharing their faith with people, people are coming to the Lord through that and then they’re knowing how to equip those people to grow in their faith and to reach others. That activation of ordinary believers all over the world with these simple discipleship tools is fulfilling because that’s the idea: every disciple of Christ being actively engaged in advancing the Kingdom.
Secondarily, the places that are particularly difficult to reach with the Gospel or that haven’t had much access to disciple and church multiplication training are getting reached. For example, it’s exciting to have lots of churches planted in Somalia as a result of that training in the somali language. Those churches would not have been planted otherwise.
Somalia has been a particularly difficult place to reach with the Gospel because of all the security issues. To see significant evangelism advance in a place like that is exciting.
I haven’t looked recently but perhaps 6 months ago the number of registrations from different languages and different countries was kind of surprising. They were countries like India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and so on. About 7 of the top 10 were in very unreached countries.
The United States ranked 9th in terms of the number of registrations by country. So just to see that hunger for this type of biblical training and equipping in those places where it’s much more challenging to do live trainings because of the security situations. Those countries are getting access at a significant level to that kind of training.
Narrator: A pattern that many listeners could probably relate to. I would think that to create something that is seeing such significant impact is not without its hardships. In the journey, this wasn’t a total smooth carpool-lane-on-the-highway type of creation. Could you speak about some of the challenges that you all had to to face and overcome in these last few years to see Zúme where it is today?
Curtis: One of the things I think has actually been helpful but it was a little difficult was, as I mentioned, that we don’t have an organization, we don’t, have a staff we don’t have a bank account, etc. We haven’t put money into advertising other than free advertising on Facebook because we got a loan of the free AdWords provided to nonprofits from two organizations. So we’ve got $20,000 dollars a month now that we can access for that but we haven’t done any paid advertising. And so, growing it and especially developing a significant platform like that does take money. We started with just what those of us who were involved would donate personally and then as people began to be aware of it they would ask us how they could donate, so we’d figure out ways to use that. But we’ve done this very inexpensively, like “bubble gum and baling wire” level of development.
This, in a sense, has forced us to be more efficient more focused in our use of these funds. Mostly because they’re so limited it forces us to work in a way that we’re seeing organic growth since we can’t do paid ads like so many christian online ministries that dump huge amounts of money into online and advertising.
Since we’re not in a position to do this, it makes it more challenging but in a sense more sustainable. This is due to the ways that we’re working with that bring about organic growth, which is more stable in a sense.
Narrator: Is there anything that you have been surprised by in this journey? Or anythin that happened unexpectedly? And that could be in a good way also.
Curtis: Yeah, in fact I will take a good way. I need to go back and look at the real numbers but around the beginning of the COVID pandemic, if memory serves me correctly, we were seeing maybe a thousand users per month on the platform. Then very shortly after COVID started we started seeing 50,000 unique users per month. That continued up until about 3 or 4 months ago when we took a little drop in that. But we’re still well over 30,000 unique users a month, even now.
It was as if we got the basics ready and functioning okay just in time for the pandemic to hit. When this interest increased so dramatically and that is obviously not something we planned or prepared for per se. We were just as just as surprised as everybody else. But it was as if God had helped us get ready just in time to in a sense take advantage of the opportunity of the increased online activity.
Narrator: That’s amazing how God is using that time of crisis and Zúme just to see it take off. What do you wish more people knew or understood about Zúme?
Curtis: That’s a great question. I think my first response would be that I wish more people understood that Zúme can be used as a reinforcement of things that I hope they’re already equipping people in. One of the lessons that I don’t know how I delayed in learning, but I’m significantly delayed in learning it, is the lesson that reinforcement is good and necessary in terms of equipping people and training people in areas of ministry. And I think that something that a lot of people under-appreciate is how important that is. And I wish people understood that Zúme could be a great reinforcing tool because it’s available anytime in lots of languages. People can use it to reinforce some really important lessons in terms of online ministries.
I think there are a lot of online ministries that would benefit greatly from tying into Zúme because it’s a sort of “niche product”, if you will. There are lots of online evangelism things, there are a pretty fair number of online discipleship tools, but very few of them do a very great job of having accountability structures built into them. Also, very few of them lead to online church. So in a sense, Zúme is close to unique in some of those aspects of getting all the way to church and the way that accountability structures are built in. It’s a great supplement for other online tools.
For instance, if there’s an online discipleship program, this would be a great additional step for the people who participate in it. For sure if there’s an online evangelism site, tying people into Zúme could greatly benefit those people that visiting and coming to faith through those sites. It’s a little bit of a niche product and one that i think would greatly supplement or complement other ministries.
Narrator: Soon in an episode we’re going to talk about all these different tools and software and how they integrate together like Disciple Tools and many others, but something I would love for us to highlight is Zúme’s real-time map. It shows the progression of the blessing, the vision cast, people real’ ‘time around the world that are using Zúme, that are sharing it with others, etc. I remember you saying at one point that Google can’t even track the amount that it’s being used. Can you talk about that real-time map?
Curtis: Yeah. On that map in the right hand column it lists all of the places and what they’re studying or doing right now. Then on the map itself it only indicates about the last 10 hours. The list reflects 100 hours of activity but the map only is capable of showing about the last 10 hours of activity. So if you can if you look at you can visualize it with 10 times that much going on. It’s pretty fun to watch some of the places that pop up on the map.
Narrator: It’s incredible to see in real-time literally every continent maybe except for Antarctica, I’m not sure. But everywhere that people are engaging Zúme and pursuing not only making disciples and passing along but even growing in our own holiness. And i think that’s something that really stood out for me the first time i hopped on here talking about the vision of holiness, obedience, and love.
Before we hop to that real quick I do want to share those who are listening that you can find this real-time map at zume.vision under “goals” you’ll see a spot you can click for maps. It’s just one way that you can find this map that we talked about.
So Curtis, as we wrap up this episode talking about history and even just some things to know and understand about Zúme, could you speak about why it’s so significant this way that you’ve highlighted holiness, obedience, and love as one of the first community goals of Zúme?
Curtis: When we talk about wanting to multiply or we’re talking about saturation, it’s possible to multiply bad things. It’s possible to saturate with bad things. So one of the first things we talk about in training is being a disciple worth multiplying. It starts with the being not the doing. This is critical in the Kingdom of God. We first need to be disciples that God would delight to multiply and then we can worry about multiplying. That, in a nutshell, is how I would explain it.
Narrator: So when people hop on zume.vision or zume.training and they see the button “join our community”, what does that mean?
Curtis: Essentially, you’re registering for the site. It’s also possible to use the site without registering but there are advantages to registering. For example, you can get a coach for free indefinitely. You can also have your own dashboard that will quickly let you see your progress not only going through the discipleship course but also in applying the lessons from the course and equipping others. You can also see how many of those people you’re equipping are passing on what they’re receiving. The dashboard helps you track that and it’s a little bit easier to access the different pieces of training separately or individually if you register.
Narrator: Awesome! So, people, just hop on, use it, go for it, and share it with others. This tool can really help serve in the Lord’s work. Thank you Curtis for taking time to share about Zúme and a little bit about its history. Is there anything else that you would like to add before we close out this episode and look forward to future ones together?
Curtis: Just that the the history is not over. We have lots of plans for future development and improvements, some of which are pretty significant. So stay tuned for the future history.
Narrator: Amen!
Episode Notes Hill111 Project
https://hill111.com
Zume Saturation Maps
https://zume.vision/maps