One at a Time

The Unexpected Way God Wants to Use You to Change the World

Kyle Idleman

• Publisher: Baker Books
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9780801094910
• eBook ISBN: 9781493433940
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

How does God want to use you to have an impact?

Most of us don't want to spend our lives being time-wasters, space-takers, binge-watchers, or game-players. We want to be difference-makers. But how do we do it?

By revealing the way Jesus valued people, bestselling author Kyle Idleman shows us the Jesus way of changing the world--by loving people one at a time.

Influencing just one person at a time may seem insignificant at first look. But as we better understand the surprising habits of Jesus, we unlock the power of small things done with great love and discover how God wants to use us to change the world one person at a time.

Part 1: Loving One at a Time

one
Zoom Lens

YOU KNOW HOW SOME MOVIES have a pivotal moment where the whole story changes or a dramatic plot point is revealed? The camera zooms in, and everything else fades into the background because, in that moment, nothing else matters. Let me tell you about one of those moments in my life.

My wife, DesiRae, greeted me at the door when I came home from work. She told me Morgan, our two-year-old, was still napping if I wanted to go wake her up.

I loved that job. I was always excited for the sweet moment.

I walked to Morgan’s room, opened the door—and saw the chest of drawers had fallen over and was lying in the middle of the room. It took me a moment before I realized in a panic . . . my daughter is underneath that dresser!

Time stopped. Everything else in my life—all of my concerns, my agenda, my goals—blurred out and disappeared. The only thing that mattered was Morgan.

In that moment I experienced something I never had before. My father-love turned to panicked terror because my daughter’s life was in danger.

I frantically went over and lifted the heavy pine dresser. I threw the drawers off of her. She lay there motionless. I yelled for my wife as I dropped to my knees beside Morgan’s still body and examined her. My daughter was breathing but was not conscious. Her entire body was swollen and discolored. Morgan did not look like Morgan.

I called 911. That was, in fact, the first time I ever dialed those numbers.

No one answered. It rang and rang and rang. Did I have the wrong number? I hung up and dialed again. No one answered. Doesn’t someone always answer 911 calls? I yelled into the phone as it kept ringing.

DesiRae held Morgan as we ran out to the car. The two of them got in the back seat and I began to speed out of the neighborhood and head to the hospital.

I opened my phone and tried 911 one more time. It just kept ringing. Morgan needed help, but the people who were supposed to help weren’t available. I was furious.

I threw my phone onto the passenger’s seat and yelled what I wanted to yell at someone on the other end of the line, “Can someone please help my daughter?!”

The Way of Jesus

I recently googled “most impactful people in history,” and it turns out Time magazine has ranked them.

Number one? Jesus.

I’m not surprised. Even people who deny that Jesus is Savior or Lord can’t deny his influence has swept through history and radically changed the world. You can’t even write down today’s date without acknowledging that all of history is divided into the time leading up to the birth of Christ and the time since.

When I looked at that list in Time that acknowledged no one has had a bigger impact than Jesus, I asked myself, How did he do it? I decided to take an afternoon and reread the Gospels with that question in mind. Here’s the conclusion I came to:

One at a time.

That’s it. That’s the secret of the way of Jesus. We are going to see that Jesus did life with a zoom lens. When someone stood in front of him, time stopped. Everything else in his life—all his concerns, his agenda, his plans, his goals—seemed to blur and disappear. The only thing that mattered was the person standing in front of him. Jesus changed the world one person at a time.

After forty-some years of life and twenty-some years of ministry, I’ve come to the conclusion that Jesus’s way of changing the world doesn’t come very naturally for me because I’m not great with people. For a long time, I thought that was just the way I was wired, and I chalked it up to my personality. It must just be that Jesus and I didn’t share the same Enneagram number.*

People who write books about connecting with people are usually superstars at connecting with people. Me? That’s probably not how you would describe me. I’m not bad at it, but I’m better at sitting in a room by myself, working on my computer by myself, occasionally looking out the window by myself, and getting coffee . . . by myself.†

It’s not that I’m a flaming introvert. I usually test on the more extroverted side of the scale. I really do love people and care about connecting with others. I’ve just never felt like I’m especially good at it. Like Michael Scott as a boss, I’m trying hard but I’m not nearly as impressive as I pretend to be.

Maybe a better analogy is basketball. I love basketball, I’m just no Michael Jordan. And when I say, “I’m no Michael Jordan,” I’m not referring to the NBA Hall of Famer; I’m talking about the Michael Jordan who is an American researcher in artificial intelligence.‡ I feel confident even that Michael Jordan is a better basketball player than me.

My point is that we can care about something without necessarily being good at it, and that’s how I’ve often felt when it comes to people. I care about them; I’m just not naturally good with them.

My struggle to connect with people has weighed on me for as long as I can remember. I developed a two-pronged strategy for dealing with my lack of people skills:

1. Avoid it.
2. Fake it.

I’d do my best to avoid social settings where I knew I’d feel awkward trying to connect with people. Not to brag, but I was good at avoiding people whom I thought might make me uncomfortable. For example, if I had to walk through a crowded room, I’d pull out my phone and have an imaginary conversation. With no one else on the line I’d be intensely listening, nodding my head, and doing my best to avoid eye contact with the real people around me.

When people couldn’t be avoided, I would fake it, pretending to be a character who’s really good at connecting with people. I prepared for social settings by thinking of myself as a charismatic actor§ who needed to get into character. I had close friends with incredible people skills, and sometimes I’d do my best impression of them.

Unfortunately, that approach felt insincere, mostly because it was. I was pretending to be someone I wasn’t. I’m pretty sure that’s not what Jesus did. Besides that, faking it is exhausting. Pretending to be a magnetic people person wasn’t sustainable. It left me feeling emotionally drained and easily annoyed by people with whom I wanted to connect.

Then it happened. “Then” was 2003. “It” was a new job as a pastor at a huge church. Before working at that church, I had started a new church in Los Angeles County and knew pretty much everybody in it. But I now found myself in a new place with new faces, and I was having a hard time adjusting to all the people.

I felt uncomfortable with the huge crowds. Crowds isn’t a good word for a pastor to use when describing the people who come to church. That’s a red flag. But that’s how I felt. It was a large group of unidentified people. And don’t tell them I told you this, but I started to find them to be, well, annoying. I felt irritated by the people I was supposed to love. That’s a big problem if you’re a pastor.

I knew something was wrong in my heart. I knew God had called me to love and care for his sons and daughters, but I was intentionally not answering the phone. Now, not only was I feeling insecure and anxious about connecting with people, I was also struggling with guilt and shame for feeling that way.

One morning I got to church early and sat in the empty sanctuary and prayed about it. I like to sit in the sanctuary by myself to talk to God and do my devotions. I told God how much I loved people, but I felt like I didn’t know how to love people.

Crowds to the One

Then, as I sat in that empty sanctuary, I turned to my devotion for that day. It was from Luke 8.

“Now when Jesus returned, a crowd welcomed him, for they were all expecting him” (v. 40). Ugh. Sorry, Jesus. I know that feeling. A crowd of people with expectations.

“Then a man named Jairus, a synagogue leader, came and fell at Jesus’ feet, pleading with him to come to his house because his only daughter, a girl of about twelve, was dying” (vv. 41–42).

This father desperately needed help for his daughter. I knew that feeling too. No doubt by this point that father had called everyone he could think of, asking for help, but no one was answering his 911 calls. But he still hadn’t given up. A good father never does.

As I was reading my devotion and thinking about this father, suddenly it hit me. The crowds. What happened to the crowds? I almost forgot about them as I read about this distraught father. The crowds were still there. Jesus was still surrounded by people, but when Jairus stepped in front of Jesus, he became the sole focus of the story, because Jesus’s zoom lens was focused only on him.

Jesus agrees to go with Jairus, but then we read, “As Jesus was on his way, the crowds almost crushed him” (v. 42).

There they were again, the crowds. Reading it, I could almost feel my anxiety rising as I thought about crushing crowds. So many people with so many expectations. But then Luke tells us that in the crowd,

a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years, but no one could heal her. She came up behind him and touched the edge of his cloak, and immediately her bleeding stopped.

“Who touched me?” Jesus asked.

When they all denied it, Peter said, “Master, the people are crowding and pressing against you.” (vv. 43–45)

Mark also tells this story and lets us know the disciples asked Jesus in disbelief, “You see the people crowding against you . . . and yet you can ask, ‘Who touched me?’” (Mark 5:31). With such a big crowd, how could he possibly focus in on just one person?

“But Jesus said, ‘Someone touched me; I know that power has gone out from me’” (Luke 8:46).

Yes, there was a big crowd, but that’s not what Jesus was focused on. The number that mattered to Jesus was the number one. It’s like taking a picture on your phone of someone standing in a crowd. You put your camera in portrait mode and watch the screen until you spot the person you’re looking for, and then zoom in and let the camera focus. In that moment everything else begins to blur and fade into the background. When Jesus was surrounded by the crowds, he had a way of zooming in and focusing on the one.

It’s the next verse that changed everything for me. When I read it, I instantly knew it was the secret to Jesus’s way of making a difference.

“Then the woman, seeing that she could not go unnoticed . . .” (v. 47).

There was a gigantic group of unidentified people, but she realized Jesus wouldn’t let her go unnoticed—not even if she tried. Surrounded by the crushing crowd, she knew the eyes of Jesus wouldn’t let her go unseen.

It was like the words came off the page and slapped me in the face. I wasn’t just convicted. I was wrecked. God was speaking to me. I realized he called me—he has called each of us who follow Jesus—to make sure that no one goes unnoticed.

In a crowd, where is the one who must not go unnoticed? Jesus loves everyone in the crowd, but the way he loves them is one at a time.

In the days to come, I started seeing this on almost every page of the Gospels. Jesus was constantly zooming in on one person at a time.

Jesus goes into Jericho, and people pack the sides of the streets to get a glimpse of him like it’s the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, but Jesus focuses on just one person: Zacchaeus (see Luke 19:1–10).

Jesus comes down from a mountain and “large crowds followed him,” but a leper shows up, Jesus zooms in, and everyone else is cropped out of the picture (see Matt. 8:1–4).

Jesus goes to a place where a “great number of disabled people used to lie”—there were l...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsements
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part 1: Loving One at a Time
• Part 2: Living One at a Time
• Conclusion
• Notes
• About the Author
• Back Ads
• Back Cover