<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"></figure>

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 Expansion
https://teamexpansion.org

More Disciples
https://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, which contains the explanation for how to do three-thirds groups. They just had the rough sketches of the videos done. I’m just gonna put it out here I hope nobody minds. They had hired some actors to do these three-thirds groups and you know it makes sense because that’s what you think you’re supposed to do. They had hired these actors who weren’t doing three-thirds groups. Due to the fact that the scenes were still rough cut, you got to hear the actors in between scenes and some of the questions they would ask. You could hear an actor that was on a live mic say, “you know this is really kind of different doing this. I think I might like this at my church.” It was just fun. But then you had others that said, “hey, where are the M&Ms?”. They were just not in the moment.

So after we watched all those rough sketches I raised my hand gently and said, “I love this. I love the lighting, I love all the people, they’re all so beautiful…”. And then I said, “none of the three-thirds group that I’ve seen have people that look this beautiful. They’re not this perfect and the conversations aren’t this perfect. What if we used video from a real Zúme group?”. And then somebody in the group said, “you mean we couldn’t use our hired actors?”. And I said, “No!” [laughs] “Let’s toss this!”

And it was just so radical that they did it and we actually did a three-camera shoot at a real three-thirds group that had been going on for a full year. They had already multiplied and, honestly, I don’t think it was exciting because watching somebody else’s three-thirds group is never going to be as good as doing your own, I know that. But I love the fact that they listened to input and that really set the tone for me. The whole Zúme idea is that they’ll listen to input. The little question I asked made a huge difference. So for the first year, the session 6 for Zúme contained this real live three-thirds group example that really was a three-thirds group. I’m not saying that people weren’t beautiful, they just weren’t “actress beautiful”, you know? But it was real, it was authentic.

Later on, of course, we replaced that with the right thing. We replaced it with a 10 or 12 minute explanatory video about how to do a three-thirds group. So you didn’t have to sit through and watch somebody else do one. I like what we have today better. Somebody else asked a question that made it even better. But I think the principle is exactly what we just said, they will listen to questions and input and they will shift based on what makes sense. I love it, I
really do.

Narrator: That’s amazing. Doug, have you been a part of this Zúme journey either right from the beginning? Or pretty close to it?

Doug: Yeah, since the beginning.

Narrator: Amazing! What have you observed in this process? What surprised or shocked you?

Doug: Okay, I’ll pick out one or two things and then tell me if this is what you want to know. For instance, in the beginning the the concept was to try to find a tool that will get people into coaching. Because we’re not going to fool ourselves into thinking that people will really learn how to do this by watching it on a online format; they’re really going to learn it in the coaching.

So it was all about trying to get the person into coaching. About 1 or 2 years in, we were coming back with these stories about entire groups and churches being able to grasp this by this “online, in-life experience”. So finally, the Zúme thought leaders started saying, “okay, let’s still make coaching available but let’s trust the training.”

And I think it’s it’s a surprise, frankly, that none of us in that initial early-going team realized that we would be able to learn stuff by this “in-life, online” format.

And then of course, remember that this was like 2 years before COVID that this became a thing. Zúme was an online training format 2 years before COVID. So when COVID started hitting and people needed insight into how to do church at home, Zúme had entire training sessions on that. We saw churches and organizations using Zúme to help people make the jump into a world that nobody thought we’d ever though we’d be thrust into.

Zúme was there because I think the power of God, the act of