Dear Discipleship-first Friends,
Our team wanted to reach all of India. 1.4 billion people. (Yes, billion, with a b). We were praying desperate prayers, asking God how to do that when I stumbled across a little book by Ying Kai. He and his wife started a disciple making movement in China that focused on mobilizing as many Christians as they could into the harvest fields to multiply disciples. In ten years, they saw 200,000 churches started and a million people baptized.
Wow.
We decided to give it a go.
I was preaching that Sunday at the church I’m a part of in India. It was planted 150 years ago by missionaries and there are usually about 1,200 people on a Sunday.
I don’t want to brag, but I felt like I preached the best sermon of my life. I gave every illustration imaginable showing how God could use multiplication to create a movement through which we could reach the entire globe. Using my “extraordinary” calculation skills, I shared how the numbers could work–how we could reach all of India in just 14 years by a repeating the process of each of us reaching just one person every six months.
I was ready for Pentecost Sunday. 1,200 people were in the room, but I just knew in my heart that 3,000 would come forward. I was expecting little Indian women to come off the streets, saying, “I want to make disciples! Sign me up Josh!”
At the end of the message, I gave an invitation. I offered a low bar, one everyone could hear, “So, if you want to reach India… if you want to make disciples–if you’re even a little bit interested in that–come forward, and we’ll help you do it.”
I waited. And waited.
12.
12 of the 1,200 people came forward.Honestly, I was incredibly frustrated. I thought, Are you people even Christians?? That was a really good sermon and anyone who loves Jesus would’ve come forward!! I was disappointed, and mad, and I went and sat down. I had a friend next to me who could tell I was upset. He nudged me and whispered in my ear, “Josh, I know another guy who started with 12 people, and he did ok.”
So, we started training our 12. Remember how 1 of Jesus’ 12 disciples didn’t work out? Well, 11 of my 12 didn’t work out. We trained them every week. We set goals. We asked, “Who are you going to share your faith with?” Each of them would tell us the names of three or four people. Then they’d come back the next week and tell me they had actually done… nothing.
Except the one. He was an uneducated guy from a small village. He couldn’t read or write. I hate to admit this but when he came forward, I was not excited. I didn’t think much of his potential, but we trained him anyway. And, unlike the others, he went out and actually put what we were teaching into practice. In fact, within 2 weeks he planted 8 house churches and led about 50 people to Jesus. In 2 weeks! I had to repent. God, I’m sorry that I judged this guy based upon his education level.
I thought about the first people Jesus called to go out with the message of His good news: the Gadarene demoniac, the Samaritan woman at the well. No one would have chosen them, but they met Jesus and their lives changed and they had to share him with everyone they knew. I felt like God was telling me, Josh, Never forget, I love to do extraordinary things through ordinary people.
I am so thankful for that village guy. If it weren’t for him, I would have quit. This doesn’t work. Let’s try something else.
That guy taught me an important lesson–we should never pre-filter our people. I thought about who Jesus trained. In Acts 1 we see him training the apostles for about 40 days (Acts 1:3). And after training them for all that time, some still doubted (Matthew 28:17) and all of them were still clueless, asking Jesus questions they should now realize are absurd “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” (Acts 1:6). But what does Jesus do with this doubting, clueless group? He sends them out to make disciples who make disciples, and they go on to lead a world-wide movement.
I probably would have fired them all and looked for new people to start over
But not Jesus. Jesus loves to take the broken and the clueless and use them for something special.
Have you noticed that we think we know who will be best for the work, but we’re often wrong? We think, this guy has such a powerful story; he’ll be amazing. And this gal has such a good heart. I’m sure she’ll go out and get the job done. But so often we are wrong. Our ability to discern and pre-filter is extremely limited, so we need to stop and, instead, train broadly.
Train Broadly
We started training everyone. If you moved and were kinda-sorta willing, we were going to train you.
What did we train people on?
- How to share their faith.
- How to make disciples.
- How to start a simple church in their home.
We kept all of our training simple and reproducible, so it was accessible for everyone. I repeatedly told my team, “If my 10-year-old son can’t do it, it’s too difficult.” Jesus told us the harvest is plentiful–and that is definitely true in India– and the workers are few, and we wanted to get as many people as possible out into the harvest field.
It started slowly. We trained the one guy. Then a few more. Then some more. But over time, it’s worked. Here’s what it’s led to lately.
- In 2019, we saw 304 churches started. We were thrilled. We were jumping up and down.
- In 2020, Covid happened, but we still saw 1,300 churches started.
- In 2021, we had over 5,000 churches started.
- In 2022, we saw 8,000 new churches started, with 53,000 people coming to faith.
- And in 2023, we saw nearly 9,500 churches started and over 56,000 people come to faith.
That happened because of God, who loves to use willing people. But it’s also the result of us training broadly.
We train broadly, and coach narrowly.
Coach Narrowly
We train everyone, but you can’t coach (invest more one-on-one time in next level instruction) everyone. You have to coach narrowly. The question is: Who do you coach?
You coach those who are faithful.
You coach those who obey.
That’s not the way it tends to work in the West. In the West we believe if someone comes to church every week and is in a small group, those are our best Christians. In the West we assume those who know more theology and can quote more Bible verses are our best Christians.
Jesus set a different bar.
He said, “If you love me, you will obey my commandments.” (John 15:14)
Jesus taught about the wise and foolish builders. You’ve probably heard, and maybe even given, sermons on it. You know the one, where the preacher says if you build our lives on anything other than Jesus (on success or sex or money or power or fame), you are building your life on sand. But if you build your life on Jesus, you will have a solid rock foundation.
It’s a beautiful sermon. The only problem is that it’s not what Jesus was saying. Jesus’ point was that the foolish man is the one who hears the words of God but doesn’t put them into practice. The wise man is the one who hears the words of God and immediately obeys them. The difference is whether or not you obey what God tells you to do.
Who should we invest our time in? Who should we coach? Those who are obeying. Pour your life into those people and it will change your church and then change your city. Find the faithful people who go out and share their faith and make disciples. Those are your Timothy’s and Tituses.
Don’t pre-filter. Train broadly then coach narrowly–coach the few who are faithful in their obedience.
If we do that, we can shake the world.
For King Jesus,
Josh Howard
Director of Vision and Mobilization
Discipleship.org