Dear Friends
WHY?
Reflecting on Disciple-making – we spend a lot of time on the question HOW? How do you do disciple-making. What do you do, when do you do it? What does the practical strategy look like? What can we learn from others also doing it? What are the best practices? What works and what does not work? How? How? How? An extremely important question!
BUT – an even more important question is not How, but WHY?
Why do we want to do Discple-making? What is the real motivation deep down in our DNA? We do not know what we do not know. The heart has secrets that the brain does not know about! We very often do not know ourselves – our deepest desires – because we live too fast – do not think about what we are thinking.
Research shows that employees working for companies with a crisp clear WHY they exist – are much more loyal, work harder, better, stay longer at this company. Money does not always motivate them – they are prepared to work for less – as long as they experience that their job adds value to who they want to be – they contribute to something bigger than themselves. (Even Coca-Cola’s mission statement is “To give every person in the world a refreshing moment every day” – it’s not about the money they make 
)
WHY do we do disciple-making? In the story of king Midas – everything he touched turned into gold – the cutlery, curtains – he changed everything he touched into a tool to serve himself.
The WHY of MIDAS-disciple-making is :
- To save people from burning and get them in heaven? All about people – that people can have a nice future! It’s all about us.
- To get more members (and money) for my church – it’s about ME!
- To feel better about myself and my ministry – because I am what I do and what I achieve.
The gospel WHY is the glory of God. The legitimate question is “What does God get out of it” and not “what do people get out of it”. The chief end of creation and what they do is to bring glory to God. John Piper says : “Missions exist because worship does not”.
The real WHY is to bring the Kingdom of God – to change everything and every person that does not look like the rulership of God into something where the will of God is obeyed. Changing a person to the character of Jesus – this change will be the biggest testimony to change the country, community, jobplace, family, marriage to look 100% like the will of Jesus. To bring heaven down.
It’s not about Disciple-making – this is not the end in itself – it is only the strategy to Kingdom change.
“Rather than offering to get people into heaven, we should devote ourselves primarily to get heaven into people”. (Augustine) and I want to add – before they die!
Thanks for the privilege to journey with you!!
Johann Theron