Based on a book by Milton Jones
This is the bulletion article for this week. Feel free to comment if you feel so inclined.
-Josh
Jesus had the right idea when he modeled and taught discipleship. For example: What if a preacher and church decides they are going to try to reach the entire world with the message of the gospel. So they decide that they would travel each state, country and continent, assembling 500 people every day for the preacher to share the message of Christ with. Their goal is to keep going until the entire world hears the message of the gospel at least once. With the current world population at just under 6.9 billion, it would take this evangelistic team just over 37,682 years to reach the entire world. This is not Jesus’ model. Jesus' model is that we all make disciples. The plan is not simply to bring people to hear a gospel presentation. Jesus’ plan is to make disciples, which takes a more in depth commitment than simply presenting the gospel to a person.
Let’s say that each individual in a church of 100 people decided they were going to make 3 disciples that year. This means that they convert those people to Christ and then teach them to make 3 disciples the next year and so on. If the progression continued, 4.3 billion people would be disciples by year 17 of this church’s commitment and year 18 would see the entire world become disciples of Jesus. Who is the last person you discipled? Are you teaching at least one person a year to not only follow Jesus but also to pass on their faith to others? Do you even know how to teach someone to be a disciple of Jesus? Do you know how to be a disciple yourself? If your answer is “I don’t know” or “No” are you doing something about it?
Year 1 100
Year 2 300
Year 3 900
Year 4 2,700
Year 5 8,100
Year 6 24,300
Year 7 72,900
Year 8 218,700
Year 9 656,100
Year 10 1,968,300
Year 11 5,904,900
Year 12 17,714,700
Year 13 53,144,100
Year 14 159,432,300
Year 15 478,296,900
Year 16 1,434,890,700
Year 17 4,304,672,100
Year 18 12,914,016,300
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Wouldn't take long for us to leave the borders of Cordell would it?
ReplyDeleteDo you think 1 year is enough time to teach someone to be a disciple of Christ and to teach others?? I know that isn't the point of the article but still...
I guess it depends on the person being discipled and the discipler. I believe that after someone has become a veteran discipler and the person converted has an eagerness about them (as most new Christians do), I believe that a year would be plenty of time. Huge strides have been made with the people I am discipling in just 8 weeks, just by meeting them once a week with that specific goal.
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