“Knowing Jesus” Church Planting Curriculum

Since 1979, the JESUS film has been viewed 8.1 billion times and 572 million people have made decisions for Christ. Those are some big numbers, but where are these individuals in their faith today? Many were discipled and are still walking with the Lord. They have matured into believers who are active in fellowship and ministry. Others, though, did not have such opportunities. They were intrigued by Jesus or even indicated a decision to follow Him, but their initial fervor faded amidst the realities of daily life. They never had the resources to truly know Jesus.

“Knowing Jesus” is a curriculum based church planting strategy that Lee’s department has tested in a few parts of the world, and is now scaling for a global release. This strategy plants multiplying missional communities by using the 61 segments of the JESUS film as a discipleship series. It begins with a national believer showing the full-length JESUS film, which is followed by two invitations: to invite Jesus into their life as Savior and to come back the next day to learn more about Him. Each time the missional community meets, they watch a segment of the JESUS film and use it to teach God’s word to new believers, challenging them along the way to share their faith and plant new missional communities.

This equips and empowers lay believers the world over to start movements in their countries, planting missional communities where there is no church. Recently in Asia, missional communities have exploded in one large Muslim-majority country as missional community leaders train others to start their own missional communities. A group of fourteen missional community leaders went out and trained 496 church partners and seminary students! These students now each have a goal to plant at least one new church before graduation.