Stage Descriptions (Where Am I Now?)
Read the descriptions below, find the one that most closely matches your current situation, and go to the page number referenced to get started in strategic prayer for your work! Keep in mind that you may be in multiple stages at the same time.
1 - Abide & Mobilize Intercession - Team is in one or more stages below but is struggling to regularly abide in Jesus, mobilize prayer, or both. The foci of this section are applicable and necessary in all stages.
2 - Laying Foundations - Team is in pre-launch or very early stages of their work. Team is seeking to grow in their understanding of God’s glory & His end vision for their focus people.
3 - Entry - Team is on-site, actively doing research about how to best engage with their focus people, ideally actively collaborating with others, looking for potential near-culture partners to learn from and train.
(3-11) - Persevering in Prayer - Team is in one of the stages from 3-11, but is not seeing the breakthroughs needed to progress, whether those breakthroughs pertain to seeing people come to faith, generational growth, the maturing of leaders in an established movement, or something else. Realistically, teams may be "stuck" in one stage for years, and yet we are still called to be faithful in prayer and intercession. This section aims to assist the weary intercessor in persevering in prayer. The resources in this section may be useful at any time between stages 3 and 11, and may be helpful at any time when a team is feeling stuck or weary in prayer.
4 - Sharing & Training to Share - Team is actively working to find persons of peace who open their social network(s) and start new 1st generation discovery groups. Team may be actively training near-culture partners to share.
5 - New Seekers & Discovery Groups - The team is regularly interacting with seekers individually or in discovery groups.
6 - Leadership Development - Team is learning how focus culture influences ideas of leadership and power and is considering how this may affect their leadership development process. Resources in this section may be useful from stage 5 onwards. **Leadership Development is listed this early in the process simply because the DNA of kingdom movement leaders is set very early in their journey.
7 - New Believers & Churches - There are some new believers, then groups, and later some groups will self-identify as churches. Later in this stage, the team is seeing consistent new generation 1 believers & groups. Some generation 1 groups or churches start new groups.
8 - Generation 1 to Generation 2 - Generation 1 and 2 churches are solidly established, growing, and starting new groups, so that multiple Generation 3 groups are starting, with some generation 3 groups eventually becoming churches.
9 - Generations & New Streams - Stable generation 3 churches, with some generation 4+ groups and churches. A growing group of indigenous leaders are beginning to oversee the movement. Later in this stage, there will be 100+ groups, consistent 4th generation churches in multiple streams, and local leaders are solid and beginning to reproduce themselves. Core DNA is in place for sustained growth. Some streams may begin purposefully sending people to new areas to start new works.
10 - Sustained Movement - At this stage the movement grows and makes significant penetration and expansion throughout the focus people group. Leaders have matured, and there are enough streams, leaders, and churches to be able to find and refine best practices to help with the continued growth of the movement.
11 - Multiplying Movement - the movement is purposefully catalyzing other networks and movements in other people groups and/or regions. It has become a movement that multiplies new movements.