Before His ascension, Jesus gave a Great Commission: to go and make disciples. In this essential conversation, we talk about how discipleship happens and what it looks like for us to help people become disciples of Jesus. Join in as we discuss what the long journey of discipleship unfolds in the lives of the people around us.
To me, discipleship is becoming cruciform, becoming like the One who spread his arms out on a tree… you know you’re becoming a disciple when you’re learning to lay down your life in the journey to be like Jesus…
Discipleship happens painfully slowly, it happens over conversations and meals… that’s why you have to pace yourself… it’s a long obedience in the same direction… if you’re trying to get everything fixed in six weeks, you’re going to be disappointed…
One of the things we’ve gotten wrong in the American paradigm is that we’ve made this a solo project, discipleship becomes a do-it-yourself kind of thing… and it really just doesn’t happen that way…
If you pay attention to what Jesus was doing, he was always telling people to “come and follow me…” it has be relational… for all of us, we need to put ourselves in spots where we can do “come and follow me…”
I can’t call everyone into the depths of my life as a pastor, but one of the things I can do, maybe my principle task, is to create the right kinds of conditions where the Spirit can do what the Spirit characteristically does…
At some point, all of us as pastors have to think about how we’re multiplying our ministry… and not in the American business sense, but in the sense of investing in people who will become disciple-makers…
The corporate worship gatherings are absolutely part of discipleship… it’s never been easier to show up to church and hide… I want to lead my gatherings in a way that makes people bump into each other in ways that make discipleship possible…
Is the goal of discipleship for people to look like me, or to look like Jesus? We need to be able to distinguish between what is just personal preference and what is Jesus…
In the New Testament, what you see is the Apostles speaking to the whole people of God together… they assume that the living Christ himself is discipling all of them, together, through all the instantiations of the church’s life…
QUESTIONS FOR YOU AND YOUR TEAM
- Think for a minute: how do you and your team describe the “bullseye” of discipleship?
- What kinds of “seedbeds” or environments have you created to help people grow into the stature of Christ? Are they sufficient to the task? Why or why not?
- How much of your ministry is devoted to making disciples who will make disciples? What can you do to grow in this?