by Todd Wilson: Pause for a minute and think about the specific ways you personally get to know Jesus. I don’t just mean knowing more about Him. I’m talking about really, intimately knowing the person of Jesus Christ! Not the teacher and wise man Jesus, but the Savior and Lord you want to model and become more like.

Sometimes the best way for us to know Jesus is to see His love and character modeled in action through others. I’ve found it pure joy when God puts just the right person in my life at just the right time to model and show me Jesus! Each of us has those people. Consider it a blessing when God gives you people not just to tell you about Jesus, but also to show you Jesus modeled in bodily form!

When our two boys were growing up, there was one prayer I prayed more than any other. I prayed nearly every day for God to put just the right people, at just the right time, with just the right words, in their paths. Why? Because I know the power and the blessing of God’s gift of putting fully surrendered Jesus followers in my path. I know that one of the best ways my family members and I get to know Jesus is to see Him modeled through other people.

This is from Bobby Harrington’s free eBook, Leaving a Legacy of Level 5 Multiplication: 10 Leadership Lessons from the Life of Billy Graham. Download the eBook here in your favorite format at no cost.

I never had the privilege of knowing Dr. Billy Graham personally. I wish I had. But I did have the second-best thing—something better than any book, seminar or tribute written about him. Even better than a book, sermon or article he wrote. I know people who were either mentored or directly impacted by having a front-row seat to Dr. Graham.

Among them are the two leaders involved in writing this book: Bobby Harrington and Robert Coleman. I know and trust each of these leaders. Dr. Graham impacted each of them, including modeling the “10 Leadership Lessons” highlighted in this book. Robert Coleman had a front-row mentoring relationship and agrees these are trustworthy lessons from Dr. Graham’s life.

Yes, Dr. Graham was a sinner just like the rest of us. But, we can know Jesus better by seeing how he lived his life, and by learning from his journey. We can see that the 10 Leadership Lessons described in this book were things Dr. Graham tried to live out because of his faith in Jesus and his desire to live as Jesus did.

Dr. Graham was faithfully married to one woman for his whole life. He and Ruth raised five children who know and pursue Jesus. He shared his faith with millions of people. He discovered and remained true to his calling. He led a quiet and humble life of obedience in spite of his celebrity status. And he was an amazing encourager, always looking for a way to lift up others.

This blog is an excerpt from the free eBook, Leaving a Legacy of Level 5 Leadership: 10 Leadership Lessons from the Life of Billy Graham. Download it free here.

Written by Todd Wilson

TODD is co-founder of Exponential and provides vision, strategy and direction for the ministry. He is a Kingdom-entrepreneur who is naturally drawn to anything around the next corner

Source: Leaving a Legacy of Level 5 Leadership: Introduction

The post Leaving a Legacy of Level 5 Leadership: Introduction appeared first on Passion for Planting.

by Todd Wilson:

Exponential is leading a track called “Church Planting and Disciple Making,” which focuses on the connections between church planting and discipleship.

Have you ever made something harder than it needed to be? We all have the tendency to focus on the complexities instead of the simple questions that get us to where we need to be. As church leaders, we can complicate the simple, especially Scripture. For example, when I read the Gospels, I see no wiggle room in the fact that our Savior commanded us to make and multiply disciples. He was crystal clear! The mission he laid out for us is not intended to be complex. And in the simplicity of his strategy, Jesus knows that if we focus on making disciples the way he did, we will see kingdom multiplication.

The question is simple: Are you producing biblical disciples who make disciples that plant churches that plant churches?

Get more content like this in person at the 2017 National Disciple Making Forum.

This is one of the largest gatherings of disciple makers in North America with 65+ workshops, 30+ speakers, and 10+ tracks. Join us to learn practical ways to make disciples of Jesus this November 9-10. Register for the 2017 National Disciple Making Forum here.

When I wrote Spark: Igniting a Culture of Multiplication (Exponential’s first multiplication-focused book), I talked about disciple making through the lens of adding disciples (making converts) and reproducing disciples. The pathways for adding disciples—connecting with people, introducing them to Jesus, and bringing them to a point of accepting him as Lord—also serve to create the entry point for us making disciples and pursuing kingdom multiplication. The “adding” and the “making” work together, as those far from God become disciples who in the process of becoming more mature disciples, naturally make disciples of others.

In fact, if each of us made a disciple every three years, and every three years, those disciples continued to multiply—we could accomplish the Great Commission in our lifetime. It’s called Great Commission math. Jesus is brilliant!

Unfortunately, we don’t always hear and embrace the simplicity of his command. Instead of focusing on disciple making as our core purpose that drives all of our programming, we tend to align our activities around other motives rooted in accumulation.

Without disciple making that multiplies—we have little hope of moving the needle on church multiplication in the United States. Exponential calls it our “4-10” mission—to see the number of reproducing churches increase from less than 4 percent to a tipping point of greater than 10 percent. Without fruitful disciple making, we’ll fall desperately short of this mission—and, moreover, Jesus’ call. We unintentionally stunt the Great Commission math.

If you sense dire urgency in my words, you’re correct. Exponential is all in, saying and doing everything we can to drive home this message because with every 1 percent increase, millions of lives and eternities will be forever changed.

What would it look like in your church and the world at large if you make disciples who make disciples who plant churches that plant churches? I can’t help think our world would look tremendously different if the disciples we made took the Great Commission to head and heart.

Leading this track are Exponential leaders Todd Wilson and Ralph Moore. Todd is co-founder of Exponential and provides vision, strategy, and direction for the ministry. He is a kingdom-entrepreneur, who is naturally drawn to anything around the next corner. Ralph is a church planter and disciple maker. He planted Hope Chapel Hermosa Beach in California, Anchor Church in Hawaii, and Hope Chapel in Honolulu. He helped start the Hope Chapel movement, which began with just 12 people, and the ‘movement’ mushroomed to more than 2,200 churches worldwide.

Source: Church Planting and Disciple Making

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