The Lost Art of Discipleship
Western Evangelicalism, the community I love and belong to, is far from Scriptural Christianity. That will always be the case because there is so much space to grow in every age.
But presently, our obsession with numbers, infatuation with the academy and rank individualism all hinder the great commission of our Lord to make disciples. It is my personal conviction that a reformation in discipleship is among the western church’s greatest needs and this article sets out to explain the what and the why.
What is ‘Discipleship’?
If we had asked the Eleven disciples what Jesus had meant by the command “make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:16-20) they would surely have replied something like this, “Jesus wants us to do for the world what He has just done for us over the last three years.” And what had Jesus done for the Twelve? He had spent many long hours with them in person teaching them by both lip and life his ways. He did not invite them to a Sabbath sermon once a week but lived with them day by day and taught them as they went along. Verbal teaching and living example were entwined in one transformational environment. For example, he taught them to love their enemies by word (Matthew 5:43-48) but also demonstrated it by life; few hated him more than the Pharisees, but he was pleased to eat in the home of one (Luke 7:36) and to speak to another by night (John 3).
We might say that the teaching style of Jesus was less ‘classroom’ and more ‘apprenticeship’ where the student learns by both hearing and observing. This is what discipleship is – teaching another the ways of Christ by both lip and life. When Jesus expounded his discipleship commandment he said “teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” (Matthew 28:20). Not merely teaching them, but teaching them to obey. And if we were to ask how the ‘teaching to obey’ took place in his ministry, surely we’d have to say that it was by life as much as lip.
In this teaching methodology, we should note in passing, Jesus does not over-ride the normal means of influence God has hard wired into the social universe he created in the first place. How does one person influence someone else? By spending a lot of time in the communicating presence of the other. It really is as simple as that, and it works both ways. “Bad company corrupts good character” (1 Corinthians 15:33) and positively “whatever you have learned or received from me, or seen in me – put it into practice.” (Philippians 4:9). The Holy Spirit takes this God-created method of influence and uses it to form Christ in disciples.
Paul’s ministry follows this discipleship pattern. When he arrives in a new town he spends a lot of time with the people teaching them verbally and reinforcing that teaching with an open life among them. So much so that he was able to write to the Thessalonians “You know we lived among you for your sake. You became imitators of us and of the Lord” (1 Thessalonians 1:6) and “we loved you so much, we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well.” (1 Thessalonians 2:8). To the Corinthians he wrote both “Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ.” (1 Corinthians 11:1) and “(Timothy) will remind you of my way of life in Christ Jesus, which agrees with what I teach everywhere in every church.” (1 Corinthians 4:7)
In sum, the discipleship command of Christ is to take a small number of believers on a prayerful journey, spend many long hours with them in our homes, on walks, over meals, teaching them and doing life with them, such that what we teach is observationally reinforced by what we do. Through this life-lip combination we are to pray that they will grow in the likeness, grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ.
We should note one big difference between the discipleship practice of Jesus and ours. Jesus set a perfect example and could therefore disciple the Twelve on his own. But not so us, because no single believer reflects the character of Jesus fully, but a new follower will see something of the beauty of Jesus in a group of existing believers. Surely this is one of the reasons Paul takes a Gospel team around with him. He can point to their lives as well as his own. So Timothy, “I have no-one else like him, who takes a genuine interest in your welfare.” (Philippians 2:20)
The ‘art’ of Discipleship
When we analyse the discipleship method of Jesus we observe the following traits. First, Jesus only admonishes the Twelve on big mistakes and errors. He overlooks, we must assume from the Gospel records, many smaller foibles and weaknesses, but he does not overlook the likes of pride (Mark 9:33-37), prayerlessness (Mark 14:37-38) and faith-lessness (Matthew 8:26). Second, we note that Jesus takes what we might call unshaped men. He does not invite the religiously preformed Pharisees and Sadducees into his band. Why not? Because he would have had to spend thirty years deprogramming them first. Jesus takes unformed men and then intensely disciples them in the first few years of their journey such that the foundations are set for the rest of their lives. We all know the crucial importance of first years. I have a friend who keeps raptors. He has discovered over the years that how a bird is trained in its first months shapes its character for life. As with birds, and as with children, so with disciples: first years are crucial. Many problems pastors face among the sheep arise out of poor discipleship or a lack of discipleship in the first few disproportionally influential years of their walk with Christ.
Thirdly, Jesus spent eons of time with his disciples. Suppose he spent just two hours a day with them, that works out as thousands of hours over the span of a three years. No wonder, “when they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus.” (Acts 4:13) When we ponder why the Gospel seems to be having so little influence in a particular convert’s life, lament how little Jesus Christ is being formed in them, and perhaps beat ourselves up for not praying enough for them or imparting enough doctrine to them, could it simply be that this younger believer has spent too little time in the presence of godly older believers?
Fourthly, Jesus’ teaching style is both formal and informal. Sometimes he has a body of teaching he wants to impart to his disciples and so he sits them down on a mountainside and instructs them. At other times the teaching arises out of an immediate event. What better time to teach folks about humility when they are arguing about who is the greatest? What better time to challenge faith when fear overtakes them? In these informal settings truth is viscerally imparted, imprinted and remembered.
Hindrances to Discipleship
If discipleship is our task, the evangelical world I live in and love presents at least three major hindrances to the calling of every Christian to be a disciple-maker.
First, our obsession with numbers. Jesus invested in twelve men. Humanly speaking, is it really possible for us to meaningfully disciple more than a small handful of people at a time? And yet much in the evangelical world, aping as we often do the secular world, is about numbers. For example, pastors so easily aspire to be like the celebrity pastor-heroes whose churches are large and whose YouTube channels get the most hits. Few dream of shepherding a small flock into deep discipleship.
It is surely a Scriptural rebuke to our hang-up with numbers that apart from the size of the Jerusalem church, a size intended to reveal the supernatural origins of the Church (3000 and then 5000, Acts 2:41 and 4:4), we know nothing about the sizes of the churches in the New Testament: no church is condemned for being small and no church is praised for being large. Our wide-ranging infatuation with big numbers is a hindrance to the art of discipling a few well.
A second hindrance to discipleship is our obsession with the academy, by which I mean the vast influence of the teaching style and ethos of the academy upon the church. In the academy, teaching can be divorced from teacher. What matters is what is being taught, not the life or example of the teacher. Out there in the colleges of the world it does not matter if the teacher is a distant figure, or if their daily life does not line up with their teaching. In the academy mind and doctrine is prized over life and character. What you know is what counts, not your character or your daily life.
Our obsession with the academy is easily discerned with two questions to pastors: What would they most like to be known as, a disciple-maker or a scholar? And who do they admire most, clever pastors or disciple-makers? Deep in our ecclesiastical history we have been more influenced by the big-name Reformers who often came from the ranks of the academy than by the lost Anabaptist reformers who came from the ranks of the ordinary.
For sure, if we think that our task is merely to impart true doctrine at a distance we will never disciple the world.
Lockdown has perhaps exposed to us all the desperate need of the human element in disciple-making, because with only the doctrinal element left in place through online preaching, we have witnessed, have we not, the spiritual decline of some, if not many?
A third hindrance to disciple-making is the radical individualism of western culture which has deeply infected the church. This individualism refuses to take into account the impact of our actions on those around us, including young lambs in the flock. We simply do as we please. A seemingly mature Christian will, as a simple example, miss vital meetings for the poorest of reasons unable or unwilling to acknowledge the impact of their action on a young disciple who is looking up to them as an example.
Needed: A New Reformation
If we are to see this generation transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit into the likeness of Christ, we must forsake the ethos and methods of the academy, our obsession with numbers and the self-centred individualism of our age. We must return to the loving, simple, sacrificial, pure and human ways of our Master. The consequences will be enormous, not only upon those we are commanded to disciple, but upon ourselves too. Why? Because discipleship has a sanctifying effect upon the disciple-maker, whose whole life must be an open book. This fact becomes a spur to personal godliness and Christ-like behaviour.
In this great discipleship task the Lord Jesus has been given all authority and promises to be with us always to the very end of the age.
Photo by Christopher Sardegna on Unsplash
