By the Numbers

Written by Joel Davis

If you’ve followed Trexo for some time, then you’ve heard Jim and the rest of our team say it a hundred times: One person, one issue, one step at a time. One of the key ingredients of our recipe is the emphasis on one-on-one, one-on-two, one-on-three small group discipleship. We’re not opposed to teaching groups of 30, 100, or 2000, but we believe that life transformation happens most consistently when we drill down into one another’s lives on a weekly basis, fall in love with the people we’re discipling, and shine the light of love and grace into every corner of our hearts and lives that we can.

Before I came on staff at Trexo, I was a pastor for 8 years, and I have to be honest with you: I did not always strategize and organize my ministry to make this the target I was tirelessly aiming at. For as long as I can remember, small group discipleship has been central to my story. I was discipled by Mr. Williams in the 6th grade, Brian in junior high and high school, Ben and Dustin in college, and several men in my Community Groups as an adult. Not only that, but I hope I was a part in discipling dozens of students and church members over 18 years of ministry myself. But I have to confess, I never was able or determined enough to translate this into a structural overhaul of my church’s discipleship strategy. I was too busy trying to make sure we have group leaders, host homes, and that the groups of 20-30 people gathering weekly for Bible study were being done well. Nothing wrong with small group ministry, but something changed for me when I sat down and worked the numbers.

I put together a table to see what would happen if just one person just committed to discipling three other men or women for a year with the express intention of giving away the Father’s love and for those three people to turn and do the same at the conclusion of that year. What I found shocked me. After one year, three people have been discipled. After year two, those three people each disciple three more while the initial person gets a new group of three. It only takes three years for 54 people to be discipled in this way. And every year after that, the numbers just become more and more staggering. If I had committed to discipling three people a year for the eight years of my time as a pastor, I could have seen a genealogical tree of disciples numbering over 14,000. Ten years of this could yield 100,000!

I know what you’re going to say. “Joel, that’s a perfect world scenario. Of course not all of those people will go on to disciple three others the very next year.” And you’re absolutely right. But the point is that a long obedience in the same direction woulda coulda shoulda yielded a harvest of potentially thousands of people walking in the overflow of God’s love. 

Don’t get bogged down in how much those numbers could tail off if people don’t continue on to disciple others. Instead, get pumped up with how quickly a move of effective disciple-making could take off! And don’t beat yourself up if you’ve not made a habit of doing this. Jesus doesn’t intend for us to shame ourselves with how much we haven’t done, but to inspire us and excite us with the incredible possibility we have when we follow Him and become fishers of men (Matthew 4:19). There is no time like the present to dedicate ourselves to discipleship!

I also want you to notice that this has always been the way of Jesus. Jesus preaches and teaches to the crowds (think Sermon on the mount), and he converses with the Twelve daily. But in some of his most private, intimate, critical moments of His earthly ministry, only Peter, James, and John are present. What a waste of time that might seem to us! Can you imagine how many Christian influencers would want a mic on Jesus for the Garden of Gethsemane in Mark 14:32-34? Or how many of us would wish that there were cameras live streaming the Transfiguration in Luke 9:28-36? And yet, Jesus chooses to be with only three of his dearest followers and bring them along for one of the most significant moments in his life. This should be a lesson for all of us. Too many teachers think that what’s important is their reach. We need more page views, more streams, and more clicks. But what I hear far less emphasis on is how deeply and intentionally we are willing to live our lives alongside a very small number of people with whom we are willing to be most vulnerable. 

The measure of our impact is depth, not breadth. What good is teaching to a room full of 500 people if you don’t love them and they don’t love you? How can we be effective conduits of transformation in people’s lives if we don’t know anything about the pressing issues in their lives? But the good news in this is that although many of us will never be invited to speak to thousands, every single one of us can find three others to intentionally disciple over the course of a year. Look at how John’s Gospel describes Jesus as He recognizes His hour has come and begins His march to the Cross:

“It was just before the Passover Festival. Jesus knew that the hour had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.”  —John 13:1

What I find so powerful about this verse, what has brought me back to it time and time again these past few months, is how it centers love in the ministry of Jesus. It does not say…

“Having taught His own who were in the world…”

“Having healed His own who were in the world…”

“Having cast demons out of His own who were in the world…”

Jesus did ALL of these things, and He did countless other things for His own as well. But the ministry of LOVE was what John wants us to see as foundational. Elsewhere in one of John’s letters, He says:

“This is how God (the Father) showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.”  —1 John 4:9

Your Heavenly Father loves you! And to show it, He sent His Son Jesus to draw near to you so that you might live! So, if we want to follow Jesus and become disciples who make disciples, we are going to have to draw near to some people, too, to get real with some people! We are going to have to fall in love with the people we are discipling. We are going to have to invite them into the most difficult situations in our own lives and encourage them to do the same. We are going to have to create margin and space in our lives to prioritize these kinds of relationships instead of racing around with our spiritual gas tanks on “E”. 

Friends, we are at the very beginning of a brand new year. There is immeasurable possibility and opportunity that God our Father has prepared for you. This week, I want to challenge you to ask the Holy Spirit to give you three names of people that you can invite into intentional, small group discipleship. I have two such groups going on right now myself, and I can tell you they are some of the most rewarding friendships I have in my entire life. They are men who speak honestly with me about the junk in my life and the mess in theirs, and we trust each other with the real, unvarnished stuff of our lives and point each other back to God’s love for us in the midst of it all. I want those kinds of relationships for each one of you. So once you get those three names, start meeting weekly. It can be during your lunch hour, before work for coffee or breakfast, in your living room during naptime, or in your garage at night after the kids go to bed. Spend some time on what happened that week, seeking wisdom from one another. Spend some time in a passage of Scripture with one another. And spend some time in prayer for one another. In doing this, you will be weekly reminding one another of the love of God for each of you.

“Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other.” —1 John 4:11

And the best news of all: If we continue to offer the overflow life to people, one person one issue one step at a time, in just a matter of time, we will find ourselves a part of a discipleship movement that truly will change the world.