What is the Greatest Blessing

As soon as I’m able to lead someone to follow the Lord, I like to tell them this:

“It is a blessing to follow the Lord, it is a great blessing to lead others to follow the Lord, it is a greater blessing to start a new spiritual community (new simple church), and it is the greatest blessing to equip others to start new spiritual communities. I want to help you start to have great, greater, and greatest blessing.”

(So essentially, what I’ve just told that brand new believer is that I want to equip them to be a church planter trainer.) So I’ll ask them:

“Make a list of a hundred people that you know; friends, family, neighbors, co-workers, and classmates. Then, after you make that list, let’s pick five that you want to share with right away. You want to share with them what Christ has done for you and why you have chosen to follow Christ.”

So they’ll make their list of a hundred, they’ll pick five, then I’ll equip them to share their testimony for a brand new believer. This is essentially why they decided to follow Christ. So we’ll practice that, and I’ll have them practice it five times. Once for each of the five people that they’ve recommended that they want to talk to right away. So we’ll role-play it and I will play the part of each of those people.

Then, I’ll equip them to share the gospel, usually in whatever way I shared the gospel with them. I’ll teach them how to share the gospel in that same way and again we’ll role-play it five times. I have them pretend that I’m the first person of those five and then they’ll share the gospel with me.

Then after they’re comfortable doing that and I feel like they’re ready, I’ll say,

“Great! This is Wednesday, so Friday let’s get together. Is the evening okay with you? Let’s say 8 o’clock. We can meet at the tea shop down the street.”

They’ll say sure, and so I’ll get their contact information. Then I send them out to share with those five people that they have identified that they want to share the gospel with.

So two days later, I’ll meet up with them. I have their contact information, so if they don’t show up, I can get a hold of them.

Then I say, “How did it go?”

Maybe they shared the gospel, but nobody believed or actually maybe they shared the God, they didn’t share the gospel. Well, if they didn’t share the gospel, then I’ll say,

“Alright, what do we need to do? Do I need to go with you? We can go right now. Would any of those people be available, if we would go right now? Or you know, would you rather just practice some more? How can I help you to do this?”

But maybe they’ve shared the gospel and no one believed. That’s fine. I’m happy! We’ll start talking about baptism, you know, we’ll start moving on to the next steps.

Maybe they shared the gospel and someone believed, and so then I’ll make sure that they followed up, telling them about the great, greater, and greatest blessings. If they didn’t, we’ll practice that again and I’ll send them back to those people who believed.

But occasionally, they’ll share the gospel, someone or more people will believe, and they share with them this entire process. I’m ecstatic in that case. I’m assuming that this is a person of peace. This is potentially a person through whom not only a new church could start, but possibly a movement could start.

This process helps me identify people that I especially want to focus extra attention and extra effort on coaching, and it’s clear that this person is functioning in that duckling manner right. Not only following, but also leading.

They’re faithfully balancing the knowledge, the obedience, and the sharing. That is someone that God will invest more in and that’s someone that I want to invest more in.

More Multiplication Concepts

This concept is part of the “Multiplication Concepts” series by Curtis Sergeant. Consider working through the entire series and challenging someone you know to do it with you. See an entire list of the concepts in the article titled “Multiplication Concepts”.

This same concept is taught in the Zúme Training course using video animation and is translated into 40 languages. Find more training on this concept with “Vision Casting the Greatest Blessing” in session 4 of the Zúme Training.

Zúme Training is an on-line and in-life learning experience designed for small groups who follow Jesus to learn how to obey His Great Commission and make disciples who multiply.