HOW TO MAKE DISCIPLES: PART 2 - The Solution

Now that we’ve defined the problem with discipleship in the church today, let’s think about how to actually make disciples in obedience to Jesus.

First of all, if being a disciple is actually just being a Christian, then discipleship isn’t something you can learn in a class or a course of study that you’ll graduate from after you go through the workbook. It’s not a program, it’s a life that must be lived.

Discipleship to Jesus is simply following Him daily. So, obviously, you’ll have to start with knowing what it was that Jesus taught. That means reading the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and/or John. It means taking the words of Jesus seriously. It means trusting Him daily to teach you Himself about how to love and forgive and serve and everything else.

So, if we hope to make disciples as Jesus commanded, then we first must become followers of Jesus ourselves. Then we can help others learn how to follow Jesus too.

The next thing we must learn to do, and then learn to teach others how to do, is to listen for the voice of Jesus in our daily life. This means spending time in prayer, and not just talking to God about what we want or need, but also listening for His voice. Jesus said that his sheep could hear his voice. If we are his sheep we will hear his voice and over time we will learn to discern what he is saying to us.

Discipleship is a long process. It will take you the rest of your life. You will not graduate from discipleship training, ever. Discipleship is your life in Christ which starts today and carries on into eternity.

Most importantly, do not ask people to follow you. Instead, teach them to follow Jesus. You can't save anyone, nor are you capable of changing their hearts, or leading them where Jesus wants to take them. Neil Cole shared an insightful testimony of his days as a young lifeguard here in California. He said he learned not to try to save drowning people himself. If you let them cling to you then you'll both drown. Instead, he learned to hand them the life preserver ring and stay at arms length away from them. Eventually they would stop struggling and allow the life ring to keep them afloat. Then you could pull them safely to shore. Teaching people to cling to Jesus for life is no different. If you let them cling to you, they will become dependent on you. If you let them cling to Jesus, they'll thrive.

As you might guess, this isn’t something you accomplish through a class. It’s something you accomplish by walking alongside Jesus daily, and if you hope to disciple others, then you must be willing to walk alongside those people for the long haul, too. This means being there for them when they have questions, or face challenges, or make mistakes, or when they learn from their mistakes or get it right and need someone to share the joy. But, again, make sure to show them how to depend on Jesus, and not on you.

Truthfully, this is better accomplished in community. In other words, the church family should all work together to encourage the new disciples whenever they gather. They should also disciple one another as often as possible. Why? Because we all need to be discipled. We all need encouragement when we feel weak. We all need comfort when we screw up. We all need wisdom when we are confused about what to do next. We all need one another, and we all need to continually refer one another back to Jesus.

That’s one of the main functions of the ekklesia – to make, inspire, encourage, and train disciples to cling to Jesus.  It’s often expressed as the “one anothers” in the New Testament.

Belief alone is not enough. Demons believe. But disciples obey, and trust, and love Jesus with all of their heart and they daily take up their cross to follow Him into the Kingdom way of life.

So, what are you waiting for? Start following Jesus today, and help others to follow Him as well. That’s called making disciples. It couldn’t be more simple than that.

-kg

"There is absolutely nothing in what Jesus himself or his early followers taught that suggests you can decide just to enjoy forgiveness at Jesus' expense and have nothing more to do with him."  - Dallas Willard ("The Divine Conspiracy")

HOW TO MAKE DISCIPLES: Part 1 – The Problem

Discipleship is a mystery to some Christians in the church today, but what’s even more confounding is the idea that being a Christian and deciding to become a disciple should be viewed as two separate things.

In other words, a disciple is a Christian and if you’re a Christian then you are already a disciple. As it says in Acts 11:26: “The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch.”

So, according to the New Testament, disciples are Christians. In fact, the default mode for all of those who follow Christ is classified as “disciple”, which just means “follower”.

If this is so, then how is it possible that Christians wouldn’t understand how to “go into all the world and make disciples, teaching them to obey all that (Jesus) commanded”? It would seem that anyone who is a disciple should understand intuitively how to go and make others who are just like them, at least in terms of faith and practice.

Nevertheless, the fact remains that many Christians still don’t have any clue how to “make disciples”. How can this be?

I believe the main reason for this phenomenon is simple; Christians are largely concerned with making converts. In other words, it starts with the way we understand (or misunderstand) the Gospel and then flows into the way we evangelize.

Most Christians today understand the Gospel as simply saying a prayer so that you can go to heaven when you die. This isn’t the Gospel. It is a simplistic element of the larger doctrine of the Atonement, but it’s not the Gospel. The same problem would arise for example if we were to confuse the Gospel with the doctrine of the Incarnation, or any other doctrine. It’s not that those other doctrines are wrong, they’re not. It’s that we’ve mislabeled the Gospel message that Jesus came and died to preach and thereby lost the point of making disciples.

So, because we’ve misunderstood the Gospel as saying a prayer so we can avoid hell, our method of evangelism has involved asking people if they want a ticket out of damnation and handing it to them by getting them to repeat a prayer of salvation with their eyes closed or by raising their hand when no one is looking as if they are voting for their own eternal security.

Because of this unbiblical practice, there are thousands (perhaps millions) of people who have “prayed the prayer” and who consider themselves Christians although none of them have never made any decision to follow Jesus. This is quite sad.

See, Jesus would not consider someone a Christian if they did not decide to follow Him. Believing in him (whatever that means) is not enough if you do not continue onward to obey the teachings of Jesus.

As Jesus himself said:

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’” (Matthew 7:21-23)

“And why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord’, and do not do the things I say?” (Luke 6:46)

“Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.” (Matt. 7:24-27)

"If you love me, you will obey what I command." (John 14:15)

"You are my friends if you do what I command"- (John 15:14)

"Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me." - (John 14:21)

I could go on and on. But I think you get the point. Jesus came and preached the Gospel (or “Good News”) of the Kingdom which was simply that the Kingdom of God had come to Earth and that by following Jesus you could enter this Kingdom here and now. This is why Jesus’ invitation was to “follow me” and those who did so were called “Disciples”.

If we continue to preach a message that only asks people to vote on their preferences for heaven or hell, then we will continue to fail our Lord Jesus when He commands us to “go and make disciples”.

How then should we evangelize? We should ask people if they are interested in following Jesus today. Why? Because Jesus is awesome. He is glorious. He is the only source of true, abundant life, peace and joy. Nothing else even comes close.

So, instead of asking people “If you were to die tonight would you be in heaven tomorrow?” we should ask, “If you were alive tomorrow, who would you follow and how would you live your life?”

Our invitation should be to ask people if they want to follow Jesus daily, the same way that we are trying to follow Him. If we’re not following Jesus daily, we will certainly have no idea how to teach others to do so.

-kg

"A notable heresy has come into being throughout evangelical Christian circles; the widely—accepted concept that we humans can choose to accept Christ only because we need Him as Savior and that we have the right to postpone our obedience to Him as Lord as long as we want to...salvation apart from obedience is unknown in the sacred scriptures." - A.W. Tozer.