Addition or Multiplication?

Would you rather lead 1000 people to Christ a day, every day for the next 50 years

OR disciple one new person for a year for the next 50 years teaching them how to disciple others?

Which would be a better use of your time? Which would be more Christ-like? The answer might surprise you.

If you led 1000 people to Christ every day for the rest of your life in a frozen population do you know how long it would take for the entire world to be reached for Christ? Roughly 15,000 years.

However, if you discipled one person for a year, bringing them to the point of spiritual maturity and then set them loose to disciple someone else the same way while you also went on to disciple someone else and then repeated this process do you know how long it would take for the entire world to be reached for Jesus? Even in an accurate and growing population rate it would take only 37 years!

This is the extraordinary truth of spiritual multiplication. Just like compound interest can cause investments to soar, so can focused, compounded spiritual multiplication help the Church to grow. It is the simple strategy Jesus gave the disciples when he said “go and make disciples of all the nations”.  Paul commented on it as well when he encouraged Timothy by saying “what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.” (2 Timothy 2:2)

As a result of the planning time that many of you faithfully prayed for this has become the focus of our team this year. We still believe in evangelism and are doing it, but we’re doing it the way that Jesus did it, in the context of discipleship.

There are 1.1 million students in Moscow and 7 of us. It doesn’t take a mathematician to realize the strategic and wise use of spiritual multiplication rather than addition. Our challenge at this point is finding the students God has prepared this year for discipleship, then teaching them, encouraging them and challenging them to live as born again believers in the universities of Moscow, then finally sending them off to begin discipling other students 6 – 12 months from now.

It is an exciting dream. Think about it: how might the universities of Moscow be different 3, 5, 10 years from now if students were multiplying their lives yearly. Imagine the Gospel spreading slowly and imperceptibly at first, then quickly and uncontrollably after years of focused and intentional discipleship. Like Jesus said the kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman hid in three measures of flour, till it was all leavened. (Matthew 13:33) Pray with us that while we water, plant and nurture the seed of faith in the men and women that we are discipling that God would cause them to grow. Pray for us that we could be patient and intentional as we love and disciple the students God has put in our path.

David Coats

Moscow Focus

September 2011

Pray With Us!

 Your prayers are the most practical and powerful way you can help us. Please pray with us for the following.

The Timothy Meeting

In keeping with our emphasis on discipleship we are gathering all of our students for an evening of teaching on the value and importance of spiritual discipleship on October 22nd. We are using Paul's seminal charge to Timothy in 2 Tim 2:2 as the foundation for the evening. We've invited a well-known and respected Russian pastor who is closely connected with our movement to be the main speaker. Pray that students come and that they catch the vision for spiritual multiplication. Pray that they would begin to multiply their lives soon and that God would work in their lives in amazing ways.

Visas

We are still waiting for our year-long visas. We are much closer than we have been. The invitations are coming and soon we'll have year-long visas. Pray that the invitations come soon and that everything goes smoothly as we apply for and process the visas. Something always happens, but it's never a surprise to God.

Student Leaders

Pray that God would raise up more students to be leaders at their universities. Pray for us that we would know how to disciple them and lead them. Pray that all of us would be moved to prayer on behalf of the city of Moscow and country of Russia.