Building the Kingdom...One Life at a Time
Editor's Note: Before reading this article, grab a pen and write down the names of the five people who've had the greatest impact on your life. We'll have you come back to this list later in the article.
We live in a mass-produced society. Long gone are the days when most furniture was hand-crafted, clothing was hand-stitched and meals were homemade from foods that were raised on the family farm. The industrial revolution changed all that. It introduced an era of mass-produced cars, furniture, soap and nearly every other thing you can buy. And now, more than a century later, mass production is a way of life that's ingrained in nearly every part of our lives.
But as efficient and cost-effective as mass production is for making products, it's not the best model for people-oriented activities like evangelism and discipleship. Kingdom laborers simply cannot be mass produced. They're raised up one life at a time by other laborers who build relationships with them and pour into their lives over time. Raising up laborers is a slow, relational process that cannot be by-passed through "mass-production" ministry.
Maybe that's why God chose to express His love for the world in the form of a person--His own Son, Jesus, "the Word who became flesh." And maybe that's why in His three years on earth, most of Jesus' recorded ministry happened, not in large-venue events, but in life-on-life encounters and relationships.
(Note: Of course, large events and mass-media ministries can also have a meaningful place in our spiritual growth. Jesus Himself spoke to the multitudes with great power--and as an itinerant ministry, we fully believe in the power of itinerant speaking! But we'd be the first to say that it's not a substitute for the life-on-life ministry of one person mentoring another.)
One life at a time
By today's standards, it could easily look like Jesus' ministry was a failure, because He didn't reach enough people. He seemed to spend a lot of time with a relatively small number of disciples--teaching them through His words, actions and life. It doesn't seem very time-efficient. But in Jesus' relational model, heaven seems to be shouting to us about a different strategy for ministry. It seems to be saying that the most powerful form of ministry happens up close, over time, in a relational context. At Kingdom Building Ministries, we've summed it up this way:
More time with fewer people equals a greater Kingdom investment.
This idea, of course, goes against the logic of our mass-production mindset. It logically seems that speaking and televising programs to as many people as possible is the best way to reach the world for Christ. This approach--which works on the rules of addition--may reach more people in the short run, but it actually reaches fewer people in the long run. And it reaches them less effectively.
The math of spiritual multiplication
To find out the capacity of life-on-life, spiritual multiplication to reach more people, just grab a calculator and do some simple math. If you were to speak to 100,000 people each year for the next 25 years, you would reach 2.5 million people. If you were to invest regularly and deeply in the lives of two different people each year for the next 25 years, and you taught each of these people to pour their lives into two more people each year (who would do the same), you would together reach more than 50 million people in that same 25 year period. Obviously, it wouldn't play out quite this perfectly in the real world, but I think you get the point: Over time, multiplication (an idea that one movie has called "paying it forward") is a more powerful strategy than addition. And it's the one that Jesus seemed to put most of His stock in.
Spiritual multiplication is a strategy to reach more people more deeply.
Let me use a story to further explain how spiritual multiplication works. It's said that the man who created the game of checkers was summoned by the Emperor of China to be his guest for a celebration dinner. At the end of dinner, the Emperor told the man he could have anything he asked for. (The Emperor apparently loved checkers.) The man asked for one grain of wheat, multiplied and compounded for each square on the checker board. The Emperor was insulted by such a small request and had the man expelled from his presence. What the Emperor did not realize was that he had just been asked for enough kernels to cover the whole country of India in a foot of grain. That's the power of spiritual multiplication. And it has the same power when it's done the context of one person investing in the life of another. It seems small at first, but the influence multiplies over time.
The Impact of Life on Life Ministry
The idea of relational, spiritual multiplication is clearly a strategy to reach more people, but it's more than that. It's also a strategy to reach them more deeply. In other words, it's both deep and wide!
Editor's Note: At the beginning of this article, you were asked to write down the names of the five people who've had the greatest influence on your life. Now take a break for a moment and answer a few questions:
"How many of the names listed are people with whom you've had close proximity and relationship?"
"How many are speakers, authors, or others with whom you've had little or no relationship?"
Our experience in having others do this little exercise is that more than 90 percent of the people who have had the greatest influence on our lives are those with whom we've had a substantial relationship.
Passing the baton
Despite the power of the life-on-life ministry, a recent Gallup poll shows that it isn't happening much in the church. According to Gallup's survey, 90 percent of people in the chruch say they've never been discipled in a relational way. The church is clearly in desperate need of mature (but ordinary) Christians who will follow Jesus' model and build relationships with others, passing on to them the experiences, resources, wisdom and understanding they themselves have received from God (often through others).
It's what Timothy received from Paul, who called him "my dear son" and "my son in the faith." And it's what Paul had received from Barnabas ("Son of Encouragement"), who took Paul in after his conversion and helped prepare and launch him into the ministry God had called him to. Barnabas mentored Paul and Paul mentored Timothy. It's a lineage of faith that Timothy them passed on to others.
In a sense, that's what mentoring is. It's the empowering ministry of passing on what God has given us into the lives of another (who, ultimately, will do the same). It's like the act of passing the baton in a relay race.
And it's what Paul meant when he said to Timothy: "And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses, teach to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach others" (2 Timothy 2:2).
It's what Jesus was talking about when He left His disciples with these words: "Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations...and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you..." (Matthew 28:19-20, Italics mine). Notice the progression here: I (Jesus) teach you. You teach them. And to go back a step, Jesus said He was passing on to them what the Father had passed to Him (John 17:7-8).
One of the clear hallmarks of Jesus' ministry was that He passed on to His disciples (and ultimately future generations) what it looks like to be a lover of God and a Kingdom laborer. He lived in close proximity to a group of ordinary men who were able to, not only hear the Kingdom principles He taught, but also see what it looks like when those principles are lived out in a life. They heard from Him that the greatest commandment is to love God and love others. They then watched Jesus as He visibly and daily lived out that commandment.
A mentoring relationship allows us to see what faith, and hope, and love, and so many other virtues look like.
That's the power of a mentoring relationship. It allows us to see what faith, and hope, and love, and so many other virtues look like. And, just as important, it allows us to see others in their struggle to live out this faith, hope and love in the midst of their humanity and imperfection.
We've all heard the phrase, "Seeing is believing." But seeing is not just believing, it's also the key to receiving. (For do we truly receive a truth that someone is trying to pass to us unless we see it at work in their lives?)
To say it a different way, "More is caught than taught."
Thinking ahead to the end
There are many examples of animal and bird species that, for one reason or another, stopped reproducing and became extinct. When you're gone, will your spiritual lineage also become extinct? Will you leave this world without reproducing other laborers, or will you pass on the wealth of spiritual blessings and resources that God has given you?
I leave you with the words of writer Dennis Exeley: "It's not enought to run the race; you must also pass the baton."
Written by Dwight Robertson © 2003 Kingdom Building Ministries. www.kbm.org
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