The Chain That Changes the World

Here's something that should stop you in your tracks.

The person who told you about Jesus was told by someone else. Who was told by someone else. Who was told by someone else. Pull the thread all the way back and you'll eventually land somewhere near the first century. Near a small group of ordinary people who had spent three years watching a carpenter from Nazareth.

That chain didn't survive two thousand years through institutions. It survived through relationships.

A friend of mine in Thailand calls it "discipolic succession." Not the Catholic version — no bishops required. Just an unbroken chain of people who took seriously the call to invest their lives in a few others who did the same.

You're in that chain. The question is whether you're extending it.

I've watched movements explode in places where Christianity was barely legal a generation ago. Mongolia. The Philippines. Parts of Africa. In every case the fuel was the same — ordinary people who understood that their faith wasn't a possession. It was a deposit to be passed on.

This is what Jesus meant by "Go and make disciples of all nations." Not "Go and build impressive church buildings." Not "Go and launch excellent weekend services." Those things aren't wrong. But they're not the same as making disciples. A disciple is someone who is learning to live the way Jesus lived and is helping others do the same.

The math of multiplication is staggering when you actually sit with it. If you disciple three people this year, and those three people each disciple three people next year, and that pattern holds for just ten years — you've touched tens of thousands of lives. Not through a megachurch budget. Not through a media campaign. Through a chain of relationships. That's not a business model. That's the New Testament.

I know a medical doctor in Hawaii who left his practice to pastor six people. Six. Some would call that a failure. Within a few years that church had grown to 400 and spawned a cluster of daughter congregations — all through a disciplemaking culture. He didn't scale through programs. He scaled through people who made disciples who made disciples.

I know a South African pastor who drives thirty hours — thirty — to disciple young men in other nations. Not because he's required to. Because he understands what's at stake in the chain.

There are Starbucks locations hosting five simultaneous disciplemaking groups right now. Not inside a church building. In a coffee shop. Because someone understood that the chain doesn't require a sanctuary.

Here's where it gets personal. You are a link in this chain whether you choose to act like it or not. But a passive link doesn't extend it. A passive link just holds what was given and passes it on through nothing more than doctrinal statement or church attendance.

An active link invests. An active link chooses one or two or three people and says — I'm going to give you my time, my honesty, my prayers, my failures and my faith. And we're going to figure out together what it means to follow Jesus in the real world. That's it. That's the chain.

You don't need a title to do it. You don't need a platform. You don't need to be further along than you are. The best disciplemakers I've ever known were honest about their own struggles — and that honesty was exactly what made people trust them.

Your mistakes don't disqualify you. They qualify you. They're the proof that Jesus works in real, broken people. That's the most persuasive thing you can show someone. Extend the chain.