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Circles are powerful. They shape identity, instill and reinforce values, and provide a variety of emotional, physical and spiritual support.
My question for you is this:

Do you experience the power of circles as an obstacle or an opportunity as you disciple the lost?

Your answer to this question reflects a small handful of factors, one of which is your disciple making strategy.
If your strategy is to disciple individuals, the power of their existing circle will often feel like a barrier to you. This is because discipling an individual places you in competition with their primary circle.
If your strategy is to disciple a whole circle, the power of the circle will typically feel like an opportunity to you. This is because discipling a circle makes you their advocate and champion.

When I look at a city, I don’t focus on neighborhoods or individuals or even centers of power.

Instead, I look for circles.

Each circle I find is unique.
Sometimes a circle is a family, sometimes it is a group of friends, sometimes it is a group that works together, and other times it is a group that plays together.
Here is why these circles are important: with one exception, circles are just like a local church.

• Circles have a leadership structure and a decision making process
• Circles have a sense of history, identity, purpose and future
• Circles have members who care for one another

The only thing that circles are missing is Christ.

Person of Peace (sometimes called “a person of good will”)…this individual is someone who is receptive, of reputation, and is a person of referral. By being receptive, he/she is eager to have a relationship with you. Regarding reputation, it could be either good or bad, but people know this person. He/she is also a person of referral in the sense that there is an influence over others, either good or bad. Every community will have people of peace. (Lydia - Acts 16:11-15; Philippian Jailer – Acts 16:29-34).

1. Finding a Person of Peace – Luke 10:2-11
A Person of Peace will:
• Welcome You
• Speak Kindly to You
• Be a Person of Hospitality (i.e. invite you into their surroundings/home) • Have a heart of Compassion
• Share a Similar Vision
• Sense the Need for Change
• Note: you will find in this person an instant friend, who will open the door to
others. Make this your base of operation, and your first indigenous leader.

Christians have made the gospel about so many things … things other than Christ.
Jesus Christ is the gravitational pull that brings everything together and gives them significance, reality, and meaning. Without him, all things lose their value. Without him, all things are but detached pieces floating around in space.
It is possible to emphasize a spiritual truth, value, virtue, or gift, yet miss Christ . . . who is the embodiment and incarnation of all spiritual truth, values, virtues, and gifts.
Seek a truth, a value, a virtue, or a spiritual gift, and you have obtained something dead.
Seek Christ, embrace Christ, know Christ, and you have touched him who is Life. And in him resides all Truth, Values, Virtues and Gifts in living color. Beauty has its meaning in the beauty of Christ, in whom is found all that makes us lovely and loveable.

I remember well my days of pastoring and working in a denominational district office. Back then, I would get the occasional call from a pastor or church leader asking for a reference concerning a former church member or adherent.

In some cases, they would ask for a letter of recommendation assuring their staff that this person (or family) had been members in good standing and weren’t subject to church discipline. They especially wanted to know if the person or family in question had a reputation of trouble-making.

The practice of “letters of commendation” is thoroughly biblical. In the New Testament era, if you relocated from one church to another, a “letter of commendation” went ahead of you. That letter was to inform the church to which you were relocating if you had a “good report” or if you had a “bad report.”

The promise of the New Covenant is this: “„I will put My laws into their minds, I will write them upon their hearts. I will be their God and they shall be My people. And they shall not teach every one his fellow-citizen, and everyone his brother saying, „Know the Lord,‟ for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest. I will be merciful to their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more.‟”

 “All shall know Me” . . . this is the beating heart of God. I‟ll be blunt: Either you and I can  know God intimately, or the gospel is a sham. One of the rewards of our Lord’s suffering is that we all shall know Him . . . “from the least to the greatest.”

 Living in organic Body life for many years has taught me the reality of a major teaching in the New Testament. Namely, the Lord dwells in all of us, and He is a speaking God. But the primary vehicle He uses as His mouthpiece is His Body.

Hypocrisy Defined

A woman once asked me, "What do they call you at your church?" I told her, "Earle." But," she replied, "shouldn't they show you more respect as a minister?" I answered, "Respect? In our church? Are you kidding?" She didn't quite catch the joke, but I explained to her that someone's using a title to address me does not really give me respect. Rather it is the condition of their heart that is the issue. In Luke 12, Jesus clearly warns his disciples about the tendency to believe that our outward behavior alone determines the quality of our righteousness and the authenticity of our Christianity. He points out to them a subtle yet important difference between authentic Christianity and Theatrical Christianity . Luke 12:1 reads:

Under these circumstances, after so many thousands of the multitude had gathered together that they were stepping on one another, he began saying to his disciples first of all, "Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy."

“Greater love has no one than this,  than to lay down one’s life for his friends. You are my friends if you do whatever I command you.  No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you.” John 15:13- 15

The One who legitimately could claim all position, title, honor, glory and authority did not do so!  He looked into the eyes of men who would soon betray Him and called them His friends. When He did this He absolutely, totally and for all time destroyed all possibility of any hierarchy representing His kingdom. Pyramids are for dead people!

There’s a great scene at the end of the film, “The Big Kahuna” where Danny DeVito’s character counsels a young co-worker about his overt mode of evangelism.

He says, “It doesn't matter whether you're selling Jesus or Buddha or civil rights or 'How to Make Money in Real Estate With No Money Down.' That doesn't make you a human being; it makes you a marketing rep. If you want to talk to somebody honestly, as a human being, ask him about his kids. Find out what his dreams are - just to find out, for no other reason. Because as soon as you lay your hands on a conversation to steer it, it's not a conversation anymore; it's a pitch. And you're not a human being; you're a marketing rep.”

That scene sums up, for me, how the world sees the insincerity in our attempts to sell our faith the way a door-to-door salesman sells magazine subscriptions.

As a young college student, I was very passionate about Christian Apologetics. I read book after book dealing with how to “give to every man an answer, a reason for the hope that lies within” using science, history, archaeology, and logic to convince the skeptic and the unbeliever that Jesus really was the answer.

Have you ever heard of Dunbar’s Number? According to Robin Dunbar, there is a maximum number of relationships a person can have due to cognitive limitations and social group sizes. According to Dunbar, the average person can have a maximum of 150 meaningful relationships with a broader range of 100-230 relationships. The larger the number, the more restrictive or superficial the relationships become.

I would venture to say that most of us don’t think very strategically about the limitations of our relationships. Of course we have our immediate relations to our family and extended family. Beyond that we have our friends and church family. Once you factor in the “given’s”, the number of available meaningful relationships is relatively small. That means we need to be careful in how we invest our lives cognitively and missionally for the sake of the gospel.

Knowing these limitations, why not come up with a plan on how to leverage your relational margin for the sake of gospel advance? How many relationships could be acquaintances? Neighbors? Friends? You can’t change the world with 500 relationships, but you can change a neighborhood with 10. I fear the problem with most of us is that we have failed to consider these limitations and leverage our relational margin at all for gospel causes. To correct that, we need to begin with examining our relationships and make efforts to demonstrate personal hospitality, receptivity, and availability for God to use us in the lives of others.