Introduction: Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son, and the Holy Spirit teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you and surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age." Welcome to Exploring Missions, connecting mission needs with those equipped by God to meet those needs across the world or across town. And now, the host of Exploring Missions, Bert Harper.

Bert Harper: On Exploring Missions, we've interviewed a lot of people, and it's like the intro says: those that have ministries around the world, and those that, you know, gather up shoeboxes full of toys to send somewhere through Operation Christmas Child. But one of my favorite things to do on Exploring Missions is doing the Bible studies of what the Bible has to say about missions. And leading that—and he does a great job—is Nathan, our co-host.

And Nathan, when we study missions, and you see it's all through the Bible—it's not that you have to search for it, it's there—but it's sometimes, how do you present it in such a way that people will understand it and see it? So, that's what we try to do here. We want you to realize, everybody who's listening, if you're a follower of Jesus Christ, been born again, you're on mission for God. And we're trying to equip you and encourage you.

And one of the things we do is go to the Word of God and find out different things using illustrations and analogies. Sometimes we tell stories about missionaries from the past to try to equip our people to be on mission for God.

Nathan Harper: Yeah, so today is going to be a little bit different from a lot of those things. We'll do a little bit of a Bible study, but nothing really in-depth. But today, most of us—maybe even especially the younger ones, like I'm thinking of my children—but most of us are somewhat interested in animals, right? In what we can learn about animals, and maybe some of us watch nature documentaries and things such as that.

And so, I'm no expert in animals whatsoever, but there's a few lessons that we can learn about missions and how to carry it out, and best practices of mission work—some things we can learn from some of our animal friends. And again, this is actually really not—not much of this at all is original to me. It's just other people have brought attention to it, and I've noticed it. They've taught it to me, so we're just going to put some of it together today and see how it turns out. So, we're going to look at a few animals and see what they teach us, maybe compare and contrast a few other animals.

So the first animal—what a great animal to start out with—we're going to talk about a mule, okay?

Bert Harper: Oh, me!

Nathan Harper: So, yeah, that's a great way to start, right? A mule.

Bert Harper: Stubborn, is what I always thought.

Nathan Harper: Yeah, stubborn as a mule, yeah. Didn't you have a couple of mules growing up?

Bert Harper: Well, when I was a little boy—and this is really preschool and first or second grade—my dad would plow with mules. Now, we didn't farm with them, but he did his garden and truck patch with a mule. And so, I had the privilege one or two times to be behind the mule while it was pulling a plow. I didn't do it very well. My dad was helping me, but I did see it, and I have been a part of it.

Nathan Harper: Yeah, so I don't know if you've ever ridden a mule, but you'll see—I've never had. I've actually ridden a horse, but I've never ridden a mule or a donkey. But I have seen like old Westerns and TV shows from the past, you know, and the guy gets on the mule, and when he gets going really fast, that thing will run sideways. Have you noticed that?

Bert Harper: Yes.

Nathan Harper: That's kind of—I don't know why that is, that's kind of funny.

Previously, when I lived in Atlanta working with resettled refugees, one of my good friends, dear friends that lives there still—originally he's from the country of Eritrea, okay? His name is Yob. And one day Yob and I were out—we were actually prayer walking together. We were walking around some of the back streets in our little town of Clarkston, and we happened upon this one street that had a fenced-in front yard. You don't see that really often, but this was a large yard with some trees, and it was fenced in in the front.

In the yard, running around, was a donkey. I thought that was pretty strange in the middle of, you know, here we are in Atlanta and there's this donkey running around in this front yard. Well, Yob, my friend, he really got a kick out of that. He said, "This is the first donkey I've seen since being in America." He said, "I used to have a donkey," and he would talk about how he would, you know, ride his donkey. He actually used to have a camel, and he'd tell stories about riding a camel, too! But we'll save that for another show.

Anyway, first thing we want to talk about regarding a mule is the simple fact, pretty well known: mules can't do one thing. They're useful for a lot of things: they're strong, I think they're pretty smart probably, they're very helpful and useful. Some people have said the West in the United States would never have been settled without a mule.

But one thing mules cannot do is reproduce. Like, you've heard that, right?

Bert Harper: Right, yes.

Nathan Harper: Okay. So, a mule is a mix of a horse and a donkey, but mules themselves cannot reproduce. So, without knowing a whole lot about it biologically, they're just not capable. It's really because of the number of chromosomes that they have.

But anyway, that's my—really my first point is that as a follower of Jesus, as a disciple of Jesus, we are called to reproduce ourselves. We are called to make disciples, right?

Bert Harper: Yeah, yeah.

Nathan Harper: So, the primary mark of a disciple is that they make disciples. For a human being, if we were to say a human being is fully mature, what's the primary indicator that someone is fully mature—I'm speaking biologically? Well, the ability to reproduce, right?

Well, spiritually speaking, for a follower of Jesus, have we made disciples? Have we reproduced ourselves? Just the text that you hear at the introduction of this show, Matthew 28:18–20, let me read 19 and 20 again. We're going to see just a few marks of what a disciple is and what a disciple-maker is, okay?

In verse 19, it says, "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you."

All right, so there's four verbs there. And again, if you listen to the show from time to time, you've heard us talk about this. But the primary verb is to make disciples. Okay, that's the commanded verb. So, someone that makes disciples does three things in order to carry that out: they go (go where Jesus sends them), they baptize in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and then they teach—they teach the other disciples to obey all the commands of Christ.

Now, is there any difference in this text that we can say, is there any difference in a disciple and a disciple-maker? I mean, what would you say?

Bert Harper: A disciple makes disciples.

Nathan Harper: Yeah, there's really no difference, is there?

Bert Harper: There's no difference.

Nathan Harper: So, if you want to make disciples, first you must be a disciple.

Bert Harper: And if you are a disciple, you should make disciples.

Nathan Harper: Exactly. So, what's a lesson we can learn from the mule is simply that we don't need to be like a mule. We don't want to be stubborn, and we don't want to fail to reproduce what God has done in our lives through Jesus. We are disciples who are called—all of us, not just pastors, not just missionaries, not just the professionals or this person or that person with whatever giftings we think—all of us that are followers of Jesus are commanded and called to make disciples, okay?

Bert Harper: When you say that, Nathan, those words—"make"—it has the idea of investing in. When you make something... right now, while we're taping this, our four grandsons—two of them are yours, and I got two more sons and I got a granddaughter—but one of the things they do, they've been saying, "Papaw, when are we going to make a treehouse?"

Well, I had to decide where we were going to do it, and if we could. And just the other day, we went and purchased the material to do so. Now I've got to do the labor. Now, God's given us everything we need.

Nathan Harper: Right.

Bert Harper: So that Jesus purchased that. We got the resources; they're in us. Now we've just got to do it, you know? And I'm afraid we sit around with all the equipment and never using what God has given us. You know, that's like having a car, and you love it so much you keep it in the garage and never run it.

Nathan Harper: Yeah.

Bert Harper: I mean, you go out there and admire it and look at it, but it's never put in use. It's never used for what it was intended for. It wasn't intended just to observe and look—it was to run. We as followers of Christ, disciples, God's equipped us and given us to make disciples. We just need to do it.

Nathan Harper: So, with that in mind, let's look at some of the practical "how-to's" of making disciples. You can actually call that mission work if you would like, because we are to make disciples of all the nations, okay? So crossing barriers, crossing borders, crossing cultures is what mission work is about.

So let's look at a couple of other animals, and we're going to compare and contrast them, okay? So let's look at elephants and rabbits. Now, some of you already know where I'm going to go with this! But elephants, what's one—the primary thing you notice about an elephant? Well, their size, right? They're huge. They're enormous.

But one thing you may not know about elephants is the gestation period for a mother elephant to give birth to a baby elephant: it takes 22 months for a baby elephant to be born, okay? 22 months of pregnancy for that mom elephant—that's almost two years. Now, it sort of makes sense because they're so big, you know, they would have a long period of time to develop and grow before they're born.

Now, again, if we're called to make disciples, reproduce, and we're looking at elephants and rabbits and how they reproduce: elephants, definitely a long period of time, slow process. But a rabbit, we know, it doesn't take long at all—really just about a month. You know, about a month, and you have, you know...

Bert Harper: More rabbits!

Nathan Harper:...more rabbits! And the other thing about elephants, they give birth one at a time, one baby elephant at a time. But rabbits can have a litter of rabbits—I don't know if that's exactly what you would call a group of rabbits that were born, but you know what I'm saying—several rabbits at one time, every month, can be born.

So if you take a mom elephant and a dad elephant, and then 22 months later you might have a baby elephant... well, in that same 22-month period, if you take a mom rabbit and a dad rabbit, you'll have multiple—like 22 generations of rabbits! In fact, enough rabbits that you'll probably be tired of rabbits, you know, because there's so many.

So we get the point: rapid reproduction. And so we see in the Bible that's actually what the method, the way to make disciples, is actually more rapid than what we probably think is to be the case.

Now, the key to that is two things. One is the message has to be simple enough where you can hear the message one time, respond to it, and decide to follow Jesus, and there's no other outside, external qualifications, you know? Like, "take this class," or "wait this period of time before you're baptized," or, quote-unquote, "join membership of this church." You know what I'm saying?

Bert Harper: Right.

Nathan Harper: Bibliically, you read the Book of Acts specifically, you don't see any of those external parameters put on the growth or the period of time that a new Christian can turn around and make new disciples. You see what I'm saying?

Bert Harper: I do. So, so what they do, they were born again, most of the time they were baptized immediately as well...

Nathan Harper: Immediate baptism usually, yes.

Bert Harper: ...and then the expectation was...

Nathan Harper: Yeah, you're qualified now!

Bert Harper: You're qualified now! And now, when you get into Paul's writings, Paul would say about a novice or a new—you know, be careful about that.

Nathan Harper: But that's leadership in a church setting.

Bert Harper: Yeah, that's leadership. And, but as far as a disciple, immediate.

Nathan Harper: Yeah. So, a quick turnaround on reproduction, okay? Wow. Not extending that time, but disciples making disciples and doing it immediately, rapidly. Now, our focus isn't on the speed; our focus is on obeying Jesus.

Bert Harper: Right.

Nathan Harper: And if we do that, and we expect new disciples to make new disciples immediately, it's going to happen. Another thing, though, that we can learn from rabbits and elephants is going back to their size. Because of their size, that's probably why the speed of reproduction can happen in different ways.

Now, speaking of congregations, local bodies, local churches—generally speaking, we reproduce what we already are, okay? So, large churches tend to want to reproduce other large churches, and that just takes a long time, a lot of resources, a lot of money, a lot of time and effort.

But smaller churches, guess what? You know, a lot of times you're part of a smaller church and you think you're at a disadvantage, but here's one thing you're definitely at an advantage of: you can plant new churches more quickly than a larger church. So, bigger is not always better when it comes to missions. In fact, more effective mission work is done on a smaller scale than a larger scale.

So, just kind of remember some of those lessons then from the elephant and the rabbit.

Bert Harper: Okay, the mule doesn't reproduce. That's a characteristic that is not—

Nathan Harper: Right, we don't want to be like the mule.

Bert Harper: The elephant and the rabbit comparison is the time it shares the gospel and the fruit that comes from that.

And also when you're small, I remember this as an illustration. I've been a part of the Southern Baptist denomination since I was saved—well, I was part of one at 10 years old when I started attending, and I've pastored there. I remember a few years ago when they had what is called the Conservative Resurgence, Adrian Rogers and men that said, "You know, we need to stay on track with the Bible and missions." That was their purpose, and good education that was theological.

And it's talking about how big the Southern Baptist Convention was, and it takes a long time to turn a large ship around. So what you're saying about the elephant and the rabbit, usually churches that are larger, they have a lot more bylaws, they have a lot more procedure manuals, whereas the smaller church, sometimes, man, they gather, they decide to do something, they do it. And so that's a good point. So these churches that are small, don't look at, "Oh, we can't do anything." They can.

Nathan Harper: Right. And there are large churches who do this correctly and do it well, but you know how they do it? They think smaller. They do their work on a small scale, okay? And so the point is scale. The point is rapid multiplication of disciples, okay?

Bert Harper: Okay, got you.

Nathan Harper: All right. So moving on, let's look at another couple of animals to compare and contrast. How about frogs and lizards?

Just the other day, my son was talking about trying to catch a bunch of frogs and lizards, and you know what he said? I said, "Well, did you catch any?" He said, "Well, I couldn't catch the lizards. They were too quick."

And so that's kind of the point. Think about how frogs and lizards eat, what they eat. They pretty much eat the same sort of things, right? I mean, do you know what they eat? Bugs, I guess, right?

Bert Harper: Bugs. I know they eat bugs, for sure.

Nathan Harper: How does a frog catch a bug to eat?

Bert Harper: That tongue of his, yeah.

Nathan Harper: Yeah. So the frog, though, what he does is he finds a good place to kind of hide, and he sits there, and he waits, and he waits, and he waits. And sometimes, is he asleep? Is he pretending to be asleep? And finally, that bug will crawl along right in front of him, and snap! You know, that tongue comes out and he has a meal. But he has to wait for a while; he has to be patient.

A lizard, on the other hand, doesn't sit and wait and wait and wait. He moves around. He goes hunting. He might sneak up on a bug, or he might chase it down. But the point is, the lizard goes to where the food is, not waiting for the food to come to it.

I really believe a biblical principle is that we, as disciples and disciple-makers wanting to see rapid multiplication of new disciples in churches, we have to go to where the people are, not expect them to come to us.

Bert Harper: I heard this story many years ago. Some stories you hear and you never forget. I was a young preacher, so you know I was looking for illustrations, and I heard about these two churches in a large city. On the marquees, one said, "Come and Worship." The other church said, "Go and Tell."

And they said, "Which one is really the biblical model?" "Go and Tell" is a biblical model. Yes, we do welcome folks to come—don't get that wrong. You do both. But as we read in Matthew, "Go." It is—I know it's "as you go," but you go where the people are.

Nathan Harper: It's still intentional. That's the point of being intentionally sent. Jesus has intentionally sent the church—and not just the church, but you and I, all of us listening even today. He has sent you somewhere to go and make disciples of all the nations, and that could be across the street, down the road, other side of town, in your workplace, in your school.

God has called and sent us. We need to recover the idea of being sent, and that sentness—apostolic, being thrust out into the harvest field. And so we need to be like the lizard and go on the hunt, going to look to see where the people are who need to hear the good news of Jesus, instead of just assuming they're going to come to us.

I mean, you know what happens to the church who sits and waits for the people to come to them? They probably eventually have to close their doors. But the church that goes out looking for people, they probably are a healthier church. I'm speaking generally, but I think that's the biblical principle.

Bert Harper: I do, too.

Nathan Harper: All right. So as we go out, as we're sent out into the harvest field, and we go out with the gospel of Jesus Christ and we share the gospel, there's generally two main responses that people will have. And so now we're going to look at another couple of animals to compare and contrast real quickly, and we'll look at the gospel response: cockroaches and moths. Okay, roaches and moths.

Bert Harper: Okay.

Nathan Harper: And this is real similar. We've all experienced this. So, you see a different response to light between a cockroach and a moth. You come into a dark room, and you flip on the light switch, and you look on the ground. What might you see? Some scurrying feet.

Bert Harper: Headed for the darkness.

Nathan Harper: Headed for the cracks and the crevices and the corners where they can get into the dark. Those cockroaches hate the light; they like darkness, okay?

But what does a moth like, on the other hand?

Bert Harper: Man, they gravitate toward that light.

Nathan Harper: They go to that light, don't they?

I tell folks what, where I grew up, the most exciting thing that happened on the weekend was watching that bug zapper. I know what you're saying, yeah. We'd say, "Boy, that was a big one!"

Okay, get back on track, Nathan.

Nathan Harper: Yeah, you kind of wish the cockroaches would go to that bug zapper and get rid of those things.

All right, I try to convince my wife all the time that actually, scientifically, cockroaches are cleaner than cats, but she doesn't believe me. But I have heard that, I don't know.

Anyway, so a man said that to his wife where he heard it from, right? Exactly, yeah.

So the main difference between a cockroach and a moth that we're talking about is their reaction to light. When we go out and share the gospel, we share the light. We shine the light of Jesus, and we present Jesus to people. We represent him.

And people that prefer the darkness, guess what? They're going to reject that invitation. They're going to turn their back on Jesus; they're going to go back into the darkness.

Yeah, that should break our hearts. But guess what? We need to find people that are like the moths, that are attracted to the light. And there's enough of those. Whatever mission field that God has sent you to or will send you to, there are enough people who are like moths, or God wouldn't send you there. Cause his witness doesn't go without any kind of fruit, you know? It doesn't go out in vain.

And so we can look for those people that are responding positively to the gospel of Jesus as we go.

Bert Harper: And they're all sizes, the moths. I'm amazed at how big some of them are and how small some of them are, but it's still the attraction. And God has used us.

I remember even as a 10-year-old lost young boy, say when I was 12, I think what attracted me to the guys and the men that I knew were saved was their lack of fear, cause fear dominated my life. And I would see that in them, and I said, "Man, I need that." There's usually an attraction. That light—let your light so shine before men. And whatever that attraction is, people are attracted for different things: joy, perseverance, strength. But it is the light that draws them.

Nathan Harper: Yes. So real quickly, speaking of perseverance, we want to get to the last animal. We're going to talk about wolves.

Now, wolves are not typically seen as a positive thing, okay? And I'm going to use it in a way that's not 100% positive. But real quickly, let me tell you a true story about wolves.

Several years ago—actually, like in the 1930s—wolves were basically eradicated from Yellowstone National Park, and they weren't reintroduced into Yellowstone until 65 years later, in 1995. Since 1995, as the wolves have been reintroduced in Yellowstone, you know what has happened to Yellowstone National Park because of the reintroduction of the wolf? The whole ecosystem of Yellowstone National Park has thrived.

What has initially come back are the herds of elk. So before, the wolves were not there to hunt the elk. The predator was not there to thin out the herd. And so what the elk would do, they would eat all the stands of willow trees. Because the willow trees were gone, the beavers were not able to thrive and build their dams and eat and then clean the rivers. And so all that effect trickled down from the wolf being gone out of the park.

Once they reintroduced wolves, the elk herds have actually multiplied but thinned out, and they're moving around now constantly. And so the stands of willow trees are stronger and are growing more fruitful. And so beavers now are all over the park in Yellowstone, making all the rivers and the streams and the creeks healthy and functional. And so you get the point.

Bert Harper: Yeah!

Nathan Harper: All right. So what I want to draw correlation to is wolves are like persecution, they're like problems, they're like suffering, they're like trials and troubles in our lives as we follow Jesus and make disciples of him. We try to get rid of them. We try to live our lives without those problems and that persecution. But God allows them in our life to bring growth, to bring character, but also to multiply our witness in the world.

And so without wolves, we will be unhealthy as a church. Without problems, without persecution, we won't be functional in this mission that God has called us to. So thank God for the wolves that are in our lives, that we can trust Jesus through it all and see him glorified.

Bert Harper: Nathan, that is a great analogy, especially the Yellowstone one. I had heard a little bit about that, but not heard it all the way.

So in our lives, there's going to be difficulty. The Bible says you live in a fallen world, so if you live in it, you're going to have to deal with it. But he gives us everything we need. And when we're fed and when we're doing it, others are blessed.

Nathan Harper: Yeah, disciples will make disciples.

Bert Harper: Amen. Thank you for listening to Exploring Missions Today on American Family Radio Network. We appreciate you doing that, and we want you to be on mission for God, whether it's across the street or around the world. And God can use you, and let him use you for his glory. Thank you for listening.