Leila, come meet Cassie — you guys will be great friends!” I try to keep up as my friend zips across the room and then stops in front of me so abruptly that I almost fall on top of her. “Wait a minute,” she mutters to herself, “Cassie hates Christians.”

In the few seconds it takes her to think this over, my blood pressure has risen by 15 points. I stammer, “Well, um, if you think this isn’t a good idea.”

“Nah,” she decides, not hearing me. “It won’t matter. She’ll love you anyway. Hey Cassie, come meet my friend…” 
Little did I know that this inauspicious introduction would not only jump-start one of the most important friendships of my life, but also catapult my training in how to disciple the lost toward Jesus.

John describes this very simple process in one of the most underrated statements of John’s Gospel: “And he [Andrew] brought him [Simon] to Jesus” (John 1:42). Wait a second, you say — that can’t be discipleship! Andrew didn’t answer any questions. He didn’t prove the gospel by living a mess-free, clutter-free, perfectly super spiritual life. He didn’t perform any miracles. In fact, Jesus did all the work in Peter’s life — all Andrew did was invite Peter to meet Him.

Hey, I never said it was complicated. The truth is, discipleship is actually really simple.

I’m going to guess at this point that you really want to believe me — but you just don’t. After all, don’t we have entire libraries devoted to this topic? How to get people to pray the prayer, how to get them plugged into church ministries, how to teach them the Bible, how to help them reach their unbelieving friends but stay holy, how to develop them into leaders, how to, how to, how to…

When I met Cassie, my husband, Eric, and I had just moved to Summit County, Colorado, to plant a church. In this county, which includes Breckenridge, Keystone and a handful of other mountain towns, only four percent of locals claim to be evangelical Christians. We knew that God had called us to reach the other 96 percent, but we had absolutely no idea how. When we first arrived, we stayed up at night asking God, Who are these lost people, and what do we say to them when we find them? We wanted to disciple the lost toward Jesus, but the enormity and complexity of it seemed overwhelming, even paralyzing.

Who are these lost people, and what do we say to them when we find them?

And then I met Cassie.

I had no idea how to “get her saved,” but I thought I’d start by being her friend. So we drank a lot of coffee, had a lot of conversations and even sometimes had fun together. Through love, grace, time and access to my life (we call this Invitation), something amazing started to happen: I began to truly love her. I longed to see the kingdom of God transform every area of her life. As this love grew, she began to feel it and then trust it. When it was time to tell her that Jesus could change her life too, but it would cost her everything (we call this Challenge), she responded, “I think I knew that.” And a year and a half after that initial introduction, Cassie gave in to the relentless pursuit of Jesus’ mercy and love, and she chose to become His disciple herself.

Wait, you say, there you go again, acting like it’s so simple! Well, it really is. Bringing people along on the journey, inviting and challenging, while listening to the Spirit — well, it works. We’ve seen this simple process of discipleship transform people’s lives over and over again. And why shouldn’t it work, since that’s exactly how Jesus did it?

Jesus invited the disciples to follow Him, spend time with Him, live alongside Him and learn from His ways long before their “salvation experience” (when they realized He was the Messiah). They didn’t only sit under His teaching and ministry; they ate with Him. Watched Him pray. Saw what made Him laugh. Observed Him as He grieved. He gave them friendship (Invitation) and confronted everything in their lives that stood in the way of the kingdom of God (Challenge), and through this simple process, they became not only disciples — people who do the things Jesus did for the reasons He did them — but also disciple makers. 
It’s that simple.

So who are you having coffee with? The choice to disciple one person toward Jesus could result in multiple generations of disciples.

Be brave. Take a chance. Follow Jesus with all your heart, all your mind, all your soul and all your strength, and invite others to do the same — and you may just be surprised at who comes along.