An Excerpt from The Fuel and the Flame
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Our recruiting is to the vision of total dedication to the person and purposes of Jesus Christ here on earth, not to any human leader or ministry. The military recruits, colleges recruit, companies recruit, countless other institutions, industries and individuals recruit. Every single commercial or advertisement on TV, magazines, and billboards is designed to do one thing─recruit us. Whether it’s new cars, beauty products or lite beer, their objective is to make us think or feel that without their product, our life will not be complete. These PR firms know how to hit our hot buttons, appealing to those deep dissatisfactions within and making us believe we deserve to have our every want and need pampered.

My question is: Everyone else recruits─Why don’t we? We Christians possess the only true solution to mankind’s wants, needs, and dissatisfactions. If Jesus alone is our satisfaction, why are we not constantly helping others to realize that? Most Christians demote themselves to a position of helplessness by admitting, “I wish I could help others, but only God can change hearts. I’ll just pray and wait!” I contend that we can become co-recruiters with God in this effort to expose the real needs people have for Jesus Christ and the life that He wants to give them.

The Holy Spirit is a Recruiter

The primary role of the Holy Spirit is that of a recruiter. Many of His activities seem to center around

            A. Showing non-Christians their need to repent of their sin and receive Christ as Savior and Lord.

            B. Showing Christians their need to repent of their sin and keep Christ as Lord.

            C. Showing Christians their need to grow in Christ.

            D. Showing Christians their need to win and build others for Christ.

            E. Showing Christians their need to be equipped for service.

As you can tell, the common denominators are “showing” and “need”. The Holy Spirit’s constant objective is to show us our need. Why? So that we will do something about it! We humans are so self-satisfied that unless an outside force disrupts our comfortable little world, we will obliviously continue toward destruction. Years ago, Dave, a young student I was discipling, came up with this definition of recruiting: “Helping show someone see their need to the point where they’re willing to do something about it.”

By this time in your ministry you may have all kinds of students around at different stages of interest and growth. How do you help each person take the next step in their spiritual journey, moving up the “discipleship ladder” we presented earlier? Answer: You recruit them! Like an onion, you tenderly peel back layer after layer of any pride, self-sufficiency, unteachableness, or ignorance they might have until you finally help them see their need so much that they’re anxious to do something about it.

Whether you are recruiting students to Christ as Savior and Lord, to a small group, to a discipling relationship with you, or just to an upcoming conference, there are several things you can do as you allow the Holy Spirit to recruit others through you:

Fervently ask God to open the hearts of students to see their need. In Ephesians 1:18 Paul prayed for others, that the eyes of their heart “may be enlightened.” Prayer moves the hand of God and our intercession can have direct impact on others as we shoot prayer arrows from our prayer closet directly to their heart.

            B. Love and serve

If there is any rebellion in the heart of your young recruit, loving and serving them has a way of melting their opposition. Whether their lack of receptivity is to you or the truth you’re presenting, if they sense you really care and have their best interests at heart, ultimately they will listen.

            C. Challenge

            If, along with your praying, loving, and serving, you are continually exposing them to the Word of God, then they are going to open up to your words of encouragement and exhortation. Yes, you need to be modeling what it is you’re asking them to do, but it also helps for them to rub shoulders with other committed believers who can influence them as well.

            D. Ask questions

Don’t ever tell someone something that you can help them discover on their own through simply asking them questions. Well-worded, non-judgmental questions can be like a scalpel in the hands of a surgeon to cut right to the place where the cancer grows. In the appendix, I have included a list of questions to make Christians hungry and a list of questions to make non-Christians hungry. Look at them, use them, or come up with your own to reveal and expose spiritual needs in others that you can help meet. Let’s admit it, only God can reach down into the heart of a young college student and turn it, but many times He wants to use us, as His ambassadors for Christ, to be involved.

In this chapter we are talking about equipping and training others to be laborers, more specifically, disciplemakers. The problem is most of us think we are way ahead of where we really are. In two of our ministry’s earliest summer training projects, I naively let students pick which one of the projects they thought they fit: Project One─For disciples, and Project Two─For disciplemakers. Even though a large number chose Project Two, by the end of the summer we realized that virtually all the students were just growing Christians trying to become disciples. In the process, we were able to gently show them that they weren’t quite as far along as they thought and that they needed a whole lot more training!

Soldiers in the Battle Want Training

If a person is not receiving training in their Christian life and ministry, it’s probably because they don’t want to. Plus, if they’re not engaged in the spiritual battle, who needs spiritual training? Picture some soldiers at an army base in west Texas during peacetime, and an instructor comes into their class to teach them how to use an M-16 rifle. Chances are he would have a very difficult time getting the details of his presentation across to the bored, yawning privates. These soldiers are just in the military to do their stint and get out, and besides, who needs to know how to take apart and put together a rifle like this when none of them will ever really use it in battle? Their teachability quotient (TQ) is very low because they don’t see their need.

On the other hand, if suddenly the U.S. was thrust into a ground war in a foreign country and these men were parachuted into enemy territory, they would have a completely different attitude. If they were pinned down in some hastily dug foxholes with a dwindling amount of weapons and ammunition and an army truck pulls up, a sergeant jumps out and starts throwing an M-16 into each soldier’s hands, with only three minutes to teach them how to load and shoot, do you think the men would be a bit more teachable? Of course, because now they are in the thick of the battle and their lives depend upon carefully listening and immediately applying the training they receive!