Discovery stories

Neighborhood friends seated in a big circle on the floor at my birthday party. — This is not, in fact, a discovery group. It's my birthday party. But DBS looks just like this (though often on typical furniture).

Powerful innovation happens when an innovator takes a concept developed from one discipline and transfers its principles to another domain. By studying a broad range of subjects, the innovator utilizes the powerful discoveries in one discipline to solve challenges in another. The biochemist may not realize how her chemical innovation might revolutionize space travel because she doesn’t know the challenges of that domain. An astronaut might.

DBS is an innovation from the global missionary discipline; a domain with which the church leader may be unfamiliar. Because the subject is relegated to the evangelist or missionary silo, the church leader is unlikely to consider how the principles might solve challenges in their local church. I believe the principles of DBS address many of the obstacles that plague traditional churches, but everyone who wishes to see fruit undergoes multiple paradigm shifts while applying them.

Jesus used stories to challenge people’s conceptions of reality and plant seeds that would later transform their worldview. Here are hand-picked stories from our own experience that I pray will transform your vision of what’s possible.

In 2014, Amie and I co-led the first Chicago Neighborhood small group as a trimmed-down DBS co-led with our pastor. At thirteen attendees, it’s the largest DBS group we’ve led. The format allowed full participation from a widely diverse group. The questions were so easy to remember that the group self-corrected when conversations strayed off-course and left the facilitators plenty of room to participate. Our pastor prepared another study just in case showing up to read the Bible together wasn’t enough, but abandonded it after the first week. DBS facilitation requires minimal training and energy.
In 2015, after only four weeks of meeting together, we invited an unlikely leader to facilitate the night’s study. She’d recently returned to faith, did not consider herself “leadership material” and had debilitating illness. She accepted, and her first words to the group were, “there are two things I’ve hoped never to do, speak and pray in front of others. Tonight I will do both.” She facilitated the entire group splendidly and stated after the meeting that it was easier than she’d expected. The discovery questions were so helpful to her that she took them home to study the bible in private. DBS means Anyone can facilitate.
In 2017, we advertised a DBS group as the non-evangelist’s approach to evangelism. One who attended openly admitted that he came because the subject of evangelism was so difficult that he needed a place to explore the subject. We committed on the first day to share the stories we read with fifteen people. I drew fifteen circles that we’d fill in with facial expressions to represent how people responded. The group shared sixteen stories over eight weeks with mostly smiles and no frowns. Among the fruit of those conversations was a coworker who asked the sharer to study the Bible with her and an aunt with whom the sharer was later able to have multiple spiritual conversations before she passed away. All of this from one DBS question, “With whom might you share this story?” DBS equips every person to share our Treasure.
In 2018, we read through Jesus' I AM statements. Many of our discoveries made foundational shifts in the way we understand God and humans which still permeate our lives today. For example, the passage where Jesus describes himself as the gate has inspired and influenced how I’ve interacted with coworkers for years now. I cannot remember most of the sermons I’ve heard in the past year but I’ll never forget the discoveries made in those short weeks. DBS forms people into disciples who know God and act on what He says.
In 2018, we met with another couple to read through the entire book of Acts, one story per chapter. Although I had no relationship with this couple before the group met, they were willing to drive forty minutes through Chicago every week to our apartment for the next story. In that year they became closer friends than those I’ve known for many years, and this occurred, not through a specialized relational group, but simply by interacting with the Bible together. DBS fosters deeply committed community and intimate relationships.
In 2020, we explored the theme of Passover from Exodus to the Gospels. As the interwoven themes of trust, sacrifice, substitution, and freedom built into a crecendo, our trust in God’s identity and rescuing action toward us grew. By the time we’d arrived at Jesus' final Passover with his disciples we were blown away by the tapestry of interwoven themes that had been deepening in meaning and power since Exodus. DBS fosters rich Biblical trust with deep theological foundations.
In 2020, over Zoom we co-led a group through Mark’s gospel comprised of an even split between long-time Christians and family members with little-to-no experience of the Bible. There was full participation from everyone in both insights and in action. We made such discoveries as 1. that Jesus was a real, historical person, 2. that we want to emulate him, and 3. that those who discount his message have a closed mind, while those who consider his words are open-minded. DBS makes the unchurched feel welcome and comfortable participating in discovery.
In 2021, we continued the same group who had started Mark’s Gospel because everyone wanted to finish the whole book together. One who’d said that he didn’t consider himself a religious person was so captivated by the first chapters of Mark that he’d read the whole book over our break. Later he began to pracitce listening to Jesus' voice on woodland hikes, and after the group was over he scheduled a three-day silent retreat at a local monastery. In 2022 he invited his closest friends to study the Gospels with him in the same manner. DBS leads people to become disciples of Jesus and to freely invite those they know to join them.

Church planters needed the means to establish Jesus communities that conformed to the host culture, had all the DNA of a church gathering, and could multiply beyond the reach and strength of the church planter’s arm. And so DBS was born. Could it be that the Church abroad has discovered principles that might revitalize the Church at home in these challenging times?