INTRODUCTION

I do a lot of talking on this sub about the mission to make disciples, but I have yet actually to explain what I mean when I say that. As you probably know by now, I firmly believe that a person cannot be satisfied on this earth - sexually, relationally, spiritually, monetarily, etc. - if he is not living out the reason for which he was put here. 404's Circles Illustration should illustrate this and the temporal nature of the satisfaction we find in the things of this world.

But it's not just about emotional stability and internal satisfaction in Christ that makes us godly men. It is the fact that we live on mission. It is that we have a purpose that matters and we can call others to join alongside us. For 7 years, including my dead bedroom, I did not understand why my wife was so unhappy when I was doing all I could to please her. It was only after I stopped trying to please her and invited her along a mission outside the home that our relationship started getting back on track.

Just as I could not be satisfied in Christ without living out my purpose in Christ to make disciples, she could not be satisfied in me without living out her purpose to be a helper to me. When I had no purpose, she could not help. Or when my purpose was something lame, like making money and having a cush life, she knew that her help toward me was (1) really a pursuit of her own selfish interests and not my mission, and (2) a vain pursuit that rendered her position as my helper meaningless and fruitless. There is no satisfaction in that or any joy in following a leader who lives like that.


WHAT IS DISCIPLESHIP?

Most people want to use dictionary definitions. "A disciple is a follower." "Discipleship is anything that helps people follow Jesus." With these types of generalities, we see churches assume that Sunday morning sermons are "discipleship" because it gives people something to follow. But this is not what Jesus modeled. Jesus did model preaching, but that's not what he meant when he called the 12 his disciples and invited them into something more.

My definition is based on a look at what Jesus did with the 12, which they then modeled with others: Purposeful, intentional relationships that provide a model for someone to become more like Christ in spirit and purpose. Let's break that down.

  • Purposeful: It's not just "let's just hang and whatever happens will happen." You go in with an agenda, just like Jesus had an agenda when training his 12. Having an agenda does not undermine the integrity of the relationship; it only directs it.

  • Intentional: No learning by osmosis or passive expectation. You have a plan. You might deviate from that plan frequently, but you know that on the whole the relationship should be moving from point A to point B, and if it's not you know how to start it in that direction again.

  • Relationships: This isn't just some student-teacher session. It is a bond of love and koinonia oneness that you're trying to foster. Like Elijah to Elisha, the person you're working with should be longing for a portion of your spirit to be left behind with him, just as Jesus gave us his. This only happens from an intense depth of love for one another.

  • Model: There's no room for "do as I say, not as I do." People don't follow hypocrites. The discipler must live out what he preaches and show the disciple what it looks like. In Matthew 10:24 Jesus makes it clear that you can't lead someone farther than you are yourself. See also 208 for more info on this.

  • Christlike: The goal of any man - or any Christian in general - should be to live as Christ would live in our shoes. Contextually things change, but we want to be transformed into the image of Christ.

  • In Spirit: That our internal character would reflect Christ and take after his image.

  • In Purpose: That our purpose for living and all of our actions would be oriented around the same goal Jesus modeled for us: reaching the nations with the Gospel through spiritual generations of disciplers living and laboring among the lost.


THE PATH

Here it is. This is what I use to gauge: (1) where a person is on their spiritual journey, and (2) what needs to happen to take them the next step forward.

Non-Christian

The Bible is clear that we're all born into sin and start here. No one is excluded. No one is born saved. As much as we'd like to say otherwise, we cannot save anyone. Only Jesus can save a person, which happens through the drawing influence of the Holy Spirit. Non-Christians need the Holy Spirit. But the Bible is also clear that the Spirit works through the existing body of believers. That's you. You must work together alongside the Spirit, who will use your effort to reach the non-Christian.

This "effort" is called evangelism, which is a systematic (albeit sometimes unintentionally so) and sometimes organic process for leading someone into a relationship with Christ who is not otherwise already in such a relationship. This process typically starts with building a relationship or rapport with the non-believer and leveraging that trust for the sake of the Gospel by verbally communicating Christ with a non-believer at some point.

Convert

This is someone who is freshly saved and often hungry to grow and learn. In the absence of spiritual leadership, the convert becomes complacent and either remains as a convert or back-pedals away from the faith altogether (or in the Calvinist view, was never really a true convert to begin with). Most Christians never advance past the convert stage.

The spiritual leader's job is to establish the convert in disciplines by which he can continue growing in his faith indefinitely without the need for indefinite spiritual leadership, just as a parent's job is to raise their kids such that they can survive on their own as adults without their parents' indefinite provision. Those disciplines have already been covered in 301-308 as the 7 basics, but I leave room for tweaking and adjustment. Again, this "path" is not a step-by-step GPS directive; it's an atlas with countless roads that will get from point A to point B. Some paths will be more efficient than others, but sometimes it's fun to take detours along the way at the expense of efficiency.

Disciple

The disciple is self-sustaining. You could throw him in the middle of a third-world country where Christians are being persecuted with no church in sight and he'd still be practicing and growing in his faith. He knows how to read the Word, pray, share his faith, etc. But he lacks a vision for his role in the greater work that God is doing. That vision is the ministry of discipleship that Jesus started, which when caught will enable him to see this process as a whole, where he fits in it, where others are in this process, and he will have the internal compulsion to help people move forward, including himself.

In order to aid him in this process, he must be equipped with several tools to help him. Those tools might be additional disciplines beyond the basics. It might be theological understanding. It might be a strong familiarity with the Word. It could be practical life skills, like charisma, passion, humility, etc. It could be practical things in one's life that help him connect with others, like his good looks, having a respectable family, house, and car, etc. All of these tools can usually be summarized in three categories: things that foster (1) relationship-building, (2) ministry skills and understanding, and (3) character development.

Worker/Discipler

Where the disciple is self-sustaining, the discipler is others-sustaining. He is no longer pursuing his own spiritual growth; he takes on responsibility for the spiritual growth of others, through the help of the Spirit and on the authority of Christ. He sees fruit form his ministry in the form of those who are following Jesus today because of his life - not just that they said a prayer or had an emotional experience, but in that they are continuing to live for Christ. The worker should also see that those he influences are not just becoming disciples themselves, but are also becoming workers and leading new generations. If the worker/discipler is only seeing disciples produced and not disicplers, he may actually only be a disciple who needs to re-catch the vision for generational ministry.

His greatest need is accountability. It is not always easy living on mission for Christ, but through the fellowship of other workers and leaders it can be done. At first that accountability will be small because he will have very few people who share his vision. This is because the church is often weak and waters down its concept of discipleship from what Jesus modeled. But as he disciples others, they will become his peers. He will watch as they even surpass him in maturity, and rejoice with their growth, as John said, "I have no greater joy than seeing that my children are walking in the truth."

Leader

The leader is a Worker/Discipler who not only engages in his own personal ministry, but who oversees other workers/disciplers. He helps them organize and coordinate. These might be people he has personally discipled or their disciples, as the generations flowing from his life grow, but it could also be other people he has not discipled who are ready to live on mission for the Gospel in the manner Christ modeled. On the path the worker and leader are vertically aligned with no horizontal progression because there is no inherent spiritual maturity distinction between them. I have known workers more mature than leaders or vice versa, but each hold their position because of the nature and quality of their gifts. That said, all people regardless of their spiritual gifts are called to be at least workers, though only a few will take on the added responsibility of being leaders.

Because of the peer mentality between them and the importance of the koinonia bond of oneness between them, and Paul's compulsion that we be one in "spirit and in purpose," an immense amount of trust must exist between workers and leaders. If the leader has discipled the worker himself, this should be natural. But the balance of relationship and impact (see 103 for more on all this) is met in that when we are of one "spirit" that is our relational bond and when we are of one "purpose" that is toward the impact the Spirit would have us commit on our world through the purpose Christ gave us of disciple-making.


NOTES ON USING THE PATH

  1. Anyone in any phase can lead someone as far as they are. A convert can make more converts. A disciple can make more disciples. A discipler can make more disciplers. A leader can train more leaders.

  2. No one can lead anyone further than they are. A convert cannot train someone to be a disciple or worker or leader. A non-Christian cannot disciple someone. A worker cannot train a leader. This is not only a biblical mandate (reference above), but a practical reality.

  3. People constantly fluctuate forward and backward in this process. I have seen countless workers get lazy and return to "disciple" mode, where they stop reproducing their lives. This is a decline in spiritual maturity - a falling away. I have also seen leaders who step down and focus on their own personal disciple-making ministry rather than trying to coordinate others'. This is not a spiritual maturity falling away, hence the vertical representation on the path.

  4. You can be between two points. These 5 circles are not representative of where someone is; rather they are mile-markers along the journey as a whole. "I'm somewhere between convert and disciple" is a perfectly legitimate place to put yourself or to evaluate someone else in where you believe they are.

  5. Very little of this progression depends on how much you know. I have known workers and leaders who could not articulate the difference between something as theologically front-lined as Calvinism and Arminianism. I have also known people who are PhD level scholars who have never passed the convert stage because they have not mastered the disciples or are not otherwise living for Christ other than their intellectual pursuits. For that matter, I've known non-Christians who have more theological understanding than many workers and leaders.

  6. The primary function of this path is not to label people, but to give an evaluative process for understanding what someone else's next step might be in their journey toward living out the calling Christ gave us to make disciples. The person utilizing this path should become reasonably proficient in evaluating quickly where a person is, as this will assist him in helping that person move forward. This applies even in a contact-ministry sense where you only have a short time with one person.


WHERE TO BEGIN

If you don't know who to disciple, for many of you the answer will be obvious: YOUR WIFE. To be clear, you shouldn't go in with pre-fabricated assumptions about what "discipleship" looks like and try scheduling a weekly session for you to teach her things. For some of you that might work, but for many it won't.

Instead, remember the definition of discipleship: Purposeful, intentional relationships that provide a model for someone to become more like Christ in spirit and purpose. Note that it doesn't mean a weekly meeting session or a time of teaching, nor does it mandate joint prayer together. All of these things might be part of how you, specifically, implement discipleship based on your gifts, personality, and character traits. But they are not necessarily universal principles for all.

What I do recommend is discerning what your specific gifts, personality, and characteristics are, and then leveraging those toward your discipleship efforts. So, if you're a very structured teacher-type, you might want to meet with someone one-on-one in a coffee shop with a pen and paper. If you're a more casual, hospitable person who likes to laugh, it'd probably look more like inviting a friend over for dinner and asking him personal questions during that time. If your gift is one of mercy and you tend to enjoy helping people in difficult times, then you might find most of your discipleship relationships beginning by helping meet a unique need the person you're discipling experiences, and then leveraging that act of mercy and service toward the person's spiritual growth.

So, when starting with your wife, look back at the process image I linked to above and evaluate where you believe she is, then evaluate where you are. If you're behind her in the process, you've got to work on yourself first. If you're ahead of her (as you should be), then look toward what the next step for her might be. If she's part way between convert and disciple, figure out which of the basics she's lacking and final a relationally potent way of leading her into developing that aspect of her faith. If she's not having quiet times, how can you get her to start? If she's never shared her faith with a co-worker, what can you do/say to help lead her in that process, and how can you model that for her to see in your own life so that she can follow you in doing it? If she's already fluent on the basics and a disciple and you've got the vision, how can you impart that to her in a way that she will receive it? In all of this, 205 becomes immensely helpful, as that's going to give you different methods of communicate beyond just a rote teaching session that many of you might otherwise be drawn into based on social stigma of what you think discipleship is supposed to look like.

Whatever context you want to create for discipleship, regardless of how formal or informal it might look, make sure you're remaining conscious of the mile-markers. If you've been discipling someone for a year and you've never had a conversation about their quiet times or prayer life, you're doing something wrong (yes, there are WRONG ways of discipling someone). But if you don't hit those points in the first 2-3 months, depending on the context that might be perfectly appropriate. But if you're meeting with a non-believer, for example, you probably shouldn't be doing much in the way of vision-casting, and if you've got someone who's a new convert, trying to evangelize won't be helpful when he really needs the basics. Again, this isn't a step-by-step GPS coordinate directive; it's an atlas with many different roads to get to the same destination, but you will always cross different longitudinal mile-markers regardless of whether you're in Canda when you cross it or South America.


FINAL THOUGHTS

Because we have already addressed the fundamentals of evangelism and the relational/proclamational paths in 304 I won't rehash that any further, although I do invite further discussion on evangelism as a process itself and how it fits into the greater scheme of discipleship. That's where it all starts, after all.

I also already addressed the 7 basics in great detail in 301-308, and thus will not be re-hasing the establishing process. That said, if there are lingering questions not on what the basics are or why they are important to impart to others, but on how to teach them to other people, that's another conversation that would be worth having, but I won't initiate it without a demand to do so.

Instead, the rest of the 300 series will be focused on the ins and outs of the equipping and entrusting processes. I will have posts offering tools and illustrations to address some of most common issues that arise when people start to catch the vision for disciple-making and want to be all-in.