A well-known Christian leader was asked the question, “If you were a pastor of a large church in a principal city, what would be your plan of action?” I’m going to hold off on sharing the leader’s name with you until I share their answer.
The leader said, “I think one of the first things I would do would be to get a small group of 8 or 10 or 12 people around me that would meet a few hours a week and pay the price! It would cost them something in time and effort. I would share with them everything I have, over a period of years. Then I would actually have 12 ministers among the laypeople who in turn could take 8 to 10 or 12 more and teach them. I know one or two churches that are doing that, and it is revolutionizing the church. Christ, I think, set the pattern. He spent most of his time with 12 men. He didn’t spend it with a great crowd. In fact, every time he had a great crowd it seems to me that there weren’t too many results. The great results it seems to me, came in this personal interview and in the time he spent with His 12.”
Do you want to guess who that leader was?
That leader was Billy Graham.
If you were curious as to how many people it was estimated that Billy Graham preached the Gospel of Jesus to, it was over 215 million people in his lifetime. It’s documented that over 3.2 million people accepted Christ following Billy’s preaching. Yet Billy Graham said if he were leading a local church, he wouldn’t pursue the crowds which he was so gifted at reaching, he would pursue a few. And equip them to reach others to multiply and do the same.
We are convinced that discipleship was Jesus’ heart and His plan to reach the world, so this is where our heart is as well. Many churches and ministries do a terrific job of making disciples for Jesus. Praise God! That is something worth celebrating. The struggle that we’ve seen and experienced personally, is not in making disciples, but in building disciple makers who give their lives to making disciples for Jesus themselves. That is the aim of this content.
If you are wondering if you have what it takes to go on this discipleship journey, there are two questions you need to answer.
- Have you put your faith in Jesus as Lord and Savior of your life?
- Are you willing to say yes to the Holy Spirit when He asks you to step out of your comfort zone for Jesus?
If you can answer yes to both questions, God is ready to use you powerfully on your discipleship journey with Him.
There is not a separate guide for trainers and participants. That’s on purpose. Because the goal is for those you disciple to disciple others themselves. As you walk through the content together, they will see you discipling them with the exact same set of tools they will have available for them to disciple others.
Every discipleship relationship will be unique from one another. The Holy Spirit will shape each relationship in a profound and different way. Let Him do that. The process of surrendering to the Holy Spirit in discipleship is always more important than any content.
The goal isn’t to create a disciple making factory that manufactures changed lives for God’s Kingdom. Fruit for God’s Kingdom can never be manufactured by our strength. But we’ve found that by creating clear tracks to run on in discipleship, it will give confidence to those that are being discipled to think, “That was so simple. I could do this!”
If your goal is 4th generation discipleship and beyond, giving your disciples clear next steps that are simple, transferable, and easily reproducible are crucial to seeing multiplication happen in the process of disciple making.
Our vision is that after a few generations of discipleship, no one will know your name, but many will know the name of Jesus.