Multiplying disciples with marbles

"In my own life," Howard Hendricks said several years ago, " I can recall several profoundly influential figures who were strategically used by God to change the course of my life." 

"The first was a man named Walt. Had it not been for Walt, I seriously doubt whether I would have ever become a follower of Jesus Christ." 


God often chooses to use ordinary folks to be His disciples and do life-changing, multiplying disciple-making.  People are impacted by changed people who love other people toward walking with God.

Mike and Travis, an accountant and an engineer in our church family, are these kind of men.  Each man just took off on "another level" with their Sunday School classes. 

Disciple-making lifts ministries into new stratospheres

Both were "out of the box" guys but never saw it, really.  They wouldn't say they are creative, either. They put together special events with their curriculum of loving disciple-making. Classes were invited to their homes for games and pizza. It became common place to witness these men using a curb on our church campus to talk to the boys one-on-one.  The boys loved these men.

"Mike" and "Travis" are everywhere in our churches.  They are following Jesus as His disciples and serving as His ministers in and all around the church.  Some go into our communities and even around the world.  Some go to the streets and into jails and prisons. 

Disciple-making men and women are artists, accountants, bakers, computer geeks, custodians, engineers, fruit growers, gamers, nurses, physicians, software engineers, mothers, and dads, grandpas and grandmas. 

Disciple-making begins on the ground
"I came from a broken home," Hendricks recounted. "My parents were separated before I was born, and neither one paid much attention to my spiritual condition. To put it bluntly, I could have lived, died, and gone to hell without anyone even bothering to care. 

"But Walt cared. He was part of a tiny church in my neighborhood that developed a passion to affect its community for Christ.

“One day, he asked me, Would you like to play marbles?”

"Walt’s passion was to reach nine-and ten-year-old boys like me with the gospel. I’ll never forget that Saturday morning I met him. I was sprawled out on a Philadelphia sidewalk playing marbles. Suddenly someone was standing beside me. I looked up to see this gangly guy towering over me—all six feet, four inches of him. My mouth sort of dropped open.

“Hey, son, how would you like to go to Sunday school?” he asked.

"That was an unfortunate question. To my mind, anything that had the word “school” in it had to be bad news. So I shook my head no.

Disciple-making talks their language
But Walt was just getting started. “How would you like to play marbles?” he asked, squatting down. Now, he was talking my language!

Younger Howard Hendricks

“Sure!” I replied, and quickly set up the game. As the best marble player on the block, I felt supremely confident that I could whip this challenger fairly easily.

"Would you believe he beat me in every single game! In fact, he captured every marble I had. In the process, he captured my heart. I may have lost a game and a bit of pride that day, but I gained something infinitely more important—the friendship of a man who cared. 

"A big man, an older man, a man who literally came down to my level by kneeling to play a game of marbles. From then on, wherever Walt was, that’s where I wanted to be.

Disciple-making builds into lives
"Walt built into my life over the next several years in a way that marked me forever. He used to take me and the other boys in his Sunday school class hiking. I’ll never forget those times. He had a bad heart, and I’m sure we didn’t do it any good, running him all over the woods the way we did. 

"But he didn’t seem to mind, because he cared. In fact, he was probably the first person to show me unconditional love.

Disciple-making models faithfulness
"He was also a model of faithfulness. I can’t remember a time that he ever showed up to his Sunday school class unprepared. Not that he was the most scintillating teacher in the world. In fact, he had almost no training for that. Vocationally, he worked in the tool and die trade. But he was for real, and he was also creative. He found ways to involve us boys in the learning process—an approach that made a lasting contribution to my own style of teaching.

Disciple-making incarnates Christ
Overall, Walt incarnated Christ for me. And not only for me, but for thirteen other boys in my neighborhood, nine of whom also came from broken homes. Remarkably, eleven of us went on to pursue careers as vocational Christian workers—which is ironic, given that Walt himself completed school only through the sixth grade. It just goes to show," Hendricks concluded, "that a man doesn’t need a Ph.D. for God to use him to shape another man."

Disciple in the Biblical context simply means one who follows and learns from a teacher. The disciple is mentored by another.  The curriculum is knowing Christ.  It doesn't require a Bible School, Seminary education, nor a library of books.  Published curriculum is helpful but isn't necessary.  The disciple's handbook is the Bible and the most faithful work life-on-life.

Using Mike, Travis, Walt, Howard, and 13 boys, disciple-making starts where we meet people and where we want to invite them to join us.  That's great for me because it tells me I can do it where the person I am meeting with and I are safest.  

At Prisoners for Christ, we have a pen pal ministry.  Letter writing is a form of disciple-making. Women are great at writing letters.  There is a long list of male inmates who requested a faithful man to write them.  They are still waiting. 

Disciple-making passionately serves
Dawson "Daws" Trotman founded the Navigators ministry and summarized disciple-making as, “a passionate call to maturity, spiritual reproduction and spiritual parenting to help fulfill the Great Commission,” in his text, "Born to reproduce."

19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age. 

~Matthew 28:19-20

Effective disciple-making, Trotman taught, was based on three principles:
1. Remember, nothing under heaven except sin, immaturity, and lack of communion will put you in a position where you cannot reproduce.

The Daws Trotman enthusiasm

2. But when all things are right between you and the Lord, regardless of how much or how little you know intellectually, from the standpoint of the world, you can be a spiritual parent And that incidentally, may be when you are very young in the Lord. 

3. The Gospel spread to the known world during the first century without radio, television, or the printing press, because these produced men who were reproducing. 

When Daws started the Navs, there was no internet nor social media, both can be tools for disciple-making.  There are many articles, booklets, and books available to do this disciple-making.  You can fill in blanks together or read and discuss chapters.  What might work best for you?  You can start by simply meeting a need or acting on Paul's "one another" passages.




Disciple-making loves Christ into the lives of others
This ministry requires time and love.  Disciple-makers love people enough to spend time with them. It is more than a casual conversation at the grocery story or in between services. Spending time together is incredibly flexible because it can be doing many things. 

Daws recounts the story, repeated many times over, of Sally, a young woman telephone worker who received Christ as her Savior at a Billy Graham Crusade.  She found Pat, who wanted to learn about Jesus, who became another faithful woman.  They followed Christ together.  Sally had a daughter in Christ.  After awhile, Pat met Sue and they did the same thing. Sally was now a spiritual grandmother and Pat had a spiritual daughter.

"How was this done? God used the pure channel of these young Christians’ lives in their exuberance and first love for Christ, and out of their hearts the incorruptible seed of the Word of God was sown in the hearts of other people."  ~"Born to reproduce" 

Solitary hiding place

"I am afraid what will happen after I am released.  I don't want to be a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," Ron confided.

Ron is an inmate at the Norm Maleng Regional Justice Center, in Kent, Washington where I serve as a chaplain through Prisoners for Christ Outreach Ministries. 

Over several months, he completed Bible studies, meets with several solid chaplains and appears to be progressing in daily faith.

Men may show signs of being responsive. They experience stress and take steps to change their lives.  They want to live a better life but are not certain what that will look like.

They will have to change their behaviors.  They need to have a definitive plan and support to live differently.  They aren't sure they want to do that.  

Some want to change because they think God will be proud of them.  Really, they will get out of jail quicker.  They want a "get out of jail" card.

If they are looking for this quick out, they will be sadly disappointed.  They are going to face the court.  There are consequences for what they are guilty of.  My heart is to care for them whether they are innocent or guilty and whatever the courts and lawyers determine. 

I tell them circumstances may get more complicated after they choose to follow Jesus.

One officer this last week said to me, "Over the years, I have learned you can't tell the book by its cover."

Ron wants to be sure he continues in the faith after leaving the jail.  His wife is not saved and she is not certain what is happening in Ron's life.  

His old "fellow users" are in his neighborhood. As his release date approaches, he worries about what is out there.  He knows how he acted before he came into jail. 

For some, change goes as far but no further than talking to fellow inmates. Some request prayer and talk a couple of times.  Others examine their lives and want to hear about walking in faith--we might meet 10 or more times.

Many attended church as a child.  They participated with church and would say they are Christians. They remember praying grandparents or a faithful mother. In staggering numbers, inmates do not have a solid father in their lives--he is often not part of their lives.  
I start asking simple questions... 

• Could you share your testimony with me?  
• What is your spiritual journey?  
• Have you attended church?  
• Do you have a Bible in your room...are you reading it?
• Would you like to read with me?
• How may I pray with you, right now?

                                 Jesus, Jesus, Jesus
I just listen and keep asking questions, praying along the way.  The Lord may lead me to a passage of Scripture.  They may want me to pray. When they see I genuinely listened and prayed with them, I a great ministry may be accomplished.  

I start, often with us reading together the conversion testimony of Charles Spurgeon.  Here it is...

Charles H. Spurgeon

"On a memorable sixth day of January, 1850, at 15, Charles Spurgeon rose before the sun, to pray and to read one of his bedside books. He found no rest.

"I cried to God with groaning—I say it without exaggeration—groaning that cannot be uttered! And oh, how I sought, in my poor dark way, to overcome first one sin and then another, and so to do better, in God's strength, against the enemies that assailed me, and not, thank God, altogether without success, though still the battle had been lost unless He had come who is the Overcomer of sin and the Deliverer of His people, and had put the hosts to flight."

Jesus. Jesus. JESUS! He alone, He without another, had become the solitary hiding place against the storm. 

I sometimes think I might have been in darkness and despair until now, had it not been for the goodness of God in sending a snowstorm one Sunday morning, while I was going to a certain place of worship. I turned down a side street, and came to a little Primitive Methodist Church.

In that chapel there may have been a dozen or fifteen people. I had heard of the Primitive Methodists, how they sang so loudly that they made people’s heads ache; but that did not matter to me.

I wanted to know how I might be saved.

The minister did not come that morning; he was snowed up, I suppose. At last a very thin-looking man, a shoemaker, or tailor, or something of that sort, went up into the pulpit to preach. Now it is well that preachers be instructed, but this man was really stupid. He was obliged to stick to his text, for the simple reason that he had little else to say.  

The text was—"LOOK TO ME AND BE SAVED, ALL THE ENDS OF THE EARTH." (Isaiah 45:22)

He did not even pronounce the words rightly, but that did not matter. There was, I thought, a glimmer of hope for me in that text.  The preacher began thus:

"This is a very simple text indeed. It says ‘LOOK.’ Now, looking don’t take a deal of pain. It doesn't require lifting your foot or your finger, It is just ‘look.’ Well, a man needn’t go to college to learn to look. Nobody needs a huge salary to look. You may be the biggest fool, and yet you can look. Anyone can look; even a child can look. But then the text says, ‘Look to Me.’ Ay!" he said in broad Essex, "many of you are looking to yourselves, but it’s no use looking there.

“You’ll never find any comfort in yourselves. Some say look to God the Father. No, look to Him by-and-by. Jesus Christ says, ‘Look to Me.’ Some of you say ‘We must wait for the Spirit’s workin.’ You have no business with that just now. Look to Christ. 
The text says, ‘Look to Me.’ "Then the good man followed up his text in this way:

Look to Me; I am sweatin’ great drops of blood.

Look to Me; I am hangin’ on the cross.

Look to Me, I am dead and buried.

Look to Me; I rise again.

Look to Me; I ascend to Heaven.

Look to Me; I am sitting at the Father’s right hand.

O poor sinner, look to Me!   Look to Me!"

When he had managed to spin out about ten minutes or so, he was at the end of his tether. Then, he looked at me under the gallery, and I daresay with so few present, he knew me to be a stranger. Just fixing his eyes on me, as if he knew all my heart, he said, "Young man, you look very miserable." Well, I did, but I had not been accustomed to have remarks made from the pulpit on my personal appearance before. However, it was a good blow, struck right home. He continued, "And you will always be miserable—miserable in life and miserable in death—if you don’t obey my text; but if you obey now, this moment, you will be saved." Then lifting up his hands, he shouted, as only a Primitive Methodist could do,

"Young man, turn to Jesus Christ. Look!  Look! Look! You have nothing to do but look and live!"

I saw at once the way of salvation. I know not what else he said—I did not take much notice of it—I was so possessed with that one thought . . . .

I had been waiting to do fifty things, but when I heard that word, "Look!" what a charming word it seemed to me.

Oh! There and then the cloud was gone, the darkness had rolled away, and that moment I saw the sun; and I could have risen that instant, and sung with the most enthusiastic of them, of the precious blood of Christ, and the simple faith which looks alone to Him. 

Oh, that somebody had told me this before, "Trust Christ, and you shall be saved." 

Yet it was, no doubt, all wisely ordered, and now I can say—

"E’er since by faith I saw the stream Thy flowing wounds supply, Redeeming love has been my theme, and shall be till I die. . ."

That happy day when I found the Savior, and learned to cling to His dear feet, was a day never to be forgotten by me . . . . I listened to the Word of God and that precious text led me to the cross of Christ.  

I can testify that the joy of that day was utterly indescribable. I could have leaped, I could have danced; there was no expression, however fanatical, which would have been out of keeping with the joy of that hour.

Many days of Christian experience have passed since then, but there has never been one which has had the full exhilaration, the sparkling delight which that first day had. I thought I could have sprung from the seat in which I sat, and called out with the wildest of those Methodist brethren . . .

"I am forgiven! I am forgiven! A monument of grace! A sinner saved by blood!"

My spirit saw its chains broken to pieces; I felt that I was an emancipated soul, an heir of heaven, a forgiven one, accepted in Jesus Christ, plucked out of the miry clay and out of the horrible pit, with my feet set upon a rock and my goings established. Between half-past ten o’clock, when I entered that chapel, and half-past twelve o’clock, when I was back again at home, what a change had taken place in me!

Simply by turning to Jesus I had been delivered from despair, and I was brought into such a joyous state of mind that, when they saw me at home, they said to me, "Something wonderful has happened to you," and I was eager to tell them all about it.  

Oh! There was joy in the household that day, when all heard that the eldest son had found the Savior and knew himself to be forgiven."

            My solitary hiding place against the storms

Tears start falling for some in the the first couple of paragraphs.  "Jesus. Jesus. JESUS! He alone, He without another, is my solitary hiding place against the storms in my life." 

As we read together, I am praying the Lord will use this testimony to touch this man's heart.  I want to learn how genuinely interested they are in seeking repentance and forgiveness for their sins. 

Now, what are they willing to say about where are they really at?  Where do they stand with Jesus?  Are they just looking for a way out, again?

Looking or turning to Jesus goes directly with believing and repentance.  The sinner changes his mind and turns away from his or her old life.  

Life with Jesus is all about the person. Repenting people look or turn directly to God through Jesus Christ and bring their sins to Him.

The inmate finds out they thought they were Christians but never heard of any of this before....or, they have prayed numerous times to be saved. 

Some "prayed the salvation prayer" repeatedly only to walk out of their jail and prison experience and returned to their old experiences. They may be saved and have stumbled badly and repeatedly. We need to be discussing walking in obedience and what it means to be His disciple.  

Like every inmate, I have scrapes on my knees and elbows to prove it.  My sins are different than theirs... but we are all sinners.  I am His and He is mine. I am loved by a great God.  I am forgiven based on what Jesus accomplished, once and for all.  

I don't need to keep asking Jesus to save me.  He already saved me.  The repenting one needs to obey the commands of Jesus and grow up in godliness.

The priority is always about Jesus.  Jesus calls for repentance from the heart, receive forgiveness and be saved, and be His disciple.  Following Jesus, being His disciple means obedience to the truth.  

That is where we start.  I may ask them to read John 3:1-21, 10:1-10-27-29 and John 14:1-6 and 15:1-16.