How Jesus Made Disciples – The Jesus Funnel

How To Be A Worker Maker

Today we’re going to talk about how to be a worker maker, how Jesus made disciples by a principle that I call “the Jesus funnel.”

The “Jesus funnel” is a concept that I first heard from Steve Jones in a group of transformational pastors that I was a part of. He talked about this concept of how Jesus made disciples. 

Now, I call it being a worker maker because Jesus said the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few, ask, beg the Lord of the harvest to send out workers in the harvest field. So, the entire purpose of everything that we’re doing is to find, train, and send out workers into the harvest to multiply because healthy fruitful things multiply. 

Let’s go over here to my computer and let’s look at the Jesus funnel. 

The Jesus funnel starts off here at the top, and if you see it, it’s the biggest part of the funnel. Now, Jesus would start off by meeting needs. He would heal the sick. He would cast out demons. He would raise the dead. He would take a boy’s sack lunch and multiply it. Whenever he met needs, the immediate thing that happened is a crowd gathered. He multiplied food, and they would only count men. So, it could have been 10,000 people, right? But it says 5,000 people were fed when he multiplied the kids’ sack lunch.

Whenever he met felt needs a crowd gathered. Now once a crowd gathered, then he would preach the gospel to the crowd. Then he preached, but not every single person is going to believe. When some believed, they would become disciples. Then they would begin to teach the disciples to obey. Jesus says, if you love me, you will obey my commands. He says you disciple people by teaching them to obey everything I commanded you. It was obedience-based discipleship where they say, now that you’re following Jesus, this is the way we’re going to live. 

Now, once he taught, some committed. Not all committed to the things he was calling them to do. Some did. The ones that didn’t commit, they were trained. Now training is different than teaching because training is in the trenches. it’s watching you every day. It’s sending you out, watching you, giving feedback, accountability. 

One time Jesus came up to a group of disciples and they were trying to cast out a demon and they were failing and said, “How come we couldn’t do that?” He said, “Oh, this one only comes out with prayer and fasting.” So it was like, they were doing, they were failing, they were getting feedback. So, training doesn’t happen in the classroom. Training happens as you go out and you begin to do the things that Jesus is calling you to do. 

Now, when he trained, most of the ones he trained were faithful. Now not all, because even Jesus’ 12, there was Judas Iscariot in the mix who wasn’t faithful. Once they were faithful, Jesus sent them. And then if you see, they began to meet the needs of the community and gather crowds and preach the gospel and teach and train and send. It was about multiplication. 

But about a hundred years ago, there was this divide in the church where one group said, “Oh, we’re going to meet needs in the community and gather crowds.” These other people said, “Oh, that’s just a social gospel. You’re not actually preaching a gospel. You’re out there just meeting needs, but you’re never preaching.” There was this big divide, where one group said, “We’re going to meet the needs of the community.” They became things like saving the whales and saving the spotted owl. I don’t know. Make sure dolphins are caught in tuna nets or something. It’s like physical or felt needs in the community are being met. They separated themselves and said, “We’re just going to preach the gospel, and where we’re going to do this, we’re going to do this in the church.”

So instead of preaching to crowds in the community, they said, “Oh, you need to come to church to hear the gospel.” They expect people to come inside the building. And again, you preach, some believe. And then you start to teach them. But the thing, unfortunately, that is happening nowadays is the thing that we’re asking people to be committed to is to come and sit in a church and to tithe and be a faithful member. We’re not asking them to commit to being trained. it’s much easier to catch fish than it is to clean fish. This happens in a training where you’re in the trenches day-to-day, meeting felt needs. You’re sending them out and you’re giving them feedback, saying, “You could have done this differently. You could have done that differently.” You’re actually training them, giving them feedback. 

So there’s been this big divide between the people that are out there just in the community meeting needs and gathering crowds, going after agendas, social agendas, and those in the church saying, “Now we’re going to preach and teach, but we’re not training and sending.”

If you look here on the left-hand side, this is like your filter. This is your feedback of what you might need to be doing. So if you ask yourself, is my group, my church, my discipleship group, am I meeting means out in the community? Am I healing the sick and casting on demons, raising the dead, feeding the hungry? Am I meeting the felt needs out in my community? If not, that’s where you need, because the very top of the funnel, for example, he gathered a crowd to save 5,000 people. The top of the funnel is bigot, and Jesus was totally okay to gather a crowd. He would never expect the same from a crowd that he expected from a trained disciple. He expected way more from trained disciples than he did with the crowd. In fact, there’s even times where Jesus will gather a huge crowd and he’ll do things to whittle out and bring it all the way down to the funnel where he just had the 12 left, and he is like, “Are you guys going to go too, or are you going to commit? (John 6)

Are you preaching the gospel out in the community? Not in the church. Jesus preached the gospel out in the community. Are you preaching the gospel in the community? If no, this is what we need to work on. 

Are you teaching obedience-based discipleship? Do you know all the things that Jesus commanded disciples to do? Are you obeying them and are your people obeying them? If not, this is what we need to know. 

Are you training people to go and preach the gospel and train people to obey? Are you sending them out to plant multiplying ecclesias? No? Okay, this is what we need to work on. We’re gonna gather one, three, and nine to begin to multiply workers.

Are you sending people out? We don’t want to just gather more and more and more people to sit in a church on a Sunday. We want to gather disciples and train them and send them to go and multiply where they’re meeting needs and preaching the gospel and training and sending.

This has been a very helpful filter to say, okay, are we following a funnel? Are we serving the masses, not expecting much from them that they just gather because they’re going to get fed or they’re going to get healed or whatever? No understanding. This is what we call to do, but then we need to preach the gospel, teach, train, and send.

Someone asked, how do you get from being a wanderer to becoming a worker? How do you go from being a lost to becoming a leader?

In the worker maker community, we have a number of workshops and trainings that will help you if you don’t know how you’re going to go from lost to being sent. First off, if you don’t even know where you’re supposed to go, we had the Purpose Discovery Challenge or Purpose Discovery Process that will just help you figure out where you need to go to start doing the Jesus funnel.

Now, if you’re not sure how to meet needs, we have a training on how to hear God’s voice, get words and knowledge. We have a training on how to supernaturally heal the sick, and coming down the pipeline is how to cast out demons and do that kind of thing. If your people don’t know how to preach the gospel, we have the Story Evangelism training. If you don’t know what to start training and teaching your disciples to believe, we have the Be One Train One card. If you don’t have a training ready, we have a strategy called the Four Fields where you’re going to train people how to go and preach and grow and gather.

This is the thing that we’re sending people out to do. Find out where you’re supposed to go, hear God’s voice, heal the sick, cast out demons, preach the gospel, teach people to obey everything Jesus commanded and train them, multiply to go and do the same.

This is just a simple way that we do it. This is what we’re training our people to do. But for you, how are you going from wanderer to a worker? How are you going from a lost to a leader?

Jesus funnel, this is how he raised up leaders, this is how he raised up workers. Hopefully, this tool helps you to do the same.

Go meet needs, preach, teach, train, and send so we can multiply workers.

Of course, if you want access to all of these training workshops, all these tools, and all the tools that we’re going to create in the future, go to WorkerMaker.com, join the community and remember, say YES to the great commission, say YES to the greatness commission. Just go be great.