There is an old brain teaser about a rich man that offers to give you one million dollars today or a penny today and double it each day for the next thirty days (i.e. $.01 today, $.02 tomorrow, $.04 the next day and so forth for a total of thirty-one days). The question is simple, which option would you choose?
It’s hard to go wrong with a million dollars, even in today’s economy. However, if you chose the penny route, on the thirty-first day you would receive $5,368,709.12 and the total you would have received over the thirty-one days would be $10,737,418.23. In terms of penny’s, that is a total of over one billion pennies in thirty-one days!
Why am I sharing this? Let’s talk about people and the Kingdom of God. Suppose our model for evangelism is broken. What if, instead of trying to see how many people we can get to come forward to make a decision for Christ each week, we focused on making just two disciples. What if we take the time to train and disciple just two new converts to the point that they can share their testimony and start discipling two of their friends.
This isn’t church as usual or evangelism as usual. I’m talking about taking the time to provide intensive training for a new convert so that they actually become a “new creation.” I’m talking about spending an hour or two per day for five to seven days per week to teach the fundamentals of Christian living.
For the sake of argument, let’s say that this discipling process would take two months to adequately disciple two people to the point that they could start discipling two people themselves. Using the example of the penny, this process could result in over one billion disciples in just five years!