We know that in the Great Commission Jesus commanded us to “go and make disciples.” Anything short of fulfilling this calling is missing the mission of the church. Anything short of fulfilling this command is disobedience.
How do we make disciples?
Having someone pray and “accept Jesus” isn’t the criteria for evaluation of the success of our evangelism efforts. We must measure those that follow Jesus. This means a changed life. In my humble opinion, the only way to measure this is by measuring those that are connecting to the church in active fellowship. In Acts 2 we see a clear picture that those who were saved were “added to the church”. They became an active part of the local group of believers.
This is what makes someone a disciple and what impacts church growth in general. Teaching people to obey the word of God, worship, pray, forgive, repent, love and more are all done in the church. As the church add these new converts they tell their friends the good news they have learned and momentum builds and growth accelerates both for the church and the individual.
We must focus not on simply making a decision to believe in Jesus for salvation but a decision to become a disciple, an obedient, sold-out, follower of Jesus Christ.
There is No Box: 