I can’t even tell you how excited I am to finally share this update!

TL;DR? Here’s the headline…

The Found in Jesus Ecosystem Finally Goes Live!

The Found in Jesus app (v1.1), website, community, and donation portal are all online!

“Found in Jesus” is the term we use (and the Apostle Paul used) to encompass apprenticeship to Jesus. It means that we are drawn into the life of God and that He gets to live His life through us. Our key Scripture is Galatians 2:20…

I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

Below is the story of how we developed this material, but in case you’d rather just jump to the punchline, here it is… We have built a bunch of tools to serve you in your discipleship journey. They’re now available, and I’d like you to…

1. Check them out,
2. Start using them to your benefit,
3. Give to our newly created 501(c)3 to support their existence and ongoing development, and
4. Pray for us and that God uses these tools for His glory and the good of His Church.

Come join us on this adventure! Check out the app. Take the assessment. Then come get connected to me and others in the community. Our sincere prayer is that all this benefits your journey with Jesus, and we’d love to do that together!

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Want the backstory? Here you go…

Indirectly, this has all been decades in the making. In terms of direct effort, more like the last 3 years or so. A lot of direct effort. And a serious adventure with the Lord and with His church — Wellspring Family Church in South St Louis, where I serve as Discipleship Pastor.

In January 2022, I was quite surprised by the offer to join Wellspring’s staff — after failing to plant a church in the St Louis Metro East area, where I grew up. Given the church planting debacle, I said “no way!” What if I botched this too? What if I hurt a bunch more people? And, honestly, what if this distracted Faith and I from what I thought was the mission: to plant a different kind of discipleship-centric, cell-based, reminiscent-of-the-new-testament, unshackled-from-the-status-quo-of-modern-evangelicalism, mere-church kind of church in the neighborhood!? So, I was pretty convinced a “traditional” Discipleship Pastor role at a “traditional” church in South St Louis (35 min from our home) wasn’t in the cards.

But they asked me to pray, so I did. And I was even more surprised when Jesus (and Faith!) immediately declared this was the plan.

Seriously!?

But I’m pretty determined for Jesus to get His way in my life. And I’ve been married for a long time to an amazing, godly woman. Soooo, I was pretty handily outvoted. Then came our church’s Family Camp — the whole church spends the weekend away together at a camp a couple hours south of St Louis every year — and I fell in love with the amazing people of Wellspring.

And suddenly — another surprise — it was not just duty, it was delight. I was all in. I still am. I was installed part-time on 4/1/2023 and then full-time on 7/1. And I haven’t looked back.

In fact — and this wasn’t a surprise at all, given my “achiever” personality — I immediately set about trying to figure out what it even means to be a Discipleship Pastor. It’s not like I’d ever done that before! And, if I’m honest, I kinda assumed that my career as a Software-Engineer-turned-Executive would be a hindrance not a help. Yeah … I was wrong about that too.

(Dan Rauch, if you’re reading this… Thank you! You knew from the very beginning. I love you, man!)

But God has an uncanny way of assembling all the pieces we don’t understand into beautiful things we couldn’t have imagined.

“God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things — the things that are not — to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before Him.”

— 1 Corinthians 1:28-29

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So, it’s three years later, and the Lord has done some really amazing things…

July-December 2023

God starts with a few untethered but explicit convictions He’d established in me over the years…

1. The deepest truest thing about you is that you were made in the image of God for union with God.
2. Any discussion about human identity must begin with a clear understanding of God’s identity.
3. God’s identity, therefore our identity in His image, is complex and multi-faceted.
4. We tend to focus only on the parts of sanctification / discipleship that we’re comfortable with and ignore the rest.
5. Discipleship is primarily rooted not in trying to imitate or follow Jesus, but in union with Jesus. Not just part of who we are, but all of us, increasingly.
6. Any plan for human growth / development (especially Christian discipleship) must address the whole person — not just the mind and the will, but the heart, emotions, and imagination as well.

… and with these raw ingredients, establishes a model both for Christian identity and growth.

First, He gave me the “identity gemstone,” which depicts nine aspects of God’s identity and therefore a path to the true- or false identity of any Christ-follower in nine dimensions.

Second, the “becoming circle” is a model for four “transformational practices” that are all required if we’re going to see real heart-, mind-, character-, life-level change as we seek to draw near to and become more like Jesus.

January-April 2024

My buddy Dan (also one of Wellspring’s elders) and I teach the first Found in Jesus class — an Adult Discipleship class at Wellspring on the identity gemstone.

Summer 2024

We start working on a Christian maturity assessment that could be used to point people who want to grow to areas on which to focus.

September-October 2024

I teach a second Adult Discipleship class on the becoming circle and the transformational practices. Work continues on the assessment — wow, was that hard!

By Year End 2024

There’s talk of writing a book, but that doesn’t feel dynamic enough to be an effective reference mechanism for all the data, plus we want a digital delivery platform for the assessment … if we ever finish it. The Lord leads us to build a mobile app instead, including providing free assistance with software development and graphic design. Seemingly unrelated, AI becomes a thing. (Wait for it…)

March 11, 2025

We launch a pilot small group program called “D-Groups” (for “discipleship-centric groups”). The goal is to use the Found in Jesus material and ultimately the assessment and app in a small group environment to facilitate growth in Christ. We are already doing this in a large-group classroom environment, and want to expand into the small group universe.

April 28, 2025

I host a breakout session at the EFCA Central District’s leadership conference about the need to consider these concepts in our church’s discipleship programs, and many sign up to receive more info when the app and the assessment are ready. About this time, our free help dries up, and yours truly — who used to be a pretty competent software developer back when dinosaurs roamed the earth — partners with AI to become our one and only developer. It goes better than I could have dreamed. Not only does the effort reawaken the joy I used to experience writing code (before I let them promote me!), but we start making real progress on the app.

August 14, 2025

The first version of the Found in Jesus app is launched, empowering users to browse material related to the identity gemstone and becoming circles, take the assessment, view a personalized assessment report, and engage exercises and resources for discipleship. It’s a huge milestone. But we don’t have an ecosystem to support users outside Wellspring.

August-November 2025

Dan and I teach the 3rd class in the Found in Jesus series. It’s a “lab section” in which everyone gets the app, takes the assessment, brings their assessment report to class, and we discuss specific elements of the gemstone and how individuals can build plans for growth. We focus on the Father-Child, Redeemer-Freedman, and Master-Servant facets of identity. And app development continues — I’m in heaven! It’s the fusion of all the things God’s done in my life. Amazing!

September 6, 2025

The Found in Jesus Ministries non-profit goes live, enabling those who find these tools valuable to give in support of their existence and ongoing development. We’d truly value your financial partnership!

November 7, 2025

We launch version 1.1 of the Found in Jesus app, which boasts a number of new features. The most notable new capability equips users to create personalized growth plans in the app and work through them there, answering the question: “In the next season of my life, what does God want to do in me and through me?”

November 22, 2025

And that brings us to today, when I launched the Found in Jesus Life website and the Found in Jesus community. The former is a simple landing page / website, the springboard to everything else in the ecosystem — download the app, gather in community, etc. And the latter is a place where we can do all this together (I hope you check it out).

Finally, at long last, I’m ready to truly “go public” with this whole thing. Hence, this blog post.

I’d like to invite you explore these tools and put them to work for you. Specifically,

1. Visit the Found in Jesus Life website.
2. From there, get the app: Apple or Google.
3. Take the assessment in the app.
4. Join the community, and start collaborating with me and others about how to use these tools to pursue a closer walk with the Lord.
5. If you feel it’s valuable, please donate to the cause. I want this thing to remain totally free, but that will require the generous support of the users.
6. And pray for us as we seek to discern where God would have us go with all this. There are several things planned for 2026 already, and this is all just getting started. Please join us in prayer!

Okay, that’s it. I hope you find these tools helpful, and I hope to see you out around the community!

God bless you as you seek to be found in Jesus!