Discipleship: What is it and whose job is it?
You could be in a room with ten Christians who are standing at appropriate physical distance from each other and get about 14 different answers to this question! So I can’t believe I am even attempting this article. But what I will do is give my perspective of discipleship based on 33 years of following Christ and on what I perceive scripture is saying.
I’ll start by noting it’s no wonder there are so many different ideas on what discipleship is and what it means to disciple someone. The word ‘discipleship’ doesn’t actually appear in the scriptures, and we use the English word ‘discipeleship’ in at least three different ways.
It can mean my own pattern of following Jesus and trusting him and learning from him.
It can also be helping others to make a commitment to follow Jesus — we do have a verb for this in New Testament Greek: mathēteuō, to make disciples. This word can mean to preach the gospel so that people choose to follow Christ and become Christians (and thus, disciples). For example, Acts 14:21 says, ‘When they had preached the gospel to that city and made many disciples, they returned to Lystra and to Iconium’.
Discipleship can also be helping others in the lifetime process of learning the ways of Jesus. We find this sense of making disciples in Matthew 28:19–20: ‘Go therefore and make disciples’. Jesus explains further what that means: ‘baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you‘.
For the purpose of this article, I have decided to start from this third standpoint.
Discipleship is a very long process. It is a lifetime process that spans from leading a person to a point where they choose to follow Jesus, through baptism to spending a lifetime teaching them to obey all that Jesus said.
Discipleship is not a one-off programme or even a series of programmes that you or your church runs. The church has a history of doing this and sometimes it has tended to make a particular part of being a follower of Christ more of a focus than others. The result of this is people who are not fully discipled. They become strong in love of their neighbour, or social justice, or intentional community, for example. All of which are good things and a part of a fully rounded disciple, but when the focus is predominantly on one aspect, it creates an imbalance and does not fulfil the scripture in Matthew 28 that we read earlier.
To me, discipleship is being involved in the life of another; you journey together and the example of how you live your life as a follower of Christ teaches them the way to be a follower of Christ. You are the teacher and they are the disciple. Now I imagine some people are saying, ‘I don’t want to have that responsibility. I need someone to disciple me first’. Well you are right (yes, you do need discipling yourself), and you are wrong (I suggest you can also be discipling someone else). We should all simultaneously be a disciple and be discipling others.
Discipling is not the job of just one person alone, or of a specific person in the church. In fact, the discipleship of a person is the responsibility of the whole Christian Community — the responsibility of the church. That means all of us have to take it seriously and we can’t just expect someone else to do it.
Parenting is an example of discipling. From the moment my child is born my job amongst many others is to disciple them. This means that my children should witness and take part in my journey as a follower of Jesus Christ. The only time we should exclude them from the journey is if it is emotionally harmful to them. If we are praying for others, then they should be present to witness it, and as they grow they can participate in it. We shouldn’t compartmentalise areas of discipleship and only allow people to experience certain parts when they reach a certain age. As a parent I am discipling my child as they grow. They get to see the good with the bad and during our lockdown they get to see how our faith journey copes with stress, anxiety and uncertainty. The children’s worker and the youth worker also have an input into the discipleship of my child, as do other significant followers of Christ whom they meet and journey with throughout their lives. To disciple someone takes a whole community. Some people will have a daily input, others weekly, others monthly and some just on the very odd occasion. Whether we like it or not during this time of COVID-19 they may be getting input from online that we don’t know anything about or have much control over. But all of that input in the end helps to make a fully rounded disciple who is continually learning, and growing, and discipling others.
Perhaps the biggest excuse given for poor discipleship within a church community is lack of time and resources. Well, I want to challenge us all and say that is not acceptable. Jesus had 12 disciples and from my experience I think this is achievable for us too. Jesus had the three that he put more time into and that is a good rule to follow. We too will have some people we input into, some on a daily basis, others maybe weekly and yet others just occasionally. During this time of restrictions it is even more important for us to be focused on a few and find ways to connect and not just use it as an excuse to just do big group online connections.
I have been thinking a lot about the scripture that states you can’t put new wine into an old wine skin. It’s been interesting to discover that, on the other hand, you can put old wine into a new wine skin. In fact some wine makers deliberately add some old wine to the new wine to help it to mature and become full-bodied. To me, that is a picture of discipleship, the new believer is a new creation and has to mature and other Christians are the old wine that can be added to help them mature and reach a rich full bodied taste.
So what is discipleship? It is sharing your life as a follower of Christ with another to help them to become more like Christ. Whose job is it? Well that’s simple it is the job of anyone who has chosen to follow Christ. It is a lifestyle, and it happens throughout our whole life. It’s not a programme or a series of sermons, or even something you study at your life group. All those things are a small part of it. Really, I think we need to realise that it is the input of a whole Christian community into the lives of all those who are part of their community. That means we have to be a community that is involved in each other’s lives more than just once or twice a week. As churches find new ways to worship together and do church together here is a great opportunity to give many people an opportunity to be involved. That involvement and the interaction that comes from it will help to grow them as disciples and for them to input into the discipleship of others.
What, may I ask, is more important than being discipled and discipling others? I think nothing, because if we all do this then we will create a community that stands out from the rest of the world, and our lives in themselves preach the gospel of Jesus Christ to a lost and hurting world.