This week, at age 99, one of the greatest representatives of the Christian faith that the modern world has ever known left this earthly life. On Wednesday, Feb. 21, 2018, Billy Graham stepped into the presence of the God whom he had faithfully announced to the world for more than seven decades. In an age that witnessed the scandalous ruin of countless leaders, both secular and religious, Billy Graham stood as a beacon of integrity.

Some have said that Graham touched more people with the gospel than any other human being in history. Russell Moore, the president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, says that Graham was “the most important evangelist since the apostle Paul.” Over the course of his life, Graham preached in person to well over 100 million people, and to many millions more via satellite, television, and film. Some 3 million people professed faith in Christ in response to his bold, simple proclamation of the gospel.

Yet, in spite of the apparent early success, Graham felt deep trouble in his soul. In 1955 as the young evangelist’s national fame grew, he confided to a close friend, Dawson Trotman, who had begun the Navigators discipling ministry about 20 years earlier.

“Daws,” Graham said, “we are having an average of 6,000 people come forward to decide for Christ in a month’s campaign. I am not able to sleep nights for thinking of what happens to the converts after a crusade is over.” He pleaded with Trotman to develop a follow-up program for these evangelistic meetings. Trotman, declined, saying, “Billy, I can’t follow up 6,000 people. My work is always with individuals and small groups.”

After multiple attempts to convince Trotman to join him, and being told that he’d have to find someone else, Billy Graham took him by the shoulders and said, “Who else? Who else is majoring in this?”

Since reading the account of this exchange, which Trotman later recounted in a message entitled “Born to Reproduce,” Graham’s question has troubled me. “Who else is majoring in this?” — this task that Jesus had entrusted to His first disciples just before returning to heaven to “make disciples of all nations… teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you…” (Matthew 28:19-20).

It troubles me to think that there were apparently so few in Graham’s early years who were committed to the single, all-important task of making disciples who would in turn make disciples. It troubles me even more that the dearth of real disciple-making persists today.

The power of spiritual multiplication by far outstrips the impact of single-handedly preaching the gospel to 100 million people. If, back in 1955, when Billy Graham asked that question, one person had led just one other person to faith and had discipled him or her over the next two years, so that together they could each lead another person to faith and disciple them over the following two years, and if they and their disciples continued this pattern of one new disciple every two years, today, 63 years later, the result would be one billion reproducing followers of Jesus.

That same potential for long-term eternal impact is ours today. Billy Graham understood that Jesus did not tell us to go make converts. He told us to go make disciples who would make disciples. And the fact that this was not happening deeply troubled him.

Dale Losch joined Crossworld as a disciple-maker in France in 1988, and has served as Crossworld’s president since 2009. He loves to motivate people to use their God-given passions to make disciples wherever life happens. Hear more from Dale.