What Has Happened to Discipleship?

I have been in conversations and been asked the following question: What do you feel God is saying to His church today? At the risk of sounding rude, I usually respond by saying, "He's probably saying the same thing He said two thousand years ago: "Go and make disciples."" Sad to say, a lot of churches talk about discipleship, but they never quite go the distance in making it part of the culture of their church.

Why do church leaders spend time doing everything but making disciples? Why do we try every church growth gimmick known to man, yet ignore the one strategy Jesus endorsed? Shouldn't His last message be our first option?

Discipleship isn't suppose to be complicated. Difficult sometimes, complicated never. If modern discipleship is confusing or complicated, it's because we've strayed from biblical principles and the simple biblical process that Jesus lived and taught His disciples.

For Jesus, discipleship was and still is top priority. Yes, He fed the hungry and healed the sick, but He always gave the twelve disciples His prime time. His final word to them before He ascended into heaven was a commission not just to be disciples, but also to make disciples. Like the original followers of Jesus, we are supposed to be disciples and we are supposed to make disciples. In other words, we are supposed to follow Jesus and we are supposed to help others follow Him.

Here are some simple biblical steps that can be integrated and applied that will help make discipleship a reality:

1. Establish spiritual foundations. There was a sign with a picture of the Leaning Tower of Pisa with a tagline that read, "Good facade, bad foundations." Like the tower, many Christians have a good facade but are dangerously unstable because of poor foundations. Even the slightest storm or temptation sends them crashing to the ground. On the other hand, Jesus promised His disciples that storms, winds and floods would beat against their lives, but they could survive if they built their "foundation on the rock" (Matt 7:24-25). If we want our disciples to survive the storms of life, we must help them establish spiritual foundations. This includes repentance, faith, water baptism and the baptism in the Holy Spirit (see Acts 2:38-41). Once these basics are established, we need to begin to develop theological foundations such as eternal judgment and resurrection from the dead (see Heb. 6).

2. Equip all believers to minister. We've heard the phrase, Every member a minister. Yet often, because of our performance-driven culture, we have littler tolerance for the messiness of the equipping process. Some do church as if only professional ministers should do ministry. The biblical job description for professional ministers-apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers-is to equip the "non-pros" for ministry, then get out of their way (see Eph. 4:11-12).

3. Empower all disciples to make disciples. Jesus expected all of His original disciples to make disciples. He empowered them, knowing they would make disciples. The call to make disciples (see Matt. 28) was given to people who were far from perfect. They had questioned, disobeyed, doubted and even denied Jesus. Here is a key point to remember; it is progress, not perfection, that qualifies one to disciple others. Because Jesus expects all His disciples to make disciples, we must not only equip them, we must empower them. To empower means to give permission or power to do something-in a sense, to give confidence to do something. Equipping without empowering produces disciples with head knowledge. Empowering without first equipping produces disciples who never mature.