In Matthew 28, Jesus gives a final address to his disciples:
“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Mt 28:18-20)
As with most subtitled movies, we don’t really understand the heart of what’s going on unless we go back to the original language. A common misnomer about this passage is that Jesus is giving us a list of suggested tasks; we pick a couple and we’re good to go. But Jesus isn’t giving us options. This is not a top ten list of recommendations for living a good life. In the original Greek, Jesus is commanding his disciples to do just one thing: make disciples.
If Jesus says being a disciple and making disciples is the main thing, then that’s the main thing for us. But what in the world does this look like? How do we know for certain that this is happening in our own life? What is present in our life that makes us say, “I am a disciple.” Or, “That girl is a disciple for sure!”
Most people answer this question in the theoretical: “A disciple is someone who lives a surrendered life.” Or, “A disciple is someone who’s in love with Jesus.” While these are good things to be, they aren’t tangible enough to properly answer the question. Which leaves us at the same place we started. How do we know that a person is living a surrendered life? How do people actually show that they’re in love with Jesus?
We as leaders understand the sentiment behind being disciples and the good intentions that go along with it, but we don’t always know exactly what we’re looking for or need to focus on. And if I don’t know how to tangibly identify a disciple, then realistically, I don’t know how to go about making one. Speaking from my own experience, I knew how to escort people into Christian culture. I knew how to help people come to church, join a small group, and get involved in serving the church. Was this how to make a disciple? I could teach people to learn how to read the Bible and pray, but was this how to make a disciple? Since I participated in these activities myself, did this make me a disciple of Jesus?
Something didn’t sit right with me; there had to be more. And I knew there had to be more because the people I read about who were called Jesus’ disciples were not living the kind of life I saw the people who called themselves disciples living in the church today. Jesus said he came so we would have life and have it abundantly (Jn 10:10), but when I looked around, it seemed like that abundant life was alluded to—like a dream or wishful thinking—but never really lived out.
Discipleship as Peripheral
Somehow along the way, discipleship became synonymous with assimilation into church culture. Making disciples came to mean helping people participate in Christian activities. While being a disciple of Jesus involves partnering with the local church, it is by no means the full picture. If we honestly and humbly examine ourselves and our leadership, we must admit to living in self-deception: making disciples has become the same thing as making a worship service gathering or, at its extreme, a megachurch.
Practical metrics of church attendance and financial prosperity are the two fruit we look for in evaluating whether we’ve made disciples. We have perpetuated a culture of spectators and nonparticipants that bears no fruit. We at best cultivate a weekly variety show that highlights a TED-like talk bookended by a local unpaid band, often paying for either smoke machines or organ maintenance). This ritual actually pushes discipleship more and more into the margins while tethering people more firmly to consumerism. Our stage productions depend financially and culturally on spectatorship.
I am not satisfied with this. I don’t think you’re satisfied with this either. I don’t think you’re satisfied with the people we lead and love investing their efforts in a weekly stage production rather than the needs of their neighborhoods and communities. I don’t think you’re satisfied with our congregants being “discipled” by sermons or musical experiences instead of being intentionally equipped. I want God’s people to get up out of the seats and fully participate in the abundant life Jesus offers all of us. I want them to experience the fruit that all of us are called to bear. I want them to bear that fruit for the sake of their neighbors, coworkers, families, and friends.
Discipleship as Central
Our local church community keeps discipleship central by orienting our life around it. Every owner (member) of our church community is discipled along a discipleship pathway in the context of a community that’s tethered to a place (neighborhood) or space (network) of mission for renewal. Every owner revisits the discipleship pathway year by year within a community. Every disciple experiences discipleship firsthand, recognizing its importance, hardship and beauty, and is led by folks who are just a little further ahead of them in the journey. While the trek may differ from time to time, we all follow the same discipleship pathway.
Following the same discipleship pathway allows community to notice our own growth and progress, and the familiarity of the journey produces joy and expectation. We not only see more and more ways we are individually and communally imitating Jesus, but we imitate his compassion and patience to journey alongside others in their discipleship. By moving discipleship from the periphery to the center, we are able to definitively say, “I am a disciple of Jesus, I know how I am a disciple of Jesus, and I know how to make disciples of Jesus.”
If we’re honest with ourselves, many of the places of Christian worship we attend have an underlying assumption that if we just maintain a weekly Sunday gathering where we hope and pray for an increased number of attendees, a thirty-minute oration and thirty minutes of singing religious songs will make disciples who live as a community for the sake of the world and culture around them. Even the most ideal version of this adds to a growing mindset of spectatorship where we simply gather weekly to listen to a speaker and hear musicians.
The praxis of imitating Christ has nothing to do with just listening and hearing.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is saying that Christlike praxis is about listening and doing. Christlike praxis is about seeing the fruit of transformation and renewal not only in his disciples but through his disciples. A sent community of people who listens to Jesus and does what he tells them to do together will not be limited to gathering weekly to listen to a sermon and sing songs. They’ll be on the move together into the culture and world around them. Living into the praxis of self-giving love as a sent community is not an elective for disciples of Jesus. It’s the main thing.
Adapted from the Centering Discipleship by E. K. Strawser. ©2023 by Eun Kyong Strawser. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press. www.ivpress.com.
