Why We Share the Gospel: Are We Making Disciples or Just Building a Crowd?

Why We Share the Gospel: Are You Doing It for the Right Reason?

Now listen, many of us will say the right things. We will say, “Because Jesus gave us the Great Commission.” We will say, “Because I want people to be saved.” And those are good answers, brothers and sisters, they really are.

But let me be honest with you. Some people share the gospel because their church expects it. Some do it because it is their job, or because their support depends on it. And if we are really, truly honest? Some do it because they want the numbers. They want to be able to stand before men and say, “Look how many souls I’ve won.”

And that, brothers and sisters, is where things start to go wrong.

Are We Winning Souls or Just Winning Arguments?

Here is something the Bible makes very clear. We are not rewarded by how many souls we have won. Think about Matthew 7 where Jesus himself says:

“On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me.’” — Matthew 7:22-23 NLT

Did you catch that? Many. Not a few. Many. These are people who were active. They were doing things in the name of Jesus. But He says He never knew them.

So if the fruit of our ministry is activity and not relationship, we have a serious problem. God wants us to tell people about Him, yes. But not to manipulate people or sweet-talk them in just so we can put a number on a board.

And it is not about who is right and who is wrong either. I have seen preachers mocking unbelievers, and that does not make us shine as light. Mocking and insulting others is very different from preaching the truth and letting the Holy Spirit do His work. Christian apologist Wes Huff put it this way: if we get heated in a gospel conversation, we have failed. And if the other person gets heated, we have also failed. The goal was never to win a debate. The goal is to open a door.

Now I want to be fair here. If someone gets heated because they cannot accept the truth, because they are under conviction, or because something spiritual is stirring in them, that is different. That is not on you. But if the heat is coming from us, from our ego, our frustration, our need to be right, then we have lost the plot.

Because here is what sharing the gospel is really about. It is not just rescuing someone from hell and calling it done. It is helping people reconnect with God. It is helping them understand who they are, what God has done for them, and that there is an invitation on the table, an invitation to restoration, to wholeness, to being made complete in Him. Salvation is the door, not the destination.

And if people accept it, praise the Lord. If they do not, you have still done your part. You have sown a seed that may take days, years, or even decades to bear fruit. We are not expected to sow the seed, water it, and harvest it all in one go. Sometimes your job is simply to plant. Do your part and trust God with the rest.

What Is the Real Problem With How We Do Evangelism Today?

Let me tell you what I see happening too often, and I say this with love.

We are building believers and calling it a day. We are not building disciples.

We celebrate when someone gets baptized, and we should! That is a beautiful moment. But baptism is the beginning, not the finish line. That person has just been saved from the fire. They have not yet learned how to run the race or been equipped to finish it.

And what happens to many of them?

• They get left alone with no follow-up.
• Nobody walks with them through the hard questions.
• Nobody teaches them how to handle temptation, how to study the Word, how to stand firm.
• They stall out, never growing up in the Lord.
• And slowly, some drift. Some fall away entirely. There is a story about a prominent evangelist from the 1980s that has stayed with me. This man had led millions of people to Jesus through mass crusades across Africa. Late in his life, he returned to one of those original crusade locations. And what did he find? Some of the local Christians there had begun incorporating witch doctor practices into their Christianity.

This great evangelist expressed deep regret. He wished they had established training schools in every place they held crusades to properly disciple the new believers.

That is heartbreaking. And it is a warning to every one of us. We do not want to labor and find at the end that it was in vain.

And let me tell you something nobody warns you about when you first start sharing the gospel. When people say yes to Jesus, your work is not done. It is just beginning. And sometimes it is harder than you imagined.

Because some of the people who come to faith will struggle. Deeply. And you will be there again. And again. And again. There will be moments you ask yourself, why did I even bring this person to the Lord? Because now you are carrying their burdens with them. Now you are in the middle of their mess, their debt, their marriage problems, their old habits that keep pulling them back. Sometimes it feels like they are not changing at all. Sometimes they backslide and you wonder if anything you did mattered.

But that is exactly what Paul was doing in his letters. He was not writing methodologies for winning souls. He was writing to believers, dealing with their sin, their confusion, their divisions, their grief. Most of the New Testament is Paul walking with people through the hard stuff after they said yes to Jesus. That is discipleship. It is not clean. It is not fast. And it does not always feel rewarding. But when you see someone truly transformed, when you watch a person who was broken become someone who is now helping others, that is a feeling no number on a board can ever give you.

I have seen this up close. There was a family in our fellowship who came to Christ after receiving healing. Everyone was excited, especially the leaders, and rightly so. But over time it became clear they were carrying enormous debt and a long trail of problems that came with it. They kept coming for help, in many different ways, and slowly people started backing away. Leaders got uncomfortable. The excitement faded. And this family almost stopped coming altogether.

We were not better than anyone else in that situation. And honestly, most of the time we judge people without even realizing we are doing it. We see someone stuck in the same cycle, the same problems, the same mess, and somewhere in the back of our minds we think we would handle it differently. We think we are better. But are you sure? Are any of us really sure?

The Lord showed us something. He showed us that if we were in their shoes, carrying what they were carrying, we would not be any different. That conviction turned our frustration into understanding. So we stayed. We helped as much as we could. We kept showing up.

And we have seen this more than once. There was a lady in our fellowship that the leaders themselves were saying, do not help her. Do not invest in her. But the Lord showed us something about her that was different from what everyone else was saying. He let us see what He saw in her. And so we were the ones who stood beside her. We went through a lot to build her up, to walk with her, to not give up when it would have been easier to walk away. And today? That same lady is considered one of the leaders, by the very leaders who once despised her. And when we went through our own difficult season, she was right there beside us.

That is the full circle of discipleship. You pour into someone nobody else wanted to pour into, and God turns them into exactly the kind of person the Body needs. You do not get to see that if you walk away too soon.

That is what it means to build disciples, not just believers. It means staying when it gets inconvenient. It means carrying burdens you did not ask for. It means choosing people over comfort, again and again.

Why Does This Keep Happening? The Root of the Problem

Brothers and sisters, let me go deeper. Because I think we need to look at the root, not just the fruit.

A lot of what drives this is pride disguised as passion. And the antidote to pride is not a better strategy. It is the fear of God, a deeper reverence for Him than for the opinions of men.

And I want to add something here. Sometimes it is not just greed that pulls us toward compromising our ministry. Sometimes it is simply need. The pressure of an empty account, a family to feed, a ministry that needs resources to keep going. Need can bend us just as quietly as greed can. Maybe even more so, because it is harder to see coming and easier to justify. I have experienced this personally.

I have lived this firsthand. There was a time in our ministry when someone came to us with an offer of financial support. We had no steady income, a big family to care for, and a ministry we were building as the Lord led. The offer was not much, but the requirements? The checklist was enormous. It felt heavier than a full-time job. And I felt in my spirit that this was not the Lord’s way for us.

So we said no.

We continued to labor through financial difficulty. And not long after that, the Lord opened a door that sustained us and the ministry in that season. He is faithful, brothers and sisters. He is always faithful.

But you cannot walk in that kind of faith when you are beholden to men instead of God. Jesus himself said it plainly: “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” — Matthew 6:33 NLT When our security is in the donor list, that verse becomes very hard to live by.

We have to make sure that we really know, deep down in our hearts, that the Lord is our provider. Not just as a title we repeat. As a reality we have actually experienced and are standing on.

How Did Jesus Actually Do It?

Now look at Jesus. Look closely at His method, because it is the opposite of what we do today.

He shared the good news of the Kingdom. He called people to repent. He did not promise health and wealth. > “You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell?” — Matthew 23:33 NLT , and they were the most influential religious figures of His time, exactly the kind of people who could have funded His ministry and expanded His platform. He did not flinch.

And when the crowd thinned out after He spoke hard truth in John 6, many disciples turned back and walked with Him no more. What did He do?

“Jesus turned and said to them, ‘Do you want to leave too?’” — John 6:67 NLT

He was not chasing numbers. He was focused on depth. He was building twelve men who would shake the world. And those twelve were worth more than the thousands who only stayed for the loaves and the fish.

Today we water down the message so nobody gets offended. We tell people God loves them but skip the part about repentance. We let people stay comfortable in sin because we are afraid to lose them. That is not evangelism. That is people-pleasing with a Bible verse attached to it.

So What Do We Actually Do Differently?

Here is where I want to get honest and practical, because I am not just pointing out problems. I believe God is calling us to something better.

Start by examining your heart. Before anything else, sit quietly before God and ask Him to show you what is really driving you. Not what you tell other people, not what sounds right in a prayer meeting, but what is actually in your heart. Are you doing this because you love God and love people? Or are you doing it to be seen, to be validated, to keep something going? > “Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.” — Psalm 139:23 NLT

Then find your actual calling. Before the next outreach, the next crusade, the next program, sit down alone with God and ask: Is this my calling, or is this what was handed to me? The gift of an evangelist is specific (Ephesians 4:11). Not everyone is called to run crusades. Every believer should be ready to give an answer for the hope within them (1 Peter 3:15), yes, but that is different from making evangelism your primary calling when God has placed something else in your heart. Find what God put in you. Do that. And do it with everything you have. If you are not sure what that looks like, it may be worth exploring the kingdom keys God has already placed in your hands.

Take action and let the Lord lead. Do not wait until everything is perfect or until you feel fully ready. Step out in what God has shown you, and let Him direct your steps from there. The early church did not grow through better messaging. They grew because the life of Jesus was visibly real in them, and people saw it and could not explain it. Persecution could not stop it. It was only when Constantine made Christianity the official religion of Rome that comfort crept in, and comfortable Christianity has never changed the world.

And please hear this: ministry is more than you think. Ministry is not just the pulpit, the worship team, the evangelism outreach, or the mission trip. Ministry is anything that brings glory to God. The teacher who pours into students with integrity, the business owner who runs an honest company, the parent who raises their children in the fear of the Lord, the artist who creates work that points to the Creator. Do what you are called to. Use the talents and resources God has given you. That is ministry. All of it counts.

“Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and no city or house divided against itself will stand.” — Matthew 12:25 NLT

And let us spend our time and energy on things that actually matter. Stop fighting fellow believers over small matters that are not against the Truth. Save that fire for the real battles.

What Does Real Fruit Look Like?

You want to know what fruit actually looks like? It looks like the person who got saved three years ago and is now discipling someone else. It looks like the young man who almost walked away but came back because someone cared enough to pursue him. It looks like a family whose marriage was restored because someone sat with them in the Word week after week.

That is the fruit that endures. That is what Jesus was building. Not a crowd. A kingdom.

Go Back to the Why

Brothers and sisters, I want to close with this.

Stop chasing methodology. Stop letting the fear of losing support or approval drive what you do for God.

Go back to the why.

If your why is rooted in genuine love for God and love for people, the how will follow. God will show you who to speak to, when to speak, and what to say. You will not need to beg or manipulate or perform.

Just live it. Walk it out in the hard seasons. And trust that God who called you is faithful to bring the increase in His time.

Because it is not about how many. It is about how deep.

Further Reading & Resources:

• What Is Discipleship? (Desiring God)
• Wes Huff on Sharing the Gospel Without Losing the Plot (YouTube)