Someone put me in touch with Fatima for the first time some years back. I got her phone number and a few days later we sat down in a coffee shop together. Fatima described herself as open minded. I shared the Gospel with her and gave her a New Testament. We fruitfully discussed what it means to follow Jesus. A decade earlier, Fatima watched a series on TV about the life of the Messiah. She found Him compelling. In the weeks that passed I periodically sent her an SMS but she got busy and stopped responding. Fatima remained one of dozens of contacts in my phone with a similar story. A seemingly one-and-done Gospel conversation. I lacked discipling tools, and yes, perhaps discipline.
Fast forward to June of 2021. I look down on my phone and see a text from Fatima, “Hi [my name] how are you? Miss u”. I, of course, rejoiced to know she still had my phone number. I possibly wanted to restart our conversations about Christ. However, I never would have remembered the details in the first paragraph of this article. I’m grateful for a free software our team uses called Disciple.Tools.
I typed in Fatima’s phone number into the secure CRM (Customer Relationship Manager), Disciple.Tools. Within a few seconds I was reading notes I had made about my first meeting with Fatima nearly five years ago.
The story of Disciple.Tools started in 2013. A field team in North Africa, working collaboratively with a coalition of various organizations and nationalities, began to develop a CRM in a proprietary software gifted to them through their organization. That software was extremely modular. It allowed them to develop an organized system that served most of the needs of their nationwide media-to-movement initiative. There was not much need for technical development.
Other field teams, disciple-makers, and organizations saw the system they built and wanted to use it for their disciple-making movement efforts as well. The proprietary nature of the software they were using, however, prevented them from giving the tool away to others. Additionally, the coalition that the team served began to outgrow the collaborative nature of the tool. They had stored thousands of records while partnering with over a hundred disciple makers. Security became a significant issue.
The team saw the need for a software specifically designed for disciple and church multiplication movements. One that any field team could use. The idea for Disciple.Tools was born. A unique software fordisciple-makers by disciple-makers.
Jesus said, “Go and make disciples of all nations…” Disciple.Tools software exists to aid disciple makers in doing that very thing. Without collaboration and accountability, we risk squandering the opportunity Christ gave our generation to make disciples among all nations.
Disciple.Tools enables the disciple maker and discipling team to take seriously every name and every group God gives them to shepherd. It provides the accountability our lazy hearts need to dig deep and stay faithful with the tasks at hand. It allows a community of disciple-makers to move past anecdotal and soft understandings of the progress of the Gospel within their ministry. It’s easier to get concrete about who, what, when and where the Gospel is advancing.
In addition to the individual contact follow-up and accountability, Disciple.Tools continues to develop functionality in tracking groups/churches and streams of groups/churches. It is making the software applicable to movements, not just small teams. At the heart of Disciple.Tools is the desire to support generational growth of disciples and churches. The software comes with customizable church health tracking to help coaches see where a church needs to grow and where it has competence. Heat maps help teams focus on where Kingdom activity is happening and where it is seemingly not, yet.
Finally, Disciple.Tools helps remind this worker in the Arab world of the details from a sweet conversation with a seeker five years ago. It reminds me of Jesus’ words, “The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground. He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how.” (Mark 4:26-27) Sometimes we need tools to remind us of what’s happening in between the scattering and sprouting of seed.
Go to https://disciple.tools to learn more. It is 100% free for users (unlimited seats/instance), but fees for hosting apply.