When my understanding of Matthew 28:16-20 changed my approach to making disciples changed.
For the better part of the 25 yrs I made disciples. The names in these circles represent individuals who I taught to obey Jesus. I used my gifts and passions to cooperate with the HS to transform their internal world, their relationships and the use of the resources that God had provided them.
I have always lived with a frustration that my disciples didn’t make disciples like I did. I used all kinds of terminology and metaphor to get across to them that they were responsible to multiply. Nothing seem to work. But one day reading Matthew 28:16-20 in dawned on me that I was responsible for making disciple-making disciples.
I was to prepare them to make disciple rather than prepare them to be a disciple. As the lights came on I saw that the methods I had used grew out of my gifts and passions. Nothing wrong with that except they were gifted and impassioned differently. I love to read and great authors impacted my life greatly so I exposed them to Nouwen, Willard, Crabb, Manning, Bonhoeffer, and others. I love to read, reflect and gouged out the implications of these thinkers and drive it deep into my life. I had the luxury of a Bachelors in Greek and a Master in Theology. I had this deep theological framework to lay these authors against, In short I possessed a journey that they couldn’t repeat.