Today we're going to talk about being a disciple and how to make disciples of other people. I want to remind you that the Lord gave us a command not to go make converts, not to just get people to confess Jesus as their Lord and receive forgiveness of sins, but to make disciples. Although those first two are vital, and I'm not minimizing that at all, the real purpose has to be to go beyond being born again and to go on to maturity. The goal of a Christian, who is a disciple, should be to go and make disciples of other people.

Jesus told us to go and make disciples, to bring people to maturity and able to reproduce. Our church world today hasn't done this. We've put the responsibility of getting people born again on what we call the clergy, or ministers. We have evangelists who travel around, hold large crusades, and see thousands of people make decisions for the Lord. Though some of them are not really born again but are just experiencing emotions, I'm sure there are people who are truly born again and have a relationship with the Lord. Most of the time, however, there's not an emphasis on going on and becoming a disciple, and that's not the way God intended it to be.

I compare this to a person who loves babies. It would be totally irresponsible to have a baby, be excited about it, but only like seeing it born. When you have a child, you have to assume responsibility to train and raise it. We tell people, "The main thing is to get born again, to confess Jesus as your Lord." When that happens, we pat them on the back and say, "Now you're a Christian. Believe God, study the Bible, and everything will be okay." That is not the Lord's emphasis.

Because of this, we've produced people, many of whom have made heartfelt commitments to the Lord, but have no maturity. They are unable to reproduce their faith because there is no material to help them. Instead of being positive witnesses for Jesus, they actually become negative witnesses. He intends for us to go out and reach people in a way that they become full-fledged disciples and are able to reproduce their faith in others.

If you led one person to the Lord every six months, separated yourself and discipled them to the point that they became a mature Christian who could reproduce their faith, at the end of six months there'd only be two Christians. Then, if each one of you led one person to the Lord, separated yourselves and discipled them for six months, at the end of a year there'd be four Christians. This doesn't look comparable to a person who could lead a thousand people to the Lord in a crusade and get them to confess Jesus. Most people would say, "Well, this discipleship method only produces four converts in the first year, whereas the other method would produce a thousand converts. We have to go with the other one." The man who could lead a thousand people to the Lord would have led 35,000 people to the Lord. That's good, and nobody would criticize it; but it's just a drop in the bucket compared to the world population. Basically, that's the way the church has been functioning.

If we emphasize discipleship, the person who leads one person to the Lord every six months and those two do the same, in just a little over twelve and a half years they would evangelize more than the population of the world. Some people think That can't be, but I challenge you to figure it out. I've multiplied it out, and in a little over twelve- and-a-half years, one person discipling another person every six months, making them a reproducing member of the body of Christ, could evangelize five and a half billion people versus twelve-and-a-half thousand people with the other method.

If we could get you to where you not only experienced victory and maturity yourself but had a desire to go out and reproduce it in other people, if you became the trainer instead of the trainee, here are some of the things that could happen if only one person got a hold of this concept, followed the Lord to a place of maturity, and started discipling another person. If you only did this with one person per year, at the end of one year, there would be you and the person you discipled—two. At the end of two years, there'd be four. But, if you could continue to follow that, at the end of ten years there'd be 1,024 people who had been discipled and were reproducing members of the body of Christ. If you continued, with only one person originally receiving this, at the end of twenty years there'd be over a million people. That's awesome. This is the method of multiplication that the Lord established—going and making disciples, not going and making converts. It's by far the best way to expand the kingdom to reach people, but our mindset is looking for the quick fix.

How many people go to large crusades, make commitments, go proclaim to be Christians, still have anger, bitterness, and jealousy, and become negative witnesses? If we want to count statistics, how many people have been turned away from the true Gospel because they saw someone who proclaimed Christianity and thought, I'm as good as the hypocrites down there at church. I don't need it.

The whole point is that discipleship is the method God set down for evangelizing the world. The truth doesn't make you free until you continue in the Word (John 8:31- 32). That's what God wants for each individual so they can experience His fullness, but it's also the method of evangelism that He set down. Whoever decided that was not the way to do it has substituted another method that hasn't worked.

I pray today that God speaks this to your heart to show you the value of discipleship. I encourage you to go on and become a disciple and a discipler of other people.