When we think about reaching the world for Christ, we often focus on big events, famous preachers, and mass conversions. But what if Jesus had a completely different strategy in mind? Today, we'll explore how discipleship multiplication, not addition, is God's method for expanding His kingdom.
2 Timothy 2:2 "The things which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also."
Let me do some math with you this morning. If you trained 10,000 churches to reach 1,000 souls a year, it would take 600 years to reach the world for Jesus Christ. With 135 million new people added to the world's population each year, this "addition strategy" will never succeed.
But let's try a different approach. Let's say you decide to disciple just one person this year. You invest in them, teach them, equip them, and at the end of that year, they're ready to do the same for someone else while you start the process again with someone new.
At the end of year one, you have two Christians. At the end of year two, you have four. By year three, eight. By year four, sixteen. At the end of year ten, you have 512 disciples—about the number of people in a medium-sized church. But if you continue this pattern, by year 34, you'd have over 8.5 billion people—more than enough to reach the entire world!
Einstein called compounding interest the eighth wonder of the world. And it's no wonder that this is the strategy Jesus gave us. The world's approach is to reach people by addition, but Jesus's strategy is to reach the world by discipleship multiplication.
It's so interesting how different the world's strategy is from Jesus's! We tend to highlight when Jesus preached to the masses at the Sermon on the Mount or when He fed the 5,000. But by and large, the vast majority of Jesus's ministry was invested in training twelve ordinary men who would turn the world upside down.
He didn't train His disciples to go make converts but to make disciples who would make disciples who would make disciples. And that's exactly what happened. Those twelve disciples changed the world because they understood multiplication.
This is the heart of the Great Commission. Jesus didn't just say "Go therefore and make converts" or "Go therefore and get decisions for Christ." He said, "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you."
A disciple isn't just someone who believes in Jesus; it's someone who follows Jesus and helps others do the same. If you're a Christian, you're a disciple. And your God-given objective, as long as you have breath, is to make disciples.
If you're a single person, a couple, or a family, there should be at least one person in your life who needs to come to Christ this year. Who are you praying for? What's your strategy? Every Christian is a gospel ambassador given a mission by Jesus Christ.
1. Who is one person you could intentionally disciple this year?
2. What practical steps could you take to become more intentional about making disciples?
3. How might your approach to evangelism change if you focused on multiplication rather than addition?
Stay dialed in,
Jonny Ardavanis