May 2004

by Rick Ives

“The church in the world today is good at reaching the lost but not very good at keeping them.”

The above quote from Pastor Grant Edwards might sound a bit brash but regardless of where we go, including USA, Cuba, Russia, Philippines, Bahamas, and in prisons, this is always the case we find. During our recent time in one of these countries, we met and befriended an official of a large denomination of churches (over 4,000 churches). He told us that while there really is revival happening today and many thousands are being saved, they are only keeping about 5% of the new converts. That’s a 95% falling away rate – even worse than our initial research suggested. We then met with 3 co-pastors of a large church of 100,000 members in over 200 locations. These wonderful men told us that last year they led over 8,000 to the Lord but only baptized 400 of them (in this country, a person is not really considered to be saved until they are baptized – a sign of real commitment and a changed life). That means over 7,000 fell away or have not grown – so again a fall away rate of 95%!

 

The truth is that around the world, most new believers fall away from faithfulness to the lord within the first 3 months of their life as a Christian!

 

It appears that the Lord is bringing Discipling Another to Love Jesus to this country at just the right time. We conducted 2 back-to-back DA2LJ conferences for over 400 pastors and church leaders and both were very well received. We were told, repeatedly, that they believe one-on-one discipleship is the key for preserving the great harvest that the Lord is bringing in. They report to us that traditional approaches to discipleship (i.e. educational classes instead of relational one-on-one) have been disappointing at best. The Lord continues to reveal two things to the church of today: 1) Jesus’ last will and testament is the Great Commission and He is shaking us now to fulfill it, and, 2) creating disciples who will remain faithful to the Lord is best done in a relational one-on-one environment and not in an educational classroom setting. This has been the case regardless of which country or state we have brought DA2LJ to.

 

These pastors are now training their elders and co-pastors to disciple new believers one-on-one across their country. These leaders have asked us to help supply up to 5,000 discipleship books which we hope to do. The cost is $1 per notebook (that’s the price to print in country – to print them here it is $4 each minimum). We ask for your continued prayer for our brothers and sisters and for the work of DA2LJ around the world!