How It Started

The Gospel Challenge was born out of a personal struggle to discover how God wanted me to be faithful to His call on my life to make disciples and who in turn would be disciple-makers. My mentor had impressed upon me the concept that “less is more” and had challenged me to work with fewer people. He encouraged me to pray specifically for God to give me a Peter, James, and John to work with.  

I struggled with this concept for years before I finally decided to give it a try. I began to pray every day for my Peter, James, and John. I prayed fervently for five months and nothing happened. Two weeks into the fifth month the faces of three men that I knew, but not well, popped into my mind with amazing clarity.

I knew that these three men were the ones. I then began to pray, Lord, what do I do now and I felt the Holy Spirit leading me to invite them to read through the four gospels with me. When I approached the first one these words just came rolling off my tongue. “Would you take the Gospel Challenge with me?” I had never used those words before and he said, what is the Gospel Challenge? Again, I believe the Holy Spirit spoke through me saying “There are 89 chapters in the four gospels and if you read a chapter a day you can finish in 90 days.” My new friend replied, “I can do that.” I asked, if you will meet with me once a week to talk about what you read the previous week, we’re on! He said yes and we started reading the Gospels each week together. It wasn’t long before we began to experience transforming moments as it felt like we were walking with Jesus and his disciples as they traversed the dusty trails of Judea and Galilee. 

Each one of my new friends completed the Gospel Challenge with me and have gone on to take many others through the Challenge, who are in turn discipling others.