Discipleship

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Example of a 2nd Generation Disciple

Here is the story of my 2nd Generation Disciple. Our team held an English School, basically, a 1-week intensive English school that met for 3 hours during the evenings. Before the school actually started, we had a registration day. On that registration day, a lady, named Tanya, approximately 50 years old, registered for the English classes with my wife, Jeanine. As she was registering, she told Jeanine these exact words, “I want your language, but not your religion.” So she came to the English School every night and then faithfully attended our English Bible study that was the follow-up to the English school. She came to my group every week. I had printed the Bible text in English and we read it on a sheet of paper, followed by questions on the text. Many weeks, Tanya would say to me, “Brad, I don’t agree with this!”. I would tell her that I didn’t write it and that she would have to tell God, since He was the one who wrote it. At that, she would ruffle her sheet of paper in frustration. Tanya began reading the Bible with one of our lady colleagues and met with her every week. Tanya became more and more open. We didn’t have one of our churches going at that time and she knew that we attended a Baptist Church every week. She just showed up one week for the service and sat by us. Then, on Easter Sunday after the sermon, an invitation to repent was given. I could see the leading of God in her life, and I told her to go up front. She did, and Tanya was the first person in our new church start. Later we found out that she was a professor of Bio Ethics at the Medical University. Well, Tanya started sharing with everyone she knew. She shared with her colleagues, but they made fun of her. She shared with her sister, mother, and father, but they all said they didn’t want to hear anything. Then she shared with her high school classmate and this classmate started coming to Bible study. This classmate became a believer, her daughter became a believer. Then Tanya shared with another former high school classmate and she became a believer after her son died in an accident at the age of 18. Then this classmate’s daughter became a believer as well as her fiancé. Then, after several years of Tanya being frustrated with her teenage daughter, Olya, who was rejecting God, rebelling against Tanya, and fell into depression, Olya became a believer. Olya started to date a believer, then got married to him, and now Olya wants to attend seminary! Tanya is a great evangelist. She talks to her medical students about faith in God and especially the 10 commandments. Tanya has been to Latvia and Kazakhstan on mission trips that Adam Coker set up, and was on a team of Russians that I took down to Sochi on a mission trip during the Olympics. We didn’t know that Tanya would become a person of peace, but she did. We didn’t see that she was a person of peace in the beginning, but only later saw it. Tanya is an example of an incredible 2nd Gen. disciple!

Keeping the Main Thing, the Main Thing

by Brad Horne

Personal Story/HIStory

Our first few years on the field in Russia, I found a Russian national to work with and we held big evangelizations to start up a church quickly. Our first 5 years on the field, we were able to start 4 traditional churches that all still exist today, some 15-22 years later. Praise the Lord that these churches are still reaching people today! That is why we are starting new churches instead of being church growth specialists and helping the existing churches to grow. More churches do reach more people.

In 2002, we were kicked out of Russia. In 2003, we started another traditional church in Ukraine. Soon after that time, God spoke to me and convicted me of this fact. No where in the Bible does it say to go and start churches. But it does say to go and make disciples many times. This really hit me hard, because I was a church planter. That was my title with the IMB. What was I supposed to do? Not start churches? I wrestled with this for several weeks. God led me to making my first personal disciple in over 10 years. It was freeing, exhilarating, and very fulfilling.

I remember my first personal disciple and how we got started. His name was Kostya and he was a 19-year-old who had become a Christian about a year before, but never made the transition to getting involved in a church. This was all God, you know. He came up to me a couple of weeks after I had started praying to God that He would send me my first disciple. I really didn’t know where to look at that point. Kostya came up to me one day and asked me if I would like to read the Bible with him! Wow! As soon as I heard this, I knew God was answering my prayer.

Our first week, we agreed to read the Gospel of John. I was actually proud of myself for reading the whole Gospel of John in one week’s time. When I met with Kostya, he told me that he had read all of the Gospel of John, all of Acts, and some of 1 Corinthians. I was truly humbled by his incredible thirst for the Word of God. We were supposed to sow the Word abundantly in our hearts by reading 3 chapters of the Bible every day.

After meeting with Kostya for a couple of weeks, he asked me if he could invite his best friend. I enthusiastically replied with a “Yes”. Our group was growing.

This is how God moved me from planting churches to actually making disciples as well as planting churches.