“If you want to plant a church every year, just hire Bible instructors. But if you want to reach your entire people group in this generation, every member must be involved in planting churches.”

When we talk about the church planting movement, we are talking about true disciples of Jesus working together to reach other people, leading them to become true disciples of Jesus who reach out to others, perpetuating the movement until the work is finished.

The Bible clearly expresses this idea—you can’t reach an entire group of people by yourself without training more people to do the same thing. Notice how Jesus reacts in Matthew 9:35-10:1. This is clearly His sentiment:

In verse 35, Jesus begins to visit all the villages, teaching, proclaiming the gospel and healing many. In verse 36, Jesus sees the crowds and feels compassion for them. They are too many, and they look lost. What is His reaction?

He speaks to His disciples in verse 37 and tells them (paraphrasing): “We are too few. We alone cannot do it. Pray that God will send more workers.” Then in Matthew 10:1, Jesus chooses His disciples and gives them His authority to cast out unclean spirits and heal the sick.

How well do the disciples know the doctrines? We do not know. How well do they know Jesus? At this point, they are not even sure if He is God; they will figure that out later. Does Jesus care that they do not know everything yet? Apparently not, because He sends them anyway and gives them His authority.
In Luke 10, we see a similar pattern. Jesus gives the 70 the same direction: “There are too many people. We need more workers” (paraphrasing).

Do you see the pattern? The King of the Universe, the Almighty, then limited by His human nature, says, “I cannot do it alone; we need more people.”

Jesus, though veiled in human nature, cast out demons, brought people to life, performed miracles from a distance and healed multitudes. But He could not be everywhere at once.

What strikes me most is this: to accomplish this work of making disciples who make disciples, He could have sent powerful angels to do the job. Why did He not do that? Would it not have been better?

Perhaps Jesus knows that to grow in character and relationship with Him—in other words, fitted for Heaven in its truest sense and grasp the reality that they belong there (by works that are the fruit of their faith)—Mbkiep needs to make disciples, and MaDavid, and Laeng, too, and MaSien, and, of course, MaPrek.

Perhaps God knows that we ALL need the mission to stay connected to Him; we need the mission much more than we imagine.

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