Starting with a few

What a beautiful sight it must have been on the day of Pentecost when Peter stood up and preached and 3,000 people were saved. Today, we are so easily enamored with preaching to people in large numbers, yet it is not the large numbers that are nearly as important as the individuals we follow up with in small numbers. Jesus dealt with large crowds. So often that he had to slip away to find rest and refreshing. Yet the crucial part of his ministry was the small group of disciples that he poured himself into on a daily basis. Peter, the mass group preacher, was nurtured in an even smaller group of three. Today, we have many preachers who preach to the same large group each Sunday but don't have individual fathering/mentoring relationships outside of the pulpit during the week. The Pastor without individuals in fathering relationships or disciples so to speak produces a church body that is program oriented and not people oriented. Jesus told some fishermen in Matthew 3, "Come follow me and I will make you fishers of men". In other words, come spend time with me in a regular relationship and I will pour myself into you, with my expectation being that you will become just like me, a fisher of men. Maybe today, we labor and strain so hard to produce big numbers that we have forgotten the importance and priority of dealing with people in small numbers. Lord, challenge our hearts to see individual faces and lives and not just covet a crowd. Help us to become disciples and disciple makers. Let us rise up as spiritual fathers and really see lives changed and a world won for Christ.