EDITORIAL
From the Editor | Ed Stetzer
One thing that’s become clear over the last decade is that discipleship has not held the central place it should in the life of the church. Many believers, often unintentionally, have been caught up in various agendas and passions—some of them even good things—that have eclipsed the priority of discipleship that flows from the gospel, the entire Bible, and the church. This is not to say the church has abandoned discipleship altogether, but rather that it has often compartmentalized it. As a result, in practice discipleship has been marginalized.
If we are to recapture the biblical vision of discipleship, we must rediscover what it looked like in the first century through Jesus’ ministry and the life of the early church. How did Jesus make disciples? How did the early church engage in discipleship in a way that transformed individuals, communities and even civilizations? The answer calls us to shift the way we think about discipleship today. Here are five key mindset shifts that can help us recover a robust biblical vision of disciple making in our era.
1. From Task to Lifestyle
Too often, discipleship has been treated as a program, class or curriculum. These are descriptors of helpful tools, but not a template for biblical disciple making. Our starting point for discipleship is understanding we live under the lordship of Christ as citizens of a greater kingdom that affects every part of life. Discipleship should happen in the flow of life instead of operating as an isolated component of that life.
What if your template for discipleship envisioned a lifestyle to live, more than a task to complete? In Atomic Habits, James Clear notes the importance of systems over goals. Goals matter, but systems matter more: “Goals are about the results you want to achieve. Systems are about the processes that lead to those results.”
For example, you may have a goal to lose a certain amount of weight. The system would be daily walking on a treadmill for 45 minutes. Such a system helps to create a lifestyle more fitness-focused than simply setting a weight loss goal. The weight loss comes as a byproduct of the system. In the same way, discipleship as a lifestyle rather than a task might mean looking for a daily opportunity to speak to someone about Jesus—either through evangelizing an unbeliever or encouraging a believer.
Our love for God’s Word can unintentionally draw us toward an “information equals transformation” fallacy. James K. A. Smith reminds us in You Are What You Love that “We often approach discipleship as primarily a didactic endeavor—as if becoming a disciple of Jesus is largely an intellectual project.” Jesus didn’t simply teach his disciples content—he invited them to follow him in a way that shaped every area of their lives.
What does that look like?
• We evangelize not just to share gospel content with someone. Like Paul, we share not only the gospel message, but “our very lives” (1 Thess. 2:8).
• Leadership development then is seen as a natural part of our discipleship. As Eric Geiger and Kevin Peck argue in Designed to Lead, leadership development is an essential part of discipleship. If we see discipleship as a lifestyle, then we must recognize that it naturally leads to raising up leaders who will disciple others.
• When we shift from seeing discipleship as a program to seeing it as a way of life, we will begin to see transformation take root not only in individuals, but in communities and cultures as well. We will see ministries, mission trips, parenting, workplaces and how we interact in our communities all as discipleship opportunities.
In other words, discipleship as a lifestyle sees every conversation as a discipleship opportunity.
2. From Initiative to Empowerment
Where is the Holy Spirit in our discipleship? Far too often, discipleship looks like a study course rather than a Spirit-led process. To be clear, courses can be transformative—I’ve benefited greatly from them. But the Holy Spirit—the One who leads us to truth (John 16:13)—must be at the forefront of our discipleship work at every level.
When we look at the book of Acts, we see that the dominant figure in the life of the early church was not Peter, Paul or any other human leader. It was the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit empowered the disciples to make disciples. Systems and structures emerged to assist the church, and they were helpful, but they were never meant to replace dependence on the Spirit. The disciples didn’t just follow a well-crafted plan. They followed the leading of the Spirit in mission, in evangelism, in teaching, and in community life. If we rely too much on our own skill, strategies and strength, we risk nudging out the role of the Holy Spirit in discipleship.
Today, discipleship that is truly transformative is not accomplished merely by useful programs or curriculum alone. It happens when we are engaged in the power of the Holy Spirit, allowing him to shape our lives and the lives of those we disciple.
3. From Curriculum to Gospel Fluency
The most widely used discipleship curriculum in the world is The 2:7 Series from The Navigators. It’s incredibly helpful, and many millions have used it. But its goal is not just for people to master biblical content. It’s for people to be mastered by Jesus. This means the gospel is inculcated into every part of life. It impacts our language, which leads us to the term gospel fluency to describe this shift. Rather than mastering a given curriculum, we begin seeing life through the lens of the gospel and speaking of things in gospel-guided ways.
When we look at the apostle Paul’s writings, almost every chapter of his epistles and most chapters in Acts reference the gospel. The gospel was the lens through which Paul and the early church viewed the world. As he writes in 2 Corinthians 5:16, “So from now on, then, we regard no one from a worldly perspective.” This is a critical shift. Instead of simply learning biblical facts, we need to cultivate a deep gospel awareness that shapes the way we see people, circumstances and our purpose in the world. The gospel must infiltrate every aspect of our lives so that our discipleship includes both knowing doctrine and living gospel-saturated lives.
4. From Defense to Gospel Advance
Because of the advance of secularism, discipleship becomes focused on building a bulwark against secularism and worldliness. This is both understandable and unhelpful. While defending the faith is important, when our focus shifts to holding the line more than advancing the mission, we have already lost something crucial.
Jesus said, “I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overpower it” (Matt. 16:18). This is not a defensive statement—it’s an offensive one. The church is less an institution to maintain than it is a movement to advance. The remarkable spread of Christianity recorded in Acts reveals such a church on mission in the face of growing opposition.
History provides an example of this in the aftermath of the fall of the Roman Empire. Thomas Cahill’s book, How the Irish Saved Civilization, describes how Irish and Scottish missionary-monastics didn’t retreat in fear—they launched mission efforts that ultimately re-evangelized Europe. They didn’t build walls to keep the world out; they built mission stations that took the gospel into the world.
We must always stand for truth. But we go that direction far easier than toward kingdom advance. Instead of seeing discipleship as a defensive tool to combat cultural change, we must see it as an offensive strategy for gospel advance. The church is not a fortress to protect believers from the world. It is an outpost to send disciple makers into the world.
5. From Classroom to Community
Finally, we must move from seeing discipleship as primarily a classroom activity to understanding it as a community-driven process. Now, I say this as the dean of Talbot School of Theology. I believe in the importance of structured biblical education. But discipleship is not intended to be confined to a classroom. It is meant to be a way of life in community. This is why small groups continue to be a vital part of the discipleship process of churches. Small groups create a close-knit family within the larger church family, something every believer needs.
This calls us to a type of discipleship that Eugene Peterson characterized as a long obedience in the same direction. It is a daily relational process, not just a Sunday practice. The scorecard must change from knowledge accumulation to the development of missional disciples who live out their faith in everyday life. That means discipleship happens in homes, workplaces, coffee shops and neighborhoods just as much as it does in churches and seminaries. And it means we do it together, not alone.
Recovering the Heart of Discipleship
Study after study has shown that we have a lot of work to do when it comes to discipleship, but if we are willing to shift our mindset, we can begin to build robust disciple-making communities. Let’s put aside past mistakes, build on what has worked, and recommit ourselves to the mission Jesus gave us: to make disciples of all nations.