Gaining by Losing by J.D. Greear

Author:J.D. Greear
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook
Publisher: Zondervan
Published: 2015-06-01T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 8

Without This, You Fail

PLUMB LINE:

“The Point in Everything Is to Make Disciples.”

On paper, President Abraham Lincoln couldn’t have hoped for a better general than George B. McClellan. Referred to flatteringly as the “Young Napoleon,” McClellan was a phenomenon. At the age of fifteen, he had been the youngest member ever to be accepted at West Point. He graduated second in his class, only because he couldn’t draw maps well. He served in the Mexican-American War and then in the Crimean War, both with distinction.

Perhaps McClellan’s greatest gifts, however, were his ability to recruit and organize. When Lincoln appointed him to head up the new Army of the Potomac formed in July 1861, McClellan immediately expanded its ranks from 50,000 to 168,000, all the while bringing a level of organization and precision to the troops that stunned McClellan’s superiors.

Furthermore, his troops loved him. Even amidst the grueling conditions of the Civil War, he kept their morale high, inspiring them to give more and do more because the cause was worth it. And that’s all the more amazing, considering they had been decimated at Bull Run just prior to his commission. Under McClellan, they started to believe again.

No one was surprised when, in October 1861, President Lincoln made McClellan his General-In-Chief. McClellan had the resume. He had the experience. Now, he had a powerhouse army behind him, outnumbering his enemy more than two to one. There was just one problem.

The man wouldn’t fight.

For weeks General McClellan readied his position, organized, and strategized, while Lee’s army lay dangerously exposed just a few miles away. Lincoln urged McClellan to put his numerical and tactical advantage to use and crush the rebellion with one, swift attack. McClellan understood the strategy. He knew his favorable odds. But he wouldn’t pull the trigger.

After an excruciating year of inactivity, Lincoln removed the greatest military mind of his time and eventually replaced him with a man with only half his tactical talent, but a man who would have picked a fight with a beehive buck naked: Ulysses S. Grant.

The greatest asset of a military man is his ability to fight. Without that, all other assets are useless.

Many skills make for an effective minister, but there is one without which everything else we do is useless: make disciples. Apart from that, all the money we raise, buildings we build, ministries we organize, sermons we preach and songs we write won’t move the mission forward. Without that one thing, we fail.

Everything else we do is ultimately in support of that one thing. Disciple-making was the central component of the Great Commission (Matt. 28:19), and it ought to be the standard by which we should judge every ministry in the church. In his classic book The Master Plan of Evangelism, Robert Coleman said,

The great commission is not merely to go to the ends of the earth preaching the gospel, nor to baptize a lot of converts into the Name of the Triune God, nor to teach them the precepts of Christ,

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