Fruitpickers

There’s a young man in Africa – Wilson is his name, who has seen over 4,000 churches catalysed across cities, nations and an entire region. He is both young, and equally sketchy talking about numbers but things are still multiplying. But Wilson didn’t set about leading hundreds of thousands of people to Christ. He took a far simpler path. Using a time tested approach, and following Jesus’ principle, he went and found the few who in time, would lead to the many.

Jesus never wanted his church to be built around anybody except him. So, for this amazing ‘church plant’ it didn’t take very long for it to be right out of Wilson’s control. Just as God intended. Wilson invested all of his time, intensively training the few and making certain that they replicated that down the line. So, by the time we get to the newest generation of believers, we will find that those early principles are, by and large, still intact. So why then, do we doubt it can ever happen where we are?

Firstly, we have created a system that is so convoluted and complex that it is hard for us to believe that simple uneducated fishermen are capable of building anything, let alone a church. We put the reaching of the many in the hands of one – that one in turn, keeps the many so busy, we don’t have the time or inclination. Disciple making is so simple, a child can do it. Jesus made sure of that. This week, I have a business lunch, my 3^rd meeting with a grown man, who has already explained that he has abandonment issues. My intention then, is to recount an appropriate Scripture about how his Heavenly Father never abandons us, and ask him if he would like to explore that together further. If he says yes, then the journey will begin.

I would like to suggest, that the single biggest hurdle to disciple making we have in the West is that we (believers) find it virtually impossible to have a meaningful conversation with our neighbour. We either spew the Gospel over them at the first meeting or never open our mouths about our Faith.

We then create our second doubt, which is that somehow God cannot do this in our neighbourhood/context/city/country. Really? Read that again and see how ridiculous it sounds. We call movements like Wilsons’ ‘God movements’ for good reason. He initiates, authors and sustains all his movements. We get to play along, while he does the work. We must never doubt his capability.

We’ll write more on this later, but for now it would seem that the real problem is us. We have overcomplicated something that is so beautifully simple and made it entirely dependent upon us, not on Christ.

Today then, walk out of your door determined with the Lord to find someone whom you can gently introduce to Jesus. If a spiritual conversation is too big, have a meaningful one. If that is out of reach, just engage in a casual one.

If they’re the right people, then one conversation will lead to the next over time anyway. If not, find someone else – one of the few. Eventually, you will get to the many and a God movement.