By Aaron Lemuel De La Torre, Iglesia Bautista de la Comunidad in Hidalgo, Texas, https://www.comunidadiglesia.com/
I was recently having a great conversation with a pastor that has labored in ministry for approximately 40 years. The focus of our discussion was what appears to be an endless circle of activities in a program design church where the calendar events appear to consume all the energy of the leadership team. The resounding take away was for me to be intentional about making disciples that make disciples and not let church activities take control of my life. Thankfully the cell-group church structure acts as a catalyst for the Holy Spirit to work in the lives of each believer.
Disciple making is not an easy task, but we have the best example of disciple making in Jesus. Jesus modeled discipleship making at the highest level. Jesus knew that His disciples would receive the Holy Spirit after His ascension to heaven and that they would carry the good news to others. Jesus witnessed and felt compassion for the people that were distressed and dispirited. He made a statement in Matthew 9:37 that is just as true today as it was the moment it came out of our Savior’s lips and that was, “the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few.”
It is humbling to think that God’s solution to the plentiful harvest was to use humans that passed from death to life through Jesus Christ to reap the harvest. Jesus passed on the commission of sharing the good news to his disciples and it was the task of the disciples to continue to spread the message of Jesus to the ends of the earth. Paul understood the importance of empowering others to achieve the mission given by Jesus. In 2 Timothy 2:2 Paul urged Timothy to entrust faithful men with the things that Paul had taught. Paul was specific as to the type of men that Timothy should entrust, and the objective was clear and that was for the message to continue from generation to generation.
The cell group church model emphasizes cell multiplication. However, the objective remains the same as that laid out by Jesus, carried out by his disciples, and as that which was urged by Paul to Timothy. The great commission was so strongly received by the early church that we are the byproducts of their trust in God and their willingness to obey God and share the good news of Jesus Christ. Passing on the good news from individual to individual through God’s Word and the Holy Spirit is evidenced through the multiplication of cell groups. As believers experience spiritual growth and new members are added and come to know Christ, the natural result is the multiplication of the cell group. Therefore, we should view the development of better disciples and the multiplication of cell groups not as a way to simply measure numerical growth, but instead view it as a way to continue with the great commission that the disciples of Jesus and the generations of believers since then have undertaken until the return of our Savior.