so as we look at Jesus’s ministry in the Gospels we see that he ministered to in interacted with a lot of people in a lot of places and so we see that he ministered to large groups like the 5,000 and the 4,000 and he had his followers you know like a group of 500 in the 70 but then he had his faithful few the twelve and then even the three and as we consider the use of Jesus’s time while he did minister to the large groups if we were just to compare the amount of time he spent he spent a considerable more amount of time with a few people so Jesus’s time mattered how did he as he’s engaging large groups of people determine who he was going to invest the majority of his time in who were his his faithful few so we want to we want to determine that in the scriptures those of us who are disciple makers are catalysts or missionaries we want to be able to determine from the Scriptures he give us any indication of how he determined who he was going to pour his time into so go ahead and take some time at your tables or if you’re by yourself by yourself and look up these passages and ask yourself the question is there any type of filter that Jesus used to determine who he was going to invest his time into okay so let’s just real quick take a look at these we see in in Matthew 10 and in John 6 Jesus used what we would call hard sayings right the challenge of of in John 6 he’s got this massive group that he’s feeding that are there to follow that are there to see Jesus and he uses the heart saying if you must eat my flesh and drink my blood and the disciples are liking the Lord this is a hard saying so Jesus used hard sayings and the large groups of people following them would actually shrink down in Matthew 13 and in mark 4 we see that Jesus used parables on purpose as a filter and then in mark 10 with the rich young ruler we see Jesus uses lordship people being willing to submit to his lordship for so for example this man was was unwilling to to leave behind the one thing that he couldn’t let go of was unwilling just to submit to the lordship of Jesus and so we see these would be there’s other passages we could look at but these are three categories examples of filters that Jesus used to determine who he was going to invest his time in so as we consider our four fields training and the process that we have one of the things that is exciting is if we consider a filter you know we hate because these are people these are lives right so but if we were just to use that term of filtering for who we’re gonna invest our time in the the three thirds format actually has these these three filters built in there I mean think about it the look-back portion is hard sayings right you think about the the loving accountability of asking somebody you know tell us how you obeyed Jesus this week with respects to the goals that you set last week you know that that’s a hard saying of how did you obey people don’t often like to hear that that question you think of look up parables we’re looking at a new lesson from the word often looking at-at parables from the scriptures and then for the look-ahead part we see the lordship filter in there asking the question of how are you going to obey Jesus this week and setting some very specific goals they’re going to make its way into their calendar that week so these three filters that Jesus use are actually in the three thirds process that we use for discipleship and church formation and leadership development and and what we’re finding is that most people they’ll choose to self select out just like in in John 6 or in mark 10 you know people are choosing to leave Jesus he’s not asking them to leave and we’re finding the same as we roll out these these three thirds groups there’s discipleship training groups that we’re not asking people to leave but when we ask the tough questions of did you obey and how are you gonna obey as we’re looking at the Scriptures people end up self selecting out and often leaders can feel like man we’re failing we’re losing people and we never want to lose people we want to entrain and see everyone get involved in making disciples but as people do leave especially if we’re you know sticking to the process just know that that is going to happen I’ve talked to leaders that feel like they’re doing something wrong so they’ll try to take out the things that are difficult take out the accountability take out the goal sing it’s like you’ve just removed the teeth so this 3/3 is a helpful process that’s built into the tools to help us consider as we Minister the masses how do we identify who are those faithful few then we’re gonna pour our lives into sick at least 60 to 90 days a year that we’re gonna invest just like Jesus did

See original video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JNbdt2mZ5E