Who is discipling you, and who are you discipling?
Do you have specific names you can attach to those questions, or are you content with the idea that your discipleship responsibility starts and stops with your own kids and perhaps, at times, extends beyond your own front door to the 10 lucky individuals who happen to be in your weekly small group? Make no mistake, children and small group members are certainly a large part of our responsibility as disciple makers, but if Jesus’ approach to discipleship was limited to a simple once a week small group meeting and dinner time prayer with immediate family, how effective would His ministry have actually been?
Consider what would have happened had Jesus never engaged in personal relational ministry like that of His infamous walk on the beach with His cowardly friend, Peter. How courageous would Peter’s faith have become without that intentional one-on-one time? And where would the church be today had Jesus just left His entire earthly ministry up to weekly small group meetings and hollow meal-time prayer?
So again,
Who is discipling you, and who are you discipling?
Answering these questions with clarity, first requires a general framework of the fundamental nature of discipleship. What does it mean to disciple someone?
Generally speaking, the process of discipling someone is to lead them, through personal, relational interaction and instruction, to pursue a shared vision of faith. In the world of the Christian disciple maker, to disciple someone is to intentionally lead one through close, personal relationship, to conform their life to that of the person and work of Jesus Christ.
To do this effectively, it will help to examine some characteristics of discipleship employed by Jesus in order to accurately align ourselves with His method of Great Commission disciple-making.
In the next post, we’ll examine four characteristics of discipleship, as modeled by Jesus, that can be applied to your life for the purpose of reproducing disciples who will go on to reproduce more disciples.
For now…
Who can lead you to become more like Jesus?
Who can you lead to become more like Jesus?