Leaving a Discipleship Legacy

Legacy.

What a powerful word.  It is what is left of you when you are gone.  It represents your life effort and the effectiveness of how well you pulled it off.   I believe one of the most important questions that is going to be asked on judgment day as we stand before Jesus is, “How many disciples did you make?”  So let me ask you a personal question; how many disciples have you made up to this point in your life?  I am not talking about how many spiritual conversations you had or how many times you sort of helped someone out.  That wasn’t the question.

How many disciples have you made?

How many people can point to you as one of the primary catalysts for their spiritual growth because of the time, prayer, teaching, and life-on-life moments that you shared together?  It is a sobering question but one of the most important questions you will ever ask yourself.  This isn’t a condemnation trip; this is a call to spend yourself for things that have eternal weight and value!  To say no to worldly pursuits that are not going to matter even one year from now, much less one million years from now.  The question isn’t going to be how many movies you watched, how many sports stats you can rattle off, how many likes you got on Facebook, or how many sweet recipes you pulled off Pinterest.  The question that matters is this; how many disciples have you made?

What will you be remembered for?  My earnest prayer is that you as a microchurch leader will be remembered for the discipleship legacy you left in your wake.   Don’t waste your life, friend.  Don’t waste your life!!!  This is the rallying cry: spend yourself for the things that matter most.  This is the call to let the beauty of the Gospel inconvenience your comfortable life with the messiness that comes when you’re discipling others.  Give yourself to the Gospel!  Give yourself to disciple making!

Give yourselves to the one who gave Himself for you.  It only seems fitting, in light of His mercy, to offer yourself right back to Him…

I want to share with you a chart that I look at often.  I am an introvert and I have aspirations that run so deep to do great things for the One who has done such great things for and in me.  I weep regularly at the thought of wanting so badly to make my life count, not because I want to leave a legacy per say, but because I want to show my appreciation for what Jesus has done for me.  I want others to taste and see He is good.  Sometimes, however, I would get overwhelmed because I thought, “What can I do?”  But then I started thinking, “If I give myself, truly give myself, to multiplying my microchurch once a year and raising up disciples who have that same passion to raise up other disciples who will go and multiply microchurches, then I can make a radical difference.  I can leave a substantial discipleship legacy.”

Think about it.  Take a look at that chart one more time.  If you continue to multiply your microchurch (let’s say the average is twenty people in each microchurch) every year and the ones who multiply from your microchurch do the same, within a span of a decade you will have reached over 10,000 people.  Within fourteen years, over 160,000.  Now I know this sounds like a pyramid scheme, but don’t miss the point: as a microchurch leader, you have the unbridled potential to change the world by making disciples who make disciples and multiplying microchurches that multiply microchurches.  When you go to rallies and hear, “Let’s take this city for Jesus!!” that battle cry ceases to be mere hyperbole and becomes a tangible possibility when you think of it this way.  It can be done.  It will be done.  And you can be the one to spark the flame that sets the entire city on fire.

Microchurch leaders, are you waiting for a sign?  Then consider this your sign.  Consider this your call.  Consider this the starting point for the most important decision you will ever make; the decision to give yourself to changing the world one disciple at a time.  Set your gaze and give yourself completely… not to results, but to the One who completely gave Himself for you.  Get ready for the ride of your life that you will never forget and you will never regret.

Live a life worth following.  Live a life worth remembering.  Live in complete surrender to Him and watch Him do things you never thought possible in and through you.