There are two ways to make a wild horse ready to take a rider.

You can break the animal's spirit, or you can tame it gently. Breaking the animal's spirit often involves tying the animal to an immobile object until its struggles cease and/or throwing a saddle on its back and fighting with the animal until it submits. The gentler methods involve spending time with the animal to build trust and relationship.

How like the training of horses is the training of disciples. Many times, ministries try to win disciples by breaking them. They do what they can to force people to go to events, or they throw a saddle of intense pressure onto the wild soul and make contest until the wild soul submits. But horses and disciples broken in this manner may or may not remain tame when the intensity of the training subsides. They may, at the first chance, leap over the fence and run away.

It is better to train disciples, as well as horses, by taking the time to build a relationship. Disciples with a relationship to a congregation, like horses with relationships to their owners, will be more likely to go out and come in without trying to escape. Since they have a bond with the congregation, they will return to it when they go out to the fields.

Ministries should be mindful of this.

Most people, like wild horses, grow skittish when accosted by strangers. They become defensive and put up resistance when someone tries to approach quickly and put a bridle on them, when someone approaches quickly and tries to get them to go to a class or a worship service without even checking to see what their status is.

It is important to take time to build relationship and trust. Only when the horse or the disciple is made aware that the trainer is concerned with their perceived needs does the wild one have anny reason to follow by choice.

Ministries intent on creating disciples, as the Lord commands, should not go out and invite strangers to Bible studies. Instead, they should go out among people, take time to get to know them, and then tell them about Jesus. Jesus is able to meet all of our needs, but until we get to know a man, we have no way to tell him what Jesus does to address his perceived needs, because we can't know someone's perceived needs until we've talked to him and listened to what he has to say. Nobody wants to be a tally mark, so ministries shouldn't invite people to go to their event or join their church on the first meeting.

Granted, some ministries only get one shot, but that doesn't change this. Paul pointed out that some plant, some water, and some reap. The modern Church universal needs to understand this concept of incremental ministry. One cannot build a city in a day. Neither can anyone build a disciple in one day. Minstry will get much further with people if it treats them as people instead of as numbers.