DiscipleMakers News

DiscipleMakers earns fifth consecutive 4-star rating from Charity Navigator

DiscipleMakers has received a 4-star rating from Charity Navigator for the fifth consecutive year. Charity Navigator is America's largest and most-utilized independent evaluator of charities.

“We are proud to announce DiscipleMakers has earned our fifth consecutive 4-star rating," wrote Michael Thatcher, Charity Navigator's president and CEO, in a letter to DiscipleMakers. “This is our highest possible rating and indicates that your organization adheres to sector best practices and executes its mission in a financially efficient way. Attaining a 4-star rating verifies that DiscipleMakers exceeds industry standards and outperforms most charities in your area of work. Only 7% of the charities we evaluate have received at least 5 consecutive 4-star evaluations, indicating that DiscipleMakers outperforms most other charities in America. This exceptional designation from Charity Navigator sets DiscipleMakers apart from its peers and demonstrates to the public its trustworthiness."

To learn more, visit DiscipleMakers' profile on Charity Navigator's website.

Peter Krol Succeeds Bill Dripps as President of DiscipleMakers

This morning marked the completion of a transition which DiscipleMakers founder Bill Dripps began planning years ago: handing leadership of DiscipleMakers to a successor equipped to carry on DM’s ministry and core values. His plan was finally realized when the DM Board of Directors officially installed Peter Krol as DM’s president at their meeting today. (Bill will continue to serve with DM as a missionary and as President Emeritus.)

“DiscipleMakers has become greater and bigger and more used of God and more exciting with each year that goes by,” Bill said. “As I look to the future, I am excited about what God is doing. My hope and my confidence is that DM will go on to many greater and better and more effective things for the Lord in the future than He's ever done through us in the past.”

When asked how he felt about this milestone, Peter replied, “We’ve got a terrific, growing staff team. We have more clarity than ever before on our mission and goals. And we’ve got a great God who has gifted us with a strong group of leaders. I’m so thankful to work with these leadership teams as we expand to new campuses and continue making disciples of Jesus Christ.”

Please pray for DiscipleMakers as we pursue these goals in faith that God will continue working in students’ hearts!

Our New Ministry Goal: 25 by ’25

We are pleased to announce a new long-term organizational goal for DiscipleMakers: to reach 25 campuses with disciple-making staff by 2025.

Since 1981, DiscipleMakers has sought to fulfill Jesus’ Great Commission to “go and make disciples of all nations” by investing deeply in the lives of college students. By God’s grace, what began as a part-time effort on one campus has grown such that we now have established ministries on eleven campuses.

As we’ve grown, we’ve sought to emulate Jesus’ strategy of investing deeply in potential leaders. Though He spoke to great crowds at times, Jesus’ earthly ministry focused on the small group of disciples He was preparing to send out into the world to share the good news of His Kingdom.

Similarly, DiscipleMakers missionaries invest deeply in students’ lives through labor-intensive methods like one-on-one mentoring and small-group Bible studies. We aim to represent the Lord, helping the gospel penetrate deeply into students’ hearts and raising up the next generation of disciple makers for the church. Such ministry happens one relationship at a time and cannot be mass-produced.

“What we’ve seen,” said Bill Dripps, DiscipleMakers’ founder and president, “is that God has been pleased to give us many strong, robust fellowships populated by committed disciples and those they are reaching. We’re seeing campuses where the majority of the discipling is done by the students themselves, not the staff. What this means is that though the number of campuses where we are ministering has not yet exploded, the number of disciples has multiplied.

But now we’re to the point where to grow further we have to move to new campuses. The need is immense, but we believe that over the next 10 years, God can more than double our ministry.”

Please join us in praying that God will raise up laborers for the harvest field on campus so that by 2025 we will see Him sending out disciple-making students from 25 campuses.