Jesus' vision for the world is to "win souls and make disciples." This He clearly stated in Matthew 28:19-20: "Therefore go and make disciples of all nations . . .." To achieve His vision, Jesus worked closely with twelve men that He mentored to take His place on the earth. Following Jesus' pattern, the apostle Paul also trained a number of young men ("Timothys") who later became the great leaders of the New Testament Church. We call this mentoring technique the "principle of twelve."
The number twelve is the number of government in the Bible. Jesus established His kingdom and government on the earth by using the same principle that God had used to establish Israel in the Old Testament. Just as Israel had twelve tribes, Jesus had twelve disciples. Using this pattern, Jesus intended to show us a model of how to disciple not only our local communities, but also the nations of the world.
Pastors César and Claudia Castellanos at International Charistmatic Mission in Bogotá, Colombia first implemented the “principle of twelve”. This church has used this discipleship principle to build the largest small group network in the world.
