What Discipleship Means

Here is another paper I wrote on discipleship about 5 years ago. Reading back through these have been good for me.

I was a little apprehensive to taking this course. I thought that it would be a good course to refresh my skills of studying with and though that it would be a fluff class. I found out however this was far from the truth. This course really forced me to think about how I view discipleship. It has helped me to view discipleship instead of as a program but as a lifelong process. There are so many things I learned and many things that were review for me in this course.

I learned that as Adsit says, “A disciple is a person-in-process who is eager to learn and apply the truths that Jesus Christ teaches him, which will result in ever-deepening commitments to a Christ-like lifestyle.” I used to think that once you became born again that you were automatically a disciple. A disciple is someone who follows, goes after, and or imitates a person or groups lifestyle. To simply become born again does not make you a disciple but it makes you a child of God. In Philippians 1:20 Paul says, “For I live in eager expectation and hope that I will never do anything that causes me shame, but that I will always be bold for Christ, as I have been in the past, and that my life will always honor Christ, whether I live or I die.” [NLT] This is what I think that all disciples should look like as an end product of discipleship. To be able to bring honor to Christ whether we live or die.

I was reminded that God is in charge of a person’s spiritual growth and not us. What a heavy load that takes off of us. It’s important for us to remember that we aren’t God. We can’t control the outcome of discipleship only God can. This has been helpful to me the past few months as I reflect on failed attempts at discipleship. We had started a study group not too long after the school year started. We started off with 15 eager and willing youth to go through a study. By the fourth week we were down to two, and by the fifth week no one showed up. I often thought that I had failed them and failed God because of the end result of the group. Through taking this course I have come to realize that although these youth had signed up for the study that for many of them it was too tough for them to understand and apply some of the principles and truths in the book. God is in charge of changing people not us.

I was reminded how powerful prayer is. We live in a society where we want everything now not later. We don’t have time for God and the things he wants us to do, but when it’s our agenda we can find all the time in the world. This mindset allowed us last school year to not pray before any of our youth group meetings as leaders. We weren’t uniting with God and asking him to do mighty things as the leadership team. This is something that will be changed through this next year.

It was interesting for me to read through the supplement on selection. It’s something I’ve never really thought of before. I think it is an important principle and it allows us to choose those we disciple knowing that we may connect better with them. However I think at times selection can be a bad thing. When you don’t have enough people to disciple the others how do we go about leaving them un-discipled? This is a question I’m wrestling with. How can we let some people not be discipled through the process of selection? Selection does have a positive quality of allowing us to equip leaders to do the work of God. I think more importantly selection deal with not those we are most comfortable with but those that possess an available nature, submissiveness, faithfulness, the desire to become a discipler, and are teachable and able to teach. Selection isn’t about those we will disciple but those that will be disciplers.

I agree with Adsit on the importance of associations. Associations are really connections with other people. I think building associations revolves around us being in a relational ministry. When we build associations with people we become connected to them. We gain their trust, their respect, and the right to be heard on sensitive issues. When I think of associations I think of my friend Shon. Shon was a good friend of mine from third grade through high school. We did everything together when we were little. When we got in high school I earned the right to be heard through an intense friendship. Shon became open to conversations about God because of our friendship. Later on in our high school years Shon became a Christian through some other key people in his life. It was awesome to see God use each of us in the process. I think without the associations we had built I would not have had the opportunity. Now building associations is a key thing in my ministry.

I also learned a lot about community. Building or fostering community is a huge thing. As our supplement states community is “an essential element of personal spiritual growth is an environment of community for each disciple of Christ.” I learned that community should bring more to the discipleship experience than just a teacher student relationship. Acts 2:41-47 is a great example of what a community should look like. People were becoming Christians and Christian lives were being changed. A community should bring life change into the disciple. Larry Crabb says, “The greatest need in modern civilization is the development of communities- true communities where the heart of God is home, where the humble and wise learn to shepherd those on the path behind them, where trusting strugglers lock arms with others as together they journey on.” Jesus created community with his disciples by being with them. Community is where relational ministry comes into play.

If I were to evaluate my discipleship efforts on a scale of one to ten right now I would give myself a 6. Discipleship is something Satan wants me to fail in. The last thing he wants is more and more people geared up on God’s Word to combat against his lies. I have had some weaknesses in the past on discipleship. I haven’t been as prepared as I should have been. I didn’t stick to the curriculum and we often got off onto other subjects. Then I would become discouraged and apathy would set in. I knew what discipleship was but I didn’t know how to do it. We can know something but if we don’t understand how it works then we can’t be effective in it. We can know Christ but if we aren’t doing everything we can to further that then we won’t get to where we should be in our relationship with him.

I believe that our youth ministry right now is very effective. However it’s got on overly strong evangelism stance to it. This enables us to reach more youth than would be possible if it were a discipleship based ministry. Right now we average 130-140 youth each week in our youth ministry. We have the opportunity each week to reach thirteen percent of the population of youth in our community. Last year we saw 378 youth come through the doors in our church. Our goal is primarily outreach as a default of the way things have been done in the past five years prior to me coming here. We are working right now to keep Wednesday as our outreach night and build up small groups to meet through the week on different nights in our leaders homes to disciple the youth. This has been a huge struggle because our leaders feel they put “enough” time in so I am trying to come up with a new discipleship strategy.

I am in the process of coming up with a plan of action for discipleship. I like to look at our process in five areas. The five areas we will concentrate on our community, crowd, congregation, committed, and the core. Our goal is to move the student from the “community” range into the “core” range. We understand that this won’t happen with every student. The community student is the student who is committed to not attending church, they are living apart from Christ. These students for us are the students that are not attending any church in the community or county. Our goal this year will be to launch a postal campaign to mail flyers and promotional stuff to every student in our city and county. Our intent is to draw them in and make them part of the “crowd.”

A crowd student is a student who is committed to attending our church, they are hearing about Christ. I would say that this stage describes 98% of our youth. In the past, as I have said, has been primarily outreach and so there hasn’t been a lot of discipleship take place so we are starting from the ground up. To bring the student’s from the crowd into the congregation we are going to start up small groups. We will recruit, or select, certain youth to be in the first few small groups keeping in mind the intent to multiply the group. Through small groups we will emphasize having a strong devotional life, daily Bible readings, and Scripture memory. The youth we first recruit will be those with leadership abilities, or the desire to win lost souls.

As the student gets more involved in small groups he/ she will move from the crowd and into the congregation. A congregation student is one who is committed to a small group and they have a relationship with Christ and with other Christians. I think at this stage this is where we will see the most happen in the form of building community. As we plug the crowd students into the congregation and connect them with other Christians they will be able to bond together in the similarities in Christ. Once a student hits the congregation stage we will move them into a deeper Bible study and start talking about student leadership. Hopefully we will be able at this point to recruit some of the congregation students into leading small groups on their own, or depending on the level of the student we would want them to become and apprentice leader with the intent of them leading a group in the future. A requirement will be that these students be at least a junior or senior in high school.

As a student develops and grows in the congregation stage they will be moved into the committed stage. A committed student is one who is committed to spiritual disciplines and is growing in Christ. At this level the youth will be more involved in doing more intense Scripture memory. They will be in a deeper level of Bible study and will be witnessing to their friends on a regular basis. As the youth grows and develops in this area he/ she will move into to core stage.

A core student is one who is committed to doing ministry and is serving because of Christ. At this level the student should be involved in the student ministry team in some way. Whether it is through leading worship, doing announcements, praying in front of the group this student will be involved in the ministry team. Although students at the congregation level will be able to be on the ministry team they may want to be on it to be in front of people, to look cool to their friends. The student in the core level will want to do ministry out of genuine obedience and a love for Christ.

I realize that this is just a program to bring the youth through in terms of discipleship, but this seems to be the most productive way. One thing I have learned in this course is that if a person has goals they tend to be more focused and driven. It seems that when youth are plugged into this mode of discipleship that they will see where they want to and how to get there. It will help to weed out those who are serious about their relationship with Christ at the present time and those that are not.

This is our program for discipleship. Will it work out? I believe that it will through prayer, hard work, and the leading of the Spirit. The thing this course has taught me is how to apply my knowledge of discipleship into a working plan of discipleship. I can honestly say that I feel a lot more equipped now in the area of discipleship because of this course. Thanks for making this enjoyable to learn from.