Mulling Over Multiplication
Posted by: Jeff Adams in Jeff's Favorites, Ministry Musings, UncategorizedMarco and I are sitting in the airport in Panama City waiting for our flight that is now about an hour delayed. This will make for a brief connection time in Houston and we are hoping to make it. We are scheduled to get back to Kansas City a bit before ten tonight, but this could put us later. We are both ready to get home.
I had an interesting experience this morning. I mentioned in passing that we were going to have a Chinese breakfast today, what you might know as dim sum. A great young Chinese couple in the church had invited us. As we pulled up in front of the restaurant, a Panamanian landmark, I had sense of deja vu. The main part of the restaurant is on the second floor, and as we walked in I immediately recognized that this is the same place where Cheryl and I enjoyed a wonderful meal with friends in 1975!
Sitting there I reflected back on many years of ministry between my first time in this restaurant and today. We often make mention of our mission of making disciples. This is the commission we have received. Making disciples is all about multiplication. The passion of my life has been to multiply myself in others. In 1975 I knew no one in Panama. We had come to Panama City to renew our visas for Costa Rica. To think that today I am heard on radio here every day and that the pastor of one of the larger churches in nation looks to me as a type of mentor is at once humbling and gratifying. Lives are being touched by God’s truth all over this country through the natural and biblical process of multiplication by biblical disciple making. This is what life is about.
With all the many demands on our time, this is a good reminder for me and maybe for you. Are you reproducing yourself in others? Who are the people in your sphere of influence? Can you name them? Can you see their faces? How are you influencing them? For good or for bad? Do you see them carrying on that same reproductive process? No matter who you are, what gifts you have or the type of things you do, you should be multiplying yourself in others. Are you?
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I read something on the internet this morning that ties in with your blog. “We are no longer fishers of men but keepers of the aquarium”. Thank goodness for your blog. It helps to keep us centered between Sundays.
Great to see your example Jeff all these years. I have often contemplated the years Jesus poured His life into the 12 then the 3. Wow. How I would have loved to have been one of them, then again sad to think they all abandoned Him at Calvary, save John.
There is no greater reward than to see those that we have discipled following on in His foot paths. God bless you and your disciples.
From an international perspective, I am one of them!
Thanks, Louis! Great to hear from you. You need to come see us. Cheryl and I just spent a few days in Montreal and thought of you much.
Welcome back to KC…
Judging from the sermon this morning, somebody got fired up in Panama City.
Your message has got me thinking…
What is the line between sacrifice, praise, and self. For me, creating images and telling stories through pictures and sound is what I have been designed to do, it is my praise (most of the time) I enjoy it.
At times I feel I should not, that my worship should be more costly, that I should deny self and sacrifice more.
As for the queston of name the address of you disciple, I panicked… there’s just a bunch of kids, neighbors and coworkers, nothing formal, no bible tracts or workbooks…
My fear is that if I come out to big as “I am Christian, be like me” I am going to screw up royal with something, I also feel like a very cheap copy of Christ, prone to fail under stress. Bad example, etc…
I struggle with guilt, that I am not doing enough and think I should volunteer more and work harder, on the other hand, my best worship comes when I let myself free to run wild, let myself go. My burden is light.
You got me thinking…
thanks
Scott, Scott, Scott! I love you artists! Remember that “laying down your life” for the sheep is not only being willing to die but to live. When you fun free and wild in the power of the gift, creativity and imagination with which God has blessed you, you are indeed laying down your life for him as you set yourself apart to serve him. Whether your images and stories are of a “Christian” content overtly, or purely “secular,” it is the same. When you are involved in your fullness, whatever you do IS a act in Jesus’ name. It’s not about what you do, how hard you work, what you give up, etc. It’s all about the fish and the sheep.
Making disciples is not only done in a formal setting with workbooks and the like — those are merely tools. However it happens, making disciples is when you expose your life in total vulnerability, prone to fail under stress and all, as a pattern for others to follow. You are a follower of Jesus (we are all copies, but not cheap. God bought us with the price of his son’s blood!) and as such you are the pattern for kids, neighbors and coworkers to imitate. More than many people, artists have the innate ability to influence others through their art even when they are not totally cognizant of how this happens.
You, like me, have a free-wheeling travel schedule, and that makes it very difficult to do a more traditional, meet-once-a-week-and-study-together type of discipleship. I prayed that God would give me someone who could fit this type of pattern and he did. I’m sure that you might be able to have this same type of experience some day, but for the moment, be free to be you with confidence, live out loud, free and wild and do what God made you to do. Open you mouth to point your life to him and others will be right behind you! Jesus said the burden would be light — whether as a videographer, martyr or both.