The purpose of God's Word is to transform people in every country and every century into the image of God.

Whereas disinfecting Christians involves isolating them and teaching them to be good, discipling Christians involves propelling Christians into the world to risk their lives for the sake of others. Now the world is our focus, and we gauge success in the church not on the hundreds or thousands whom we can get into our buildings but on the hundreds or thousands who are leaving our buildings to take on the world with the disciples they are making

Do you believe that Jesus is worth abandoning everything for? Do you believe him enough to obey him and to follow him wherever he leads, even when the crowds in our culture - maybe even our churches - turn the other way?

The journey begins, though, with understanding what it means to be a christian. To say you believe in Jesus apart from conversion in your life completely misses the essence of what it means to follow him. Do not be deceived.

Somewhere along the way we have subtly and tragically taken the costly command of Christ to go, baptize, and teach all nations and mutated it into a comfortable call for Christians to come, be baptized, and listen in one location.

To be a Christian is to realize that in your sin, you were separated from God's presence, and you deserved nothing but God's wrath.

Consider the cost when Christians ignore Jesus commands to sell their possessions and give to the poor and instead choose to spend their resources on better comforts, larger homes, nicer cars, and more stuff. Consider the cost when these Christians gather in churches and choose to spend millions of dollars on nice buildings to drive up to, cushioned chairs to sit in, and endless programs to enjoy for themselves. Consider the cost for the starving multitudes who sit outside the gate of contemporary Christian affluence.

By God’s design, he has wired his children for spiritual reproduction. He has woven into the fabric of every single Christian’s DNA a desire and ability to reproduce.