What Is DNA?
DNA is a training program for pastors and church leaders that helps them build a cell-church model fitted to their own culture and values. Two of Snowball Fund's four projects exist to put this program in the hands of leaders who could not otherwise reach it.
The problem DNA addresses
Most pastors are not short on conviction. They are short on structure. A congregation grows to the size of the room it meets in, discipleship depends on a handful of overloaded volunteers, and there is no repeatable way to form the next generation of leaders. Church growth stalls not because the message stopped working, but because the model does not scale past the people the pastor can personally reach.
The cell-church model answers this by moving discipleship into small groups that meet in homes, each led by someone the church has trained, and each expected in time to multiply. It is a well-established model — but transitioning an existing church to it is genuinely difficult, and most pastors attempt it alone, without curriculum, without a roadmap, and without anyone to call when it stalls in month four.
DNA exists to remove that isolation. It is a program of Central Church, which reports having supported more than 15,000 churches worldwide through it. It combines seminars, published curriculum and long-term mentorship into one path a pastor can actually follow.
How DNA works: three pillars
Challenge
Seminars and lectures that ask a congregation to shift paradigms and live out the gospel in a new way. This is where a church decides that discipleship is going to happen in homes and small groups, not only in a Sunday service.
Nourish
Free training material, written articles and ready-made small-group lessons, so that a leadership team is not starting from a blank page. A pastor who commits to the model needs curriculum on Monday morning, not just inspiration on Sunday night.
Aid
Mentoring and coaching groups that walk a church through the transition itself — the months where an existing structure has to be rebuilt around small groups without losing the congregation along the way.
The four components
DNA 1 — The Foundation
The entry seminar. It lays out the biblical and practical case for the cell model and gives a leadership team the shared vocabulary they need before any structural change begins. Attempting the transition without this step is the single most common reason it fails.
The Transition Book
A step-by-step implementation guide covering the actual sequence of a transition — what changes first, what to leave alone, and what to expect from a congregation while it is underway.
DNA 2 — Advancing the Vision
The advanced seminar, for churches already running cells. It deepens the DNA 1 material and addresses the second-stage problems: leadership pipelines, multiplication that stalls, and keeping cell quality from degrading as the number of groups grows.
DNA Mentorship
The twelve-month accompaniment described below. DNA 1 and DNA 2 are prerequisites — the mentorship is not an introduction to the model, it is sustained support while a church actually implements it.
Inside the 12-month DNA Mentorship
A seminar changes what a pastor believes. It does not, by itself, change what a church does. The mentorship exists to cover the gap between the two — the year in which the transition either takes root or quietly reverts.
- Twelve months of accompaniment — the current cohort runs August 2026 through July 2027.
- Two live sessions per month across four months, taught rather than merely recorded.
- Individual guidance for each church, addressing that specific congregation's obstacles rather than a generic curriculum.
- Peer communities — private groups of pastors going through the same transition at the same time, which is often what keeps a leader from giving up.
- Three books: Transition, Excellent Cells, and Non-Negotiable Values of the Cell Church.
- A full year of platform access and the complete DNA Library.
Delivery is available in English, Spanish and German. For a pastor in a low-income region, the barrier is almost never willingness — it is the cost of the year and, often, the absence of the material in a language their leadership team can actually read. Those are precisely the two barriers Snowball Fund was created to remove.
Watch: DNA explained
DNA | INSTITUTIONAL | ENGLISH
Published by Central Online, the ministry behind the DNA program.
The official English-language introduction to DNA from Central Online. It presents the program as a path for pastors and leaders to build a cell model suited to their own culture and values, and walks through how the seminars, the published curriculum and the mentorship fit together into a single transition process for a local church.
How Snowball Fund fits in
Snowball Fund does not create the DNA curriculum and does not teach it. Central Church does. Our role is narrower and, we think, useful: we pay for access where access is the only thing missing.
Two of our four projects do this directly:
- DNA Scholarships — full scholarships so a pastor or leader can complete the 12-month mentorship at no cost to themselves.
- DNA Translation — funding the translation of the curriculum into languages it does not yet exist in, which opens the program to an entire language group at once.
DNA is a program of Central Church. Snowball Fund is an independent 501(c)(3) that funds access to it and is not the author or owner of the curriculum. Program details on this page are summarised from Central Church's published material at central.online.