What exactly is discipleship?
I’ll talk a lot about discipleship in this Substack… but what on earth do I mean by discipleship?
I can recall several years ago when our church was going through a particularly rough patch as we transitioned to a more discipleship-focused approach. One of the young guys I had been discipling (or at least I thought I had) sat down across from me and said, “No one has ever discipled me.”
He left our church, along with many of his peers. I don’t know if they found a discipler who met their expectations. That painful experience highlighted the critical need for a clear definition of discipleship.
Jesus commanded us to go into all the world and make disciples of all nations. But what does that actually mean?
I’ve done a much more comprehensive breakdown of how we arrived at this in Everyone Sent, but let me share the conclusion:
Discipleship is glorifying God by following and being transformed by Jesus while inviting, modelling, training, and empowering others to do likewise.
This definition seeks to capture a few key ideas:
Discipleship is worship: It’s not about us; it’s about glorifying God.
Discipleship is relational: It always involves others.
Discipleship is transformational: It’s not just about acquiring information.
Discipleship multiplies: It leads to the creation of new disciples.
This is my definition. There are other good ones out there. The key idea is to have a clear shared definition. Without a clear, unified definition of making disciples, we’ll struggle to make disciples effectively. A clear definition serves as an anchoring principle, allowing us to ask, “Are we actually making disciples consistently?”
The Personal Value of a Definition
For me, this definition is grounding in two key ways:
It’s not about me: This reminds me that discipleship isn’t about my efforts, church, or mission. It’s about Jesus. These are his disciples.
It’s relational, not systematic: While I’m an engineer who loves systems, this definition is relational in nature. We make disciples the way Jesus did—by focusing on relationships first. Programs and systems, though important, are never the best strategy.
Four Checks for Disciple-Making
If we’re stalling in reproducing disciples, I use these four checks based on the definition:
Inviting: Have we asked anyone?
Am I inviting my disciples along and inviting new disciples to the table? A personal and direct invitation is often the missing piece in discipleship ecosystems. In my experience, disciple-making activity almost always requires this step to gain traction.
Modelling: Are we showing people what to do?
One of my mistakes has been expecting people to intuitively understand a principle or technique without seeing it modelled firsthand in an effective way. So I often ask myself, are we setting a good example of a healthy disciple-making life?
Training: Have we trained effectively?
Are there systems in place to ensure disciples are properly equipped with the right knowledge and accountability? For us, having a common baseline for training is critical. (Note: Software plays a significant role in this for us - we try to automate as many information transmission processes as possible.)
Empowering: Are we releasing our disciples to reproduce?
Have we commissioned our disciples to make disciples of their own? A scalable co-vocational culture depends on everyone sharing the load.
For more on this approach, check out resources like Everyone Sent, Living Sent, and our tracking tool, Engage Spaces. These dive deeper into how we implement these principles and measure success in our discipleship efforts.
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