Disciple Making- the Invisible and Immeasurable impact

Making disciples of Jesus among college students is exciting, to see young lives being transformed, to see them grow and mature, to watch them walking with Jesus and start fishing for men, there is nothing more exhilarating than that. But the sad part is that it is short lived, we get them for a short period of three to four years and they graduate and move on, sometimes staying connected but often clueless on how to plug back in. Then we start all over again with new students, the whole process of evangelism and discipleship and repeat that cycle, often wondering are we making an impact, is it really worth it?

It was few years ago I met this man in an unexpected way and as he introduced himself to me he said that he was looking for a staff who had discipled him as a student. That particular staff had left the movement and moved on to another city and had gone on to become a pastor by then. But I was keen to hear more about his story so I probed further. He said that he was a notorious student in one of the campuses in that city involved with a gang who were into drugs and alcohol, they used to idle away their time in a nearby park and this particular staff used to visit that spot and talk to these guys about finding meaning and purpose for life. He said to me, “we used to make fun of him so badly and kept pulling his leg, but that didn’t deter him, he kept coming back every week and met us. His persistence really struck me and I was wondering, this guy is either shameless or there is something else in him”. So the next week few of us wanted to find out, we went to him and asked him this same question, “don’t you have any shame, are you so thick skinned that you keep coming to us in spite of all that mockery and ridicule that we are heaping on you?” He smiled at us and I can never forget that smile, then he gently said, “Jesus loves you so much that he gave his life for you and I love you with that same love and I don’t want you to destroy your lives”. That day with tears streaming down my eyes I prayed and invited this Jesus into my life along with two of my gang members”.

He continued sharing to me, “then we started meeting every week in that same park, we learned almost every basic truth of Christian life from him, he taught us how to do evangelism and discipleship from his life. I can never forget the next two years of college life, it was truly exciting and looking back I dread to think of what would have happened to my life if God hadn’t brought this man of God into our lives and if he was not persistent with us in that manner. Today I am leading a ministry in a foreign country where Christianity is severely persecuted and many people are coming to know Jesus there”. As I heard him share this story, I felt goosebumps all over my body, I couldn’t hold back my tears, I was praising God in my heart, telling myself, yes, yes! it makes all the sense in the world, even though the discipler had no clue about the manifold fruits of his labour in the Lord nevertheless the impact was tremendous. It is not easy to measure or gauge this impact, it is not visible or immediate but it is never in vain. As apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:58, “Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain”.

Recently I received a surprise call from one of the guys whom God had allowed me to disciple while he was a student and he told me something that deeply encouraged my heart, he said, “thank you so much brother for walking with me and helping me draw close to Jesus and His word, if you had not invested those times, teaching the word and praying into my life, I don’t know what I would have become today”.  He is now a lecturer in a prime college and I was so overjoyed to hear that he is discipling 5-6 of his students every year. I know many of us have stories like this to share of life change and impact and that really adds passion and fire into what we are called to do – to make disciples. 

I will never forget these words, it was in the initial years of my ministry, it was from one student with whom I thought I did a pretty decent job of discipling. He told me after he graduated, “brother it was a great time hanging around with you, you “used me” for your ministry and “I used you” to grow and develop myself” I was shell shocked, his words kept ringing in my ears for a long time and I learned something very important that day, that is as we make disciples the key is to remind ourselves that the objective of why we are doing what we are doing is to help our disciples to become Christ-like, to be spiritually mature believers who will bear fruit. “They are not mere numbers to be added into our reports or goals, they are not objects to be used in our programs and strategies, neither are they heads to be counted for the donors to send in the money but they are people whom God loves dearly and in whom He is at work so that they grow to the stature of His son Jesus Christ. 

We are motivated by just one thing - "Love" it is the love of Christ that compels us. Real discipleship is painstaking we need to be like a nursing mother and a doting father as Apostle Paul reminds the Church in Thessalonica (1Thess 1:7-11). We are commanded by the Lord Jesus Himself in Mathew 28:20 to “teach them to obey all that I have commanded you” which is often neglected in disciple making instead it is mostly filled with activities and programs that do not result in life change. As Apostle Paul reminds us in Galatians 6:9, “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up”.