I’m talking to a guy about learning what I do on Sunday mornings. Not the teaching part. Not the talking with people part. Not the temperature part or the encouraging part. The tech part.

One of the things that I do is handle tech questions: why aren’t the song slides showing up on the screen? Why are the song slides green? Why does the projector show the DVD and not the laptop? Why can’t I hear anything out of this little speaker? Can you take this file from a USB drive and put it on a DVD? In 15 minutes?

I realized recently that it would be wise to have other people who know how to do what I do. A name came to mind. I talked with him this week. He said, “That makes sense. But how do we get me started?”

I made a list.

• We decide that you will do it.
• You follow me around.
• Each time we do something, we label it for ourselves and others, with white mailing labels and notes.
• When you are ready, we tell a handful of people that you are me for these things.
• And I treat you as me for those things.

He’s got the gifting to be a competent troubleshooter. What he needs is the blessing and the orientation.

And I realized that’s exactly what we see happening in the stories of the disciples that we read in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Calling. Following. Documenting. Authorizing. Treating as the go to people.

The process of making disciples isn’t nearly as complicated as we think it is. In fact, we do that process all the time about all kinds of things.

Of course, sometimes we don’t do this process. We just hand people a book.

But that almost never works.