I was watching the pre-game show for the 2018 NCAA Football Championship game when Alabama’s Coach Nick Saban was being interviewed. Coach Saban concluded his interview by saying, “It really comes down to two things- focus and execution.”
Coach Sabans’ comments stunned me. I had no idea how much he knew about leading a disciple making church. Who would have guessed that coaching a college football team was so similar to leading a church to make disciples?
Two of the most important keys to becoming a disciple making church are to be focused on the discipleship target, and to execute a disciple making strategy. If you don’t stay focused on the right target, you can end up making anything but disciples. If you do not execute a disciple making strategy you will have activity but not real productivity.
The win for the Church is to make “fully trained” disciples that look and act like Jesus. If Christians don’t stay focused on making disciples, we will not accomplish the mission Christ gave us. We might end up making worshippers, students, servants, stewards, or just “good church” people and actually fail to make disciples.
The game plan for the Church is to execute a strategy to help unschooled and ordinary people become “fully trained” disciples by going, baptizing, and teaching people to become disciples. The Church doesn’t execute our own strategy: the Church executes the strategy that Jesus used. The job of the Church is simply to do what Jesus did. Nothing more and nothing less.
Satan will do everything within his power to keep the church from going, baptizing, and teaching people to become disciples. He will distract us, divide us, and derail us in order to stop us from working Christ’s strategy. The enemy will do everything possible to stop the Church from executing Christ’s game plan. If the Church has great worship services, builds more buildings, has warm fellowship, and implements impressive programs but does not go, baptize, and teach then we have failed to execute the strategy that enables us to hit the target.
Coach Saban led his team to a win in the 2018 National Champion game. His team stayed focused and they executed. In the big picture, the NCAA National Championship victory means nothing. In eternity, the impact of the Church means everything. How well we accomplish Christ’s mission will literally mean the difference between Heaven and Hell for countless numbers of people. Let’s stay focused and execute well.
If you would like to know more about the mission of making disciples, contact impactdisciples.com for more information.
