Four generations, and where your chain stops

Paul is in prison, writing to a young man he trained, and he compresses the entire strategy of the Christian mission into a single sentence.

What you have heard from me in the company of many witnesses, entrust to reliable individuals who will be able to teach others as well. — 2 Timothy 2:2 (OTB)

Count the links before you read on.

Four

Paul is one. Timothy, who heard it from him, is two. The reliable individuals Timothy entrusts it to are three. The others they will be able to teach are four.

Four generations, in one verse, written by a man in a cell who could not personally reach any of them past the second.

Notice what Paul is measuring. Not how many people he taught. Not how large the gathering in Ephesus got. He is measuring how far the thing traveled after it left his hands — and he is explicitly asking Timothy to select for the ability to pass it on. Reliable individuals who will be able to teach others as well. The criterion is reproducibility, written into the verse.

Draw your own chain

This is the exercise, and it is worth doing on paper rather than in your head, because the head negotiates.

Draw a line. Above it, write the name of the person who discipled you — the actual human being who taught you to follow Jesus. Not a preacher you admired from a distance. Someone who knew your name.

Below your name, write the person you are discipling now.

Below them, write the person they are discipling.

Most chains stop at the second link. Many stop at the first. Some people cannot fill in the line above their own name at all, and that is its own kind of information — it usually explains why the line below is empty too. We reproduce what was done to us.

Sit in it

Do not rush past the blank spaces to a plan. The blanks are the lesson, and they are not an accusation. Almost nobody has a fourth generation, and the reason is not that we are lazy. It is that nobody ever told us this was the scorecard, so we were never aiming at it.

But now you have seen it. And the honest question is not “how do I get to four generations?” It is much smaller: what would have to change so that the person below my name could put a name below theirs?

Usually the answer is that what you are doing with them has to get simpler.

Recite this

Paul counted four generations. Count how far it travels after you.

Try it this week

Draw the chain. Above your name, below it, and below that. Then take the one person on your line and ask them, out loud, who they are walking with — not to pressure them, but so the question exists between you.

I will draw my chain and ask ________________ who they are walking with, on ________________.