What is Discipleship?

A Note from Lifeway Girls: Discipleship is a common word used in the Christian culture, yet many Christians aren’t engaging in the actual act of discipleship. However, as leaders and as parents, discipleship isn’t something that we can stray from, no matter the excuse. It’s a command from Jesus Himself. But, don’t grow weary. It’s not something that He has made into a complicated, religious task to complete. As we will see today, Jesus was gracious to be clear in His command and to provide life-giving examples for us to follow.

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My job is training college aged students to lead small groups on their campus or in their workplace.  At the end of each training we commission this group of students by reminding them where they have been, where they are, and where they are going in their journey as a disciple maker.  To begin, they write a letter to someone who discipled them, a mentor, small group leader, youth pastor, coach, or parent who saw them and went deeper, training and speaking life into them to shape them into who they are.  It is in this moment, when I stand in front of a room and watch as 10-30 college aged students take pen to paper addressing this person, that the weight of discipleship hits me the deepest—this necessary, Biblical, part of life which is so complex yet simple, so messy yet beautiful, and so demanding yet so rewarding.

Discipleship is a commandment. Never in the list of spiritual gifts do we see the word discipleship listed, nor is “discipler” described as a defined role in the church.  Rather, making disciples is the call Jesus gives to all believers in the Great Commission.

• Go! 
  • Just as Jesus found these eleven men as they were working and called them to follow, He tells these eleven men to go.  Do not just stare at the sky knowing what Jesus has taught you. Leave from the spot of your amazement and go!
    
    
• Make Disciples
  • This command needed no further explanation to the eleven staring into the face of Jesus before He ascended into Heaven.  I imagine them standing there staring at Him with their mouths wide open in amazement thinking they have reached the grand finale of their journey of faithfulness and following Jesus.  Yet in this moment they learn their journey has just barely begun. It is now their job to do what Jesus did for them. To lead, to love, to serve, to pray, to have faith when no one else does, to go after the least of these, to speak up against injustice, to preserve the purity of the Church, to mourn with those who mourn, to weep with those who weep, and to follow God’s call no matter the cost.  While the disciples had a unique proximity to the life and ministry of Jesus, the Messiah in the flesh here on this earth, we have a very similar task to those mouth wide open eleven men- to show others what Jesus has shown us. To love because He first loved us. 
    
    
• Of All Nations
  • This naming of their demographic was still groundbreaking for this group of men.  The Jewish people had regularly been at war or in bondage to those of other nationalities in surrounding nations.  We see this in the New Testament as the disciples question Jesus for sitting with a Samaritan woman and Paul going into great detail to work against the separation of Jew and Gentile.  Christ exhorts these 11 not to keep what they have experienced and therefore the effects of their ministry to those who they travel with and who look like them, but to the literal ends of the earth.  I have been challenged in my discipleship to heed this wisdom, that the gospel is so much bigger than the middle class white girl who looks like me and the love of Jesus is big enough to show someone with a very different life what Jesus has done for me.  When I sit across the table from people who are different than me and they see the Gospel with a totally different set of eyes, I am pushed to see God in bigger and more beautiful ways.
    
    
• Teaching Them All that I Have Commanded You
  • If I am honest, should I be given permission (which I never should be) to take a red pen to the Bible I would change this.  Not because it’s wrong, because Scripture NEVER IS, but because it’s hard. Sometimes I wish I could read “teaching them just how much I love them” or “teaching them how sweet it is to trust in Jesus.” But that is not my calling. And sometimes I wonder if this is the part of the Great Commission today’s Church is overlooking because this is challenging. Teaching ALL that Jesus commands is hard. It calls for my full self to come into question and to know that in my lack of holiness and my shortcomings of His calling of perfection and holiness that I am to teach others.  
    
    
• Baptizing Them in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit
  • I baptized someone for the first time in my life last year and it was a great honor and one that laid heavy on my heart. She made a bold statement to her family and friends that she was following Jesus. When we make disciples we are not called to teach them simply so they know. We are not even called to teach them so they become ministers. Rather, we are called to make disciples and teach them them to be baptized, so they may claim to the world that they have died to their sin and been raised to a new life in Christ. This sign serves to show they are the Lord’s and begins their public ministry as a part of the Church and an example to the world just as it did in the life of Jesus.  

While these bullet points of the Great Commission create some framework for Discipleship, rarely are we given a very clear picture of what it looks like to make disciples.  I often explain we struggle to feel like we know what to do or fully understand when studying Scripture, because our Western minds look for linear logic in a circular culture.  However, the Bible offers clear insights and parameters into discipleship, and most of all, it offer stories.

• Eli discipling Samuel.
• Samuel discipling David.
• David discipling Solomon.
• Deborah discipling Barak.
• Jethro discipling Moses.
• Moses discipling Joshua.
• Naomi discipling Ruth.
• Joseph discipling the baker in prison.
• Jesus discipling Peter, James, John, Matthew, James, Judas, Phillip, Simon, Thomas, Bartholomew, Andrew, Matthias, James son of Alphaeus, Mary Magdalene, the Samaritan Women, Nicodemus, Zaccheus, and more.
• Paul discipling Timothy.

Within these stories we find discipleship taking many different forms whether training a priest, anointing a king, motioning a military leader to battle, telling a leader boundaries he needed to put in place, enduring grief with one another, explaining the truth of who God is in a desolate place, or calling fishers and tax collectors to form a Church after following Jesus.

These different forms define discipleship best, in my opinion, that discipling well often means wearing many hats. Personally, I have found myself in discipleship as a mother, a teacher, a counselor, a friend, a job reference, a meal provider, a hand holder, an advocate, and many more. Discipleship is simply the process of walking through life intentionally. It is sharing what Jesus has first done for us and making His Word applicable to the girl we disciple—which takes knowing her world and her needs—and then intentionality building the trust to call her to more.

As I stand in front of those students completing a training, I finish each commissioning service and explain that as they go and make disciples now as a college-aged student and ideally for the rest of their life, I know one day someone will sit in a room and be asked to write a letter to someone who discipled them and their name will be at the top of the page.