Jesus Christ’s gospel (the “evangel” from which our movement gets its name) embeds in its command to “go and make disciples” the measurement of the movement’s health. By Christ’s own words, this is the simplest gauge we use to measure success or failure. Are we making disciples? Not just convincing converts, but making disciples?
Not just filling the seats in auditoriums, but training the souls of transformed individuals? Are we valuing the quality of our discipleship more than the quantity of our attendance? Jesus’ words and life reveal that evangel-followers can know whether they are succeeding or failing by this: whether new growing disciples are being made or not.
John Dickerson – The Great Evangelical Recession
I am encouraged by this affirmation of the importance of quality of the disciples over the quantity of them.
The problem is that it is much easier to assess quantity and more difficult to assess quality. But the difficulty does not relieve us of the responsibility to have this priority.