The Great Commission can be accomplished as millions of Christians develop a personal strategy that ties in directly to Christ's global strategy. One Christian with a personal strategy, focusing all his efforts, can magnify and multiply his fruitfulness beyond measure.
“But,” you may ask, “what is a personal strategy?”
A personal strategy is a deliberate plan of action by an individual to accomplish a specific goal. Since the goal of every sincere believer should be to help fulfill the Great Commission, his personal plan should include evangelizing and discipling, adding and multiplying.
When you personally introduce another to Christ, that is spiritual addition. But when you deliberately disciple the new Christian and help him to win, disciple and send others who will do the same to win and disciple others, generation after generation, that is spiritual multiplication!
Let me illustrate. During a Campus Crusade for Christ banquet in Manila, the director of our Great Commission Training Center introduced a medical doctor whom he had introduced to Christ and discipled. The doctor stood and gave his testimony, then introduced one of the persons whom he had introduced to Christ and discipled. This man in turn gave his testimony and introduced one of the medical students whom he had introduced to Christ and discipled.
This went on for ten generations of a ministry that had begun with one of our American staff who had poured his life into the discipling of men who in turn discipled others.
Recently, I traveled to Thailand where I met many spiritual multipliers, one of them a man who is the spiritual father of twelve generations. He has led more than fifteen hundred people to Christ in the past four years. While I was there, he introduced me to one of his disciples, who introduced me to one of his disciples, and so it went on down a line of twelve men and women. The last disciple in the chain had been a Christian only six months and had already introduced twelve people to Christ and was in the process of discipling several of them.
These believers in Thailand know that it is not enough just to lead others to the Lord and to say, “Isn't that great?” – then forget them. Rather, they win people and disciple them, training these new Christians to win and disciple others so they, in turn, will win and disciple still others.
How would you like to introduce hundreds – even thousands – of men and women to our Lord Jesus Christ? You can.
If you were to introduce just one person to the Lord Jesus every month for the next twenty years, you would have introduced 240 souls to Christ. This is the principle of addition and very few Christians have such a fruitful witness.
However, if you were to disciple each of those 240 new believers so that they in turn would win and disciple others, generation after generation, many millions would be introduced to Christ in the same number of years.
The apostle Paul was referring to spiritual multiplication in his second letter to Timothy. “You must teach others those things you and many others have heard me speak about,” he said. “Teach these great truths to trustworthy men who will, in turn, pass them on to others.”
Beginning with only two persons and using this simple, continuous cycle of discipling, or spiritual multiplication, the entire world could be totally evangelized and saturated with the gospel in only thirty-two subsequent steps because two, multiplied by itself thirty-two times, equals the population of the world!
As each of us develops a personal strategy, God can use us to play a vital role in helping to fulfill the Great Commission.
It all boils down to this simple equation:
GOAL – PLAN + ACTION = DREAM
GOAL + PLAN + ACTION = REALITY
Adapted from the Transferable Concept: How You Can Help Fulfill The Great Commission, by Dr. Bill Bright, co-founder of Campus Crusade for Christ. © Cru. All rights reserved.
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