What does success look like as a Christ-follower?

¹You therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. ²The things which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. 
2 Timothy 2:1–2 (NASB95) 

What does “success” look like? 

Numbers matter. Yep, I said it. As a pastor, I constantly fight the feeling within me to focus on “numbers” as a proper measure of success. Many days I have walked away from a great sermon and felt like it “flopped” simply because the attendance was low. At other times, I’ve taught an average (or below average) lesson and felt like a rock star because the room was more filled than normal. 

Activity matters. There have been days when I was really proud of the fact that I preached four or five times…or I taught for six or eight hours. After all, if you are doing a lot, you must be successful. 

Truthfully, activity is important and numbers are a reasonable measure of influence; however, neither activity nor numbers are effective indicators of success. In the passage above, we see that the Apostle Paul instructs Timothy in his ministry…to entrust what he has learned to faithful men who will entrust these things to others. No amount of activity is given as a standard. No base line of numbers is identified as acceptable. What is articulated is duplication…or more accurately, multiplication. Stated differently, Paul says to Timothy: your ministry is to multiply people who do what you do, which is to take what they’ve heard and teach it to others. Another word for this is discipleship. 

Discipleship is not a class or a multi-week study. It is not an hour set aside on Sunday or Wednesday evenings. It is not a program, a pathway, or a track to follow. Discipleship is a descriptor of the life of a Christ-follower. Discipleship describes a life of learning, obeying, and teaching others to learn and obey. It alone is the measure of success. 

I expect that many will be surprised when standing before Jesus one day. These will try to tell Jesus how busy they were, how many groups they were in, how many hungry people they fed, how many spiritual crisis situations they intervened in. These people will point to the breadth of their ministry lives. In then end though, when they came to the end, so did their ministries because they never multiplied their influence. 

Is it possible that one faithful person who intentionally discipled one person a year who went out and did the same could better obey the Great Commission than the most active of church members and eloquent of teachers? 

Reflection: Who are you discipling right now? Who is discipling you? If you hesitate on either or both questions, then the next step is to ask the Lord for forgiveness and commit to begin the discipleship journey today.