Moldovan Meanderings: Meditations: Practical Discipleship

Different Approaches to Discipleship

There are many different discipleship structures. Jesus spent around three years of His life living 24/7 with the 12 apostles plus it would seem that many others were following along as well. The 12 apostles seem to have had special access to Jesus’ time and teachings. For example, in Mark 4 after Jesus shares the parable of the sower with the crowd, the disciples and other interested people approach Jesus and ask Him to explain the parable in more detail. Indeed, in Mark 3: 14 when the twelve are appointed as apostles, their main task is to be with Jesus and then to go out and preach and have authority over demons.
In other words, Jesus made disciples by spending time with them and through this time transmitting to them what they needed to know. Obviously, most of us won’t be able to spend all day everyday with those who we want to disciple, but there is still here the underlying principle that discipleship takes time and is more than just teaching someone a few lessons. It could be said that discipleship is actually sharing our lives with our disciples (1 Thessalonians 2:8) .
There are various different practical ideas about how to spend this time with disciples and in what form. For example, in England as a student I remember one-on-one Bible studies being a popular way of both evangelising non-Christians who are open to studying the Bible as well helping younger Christians grow in faith. Whereas in Romania it was popular to form small groups of the same sex, a leader who was a slightly more mature Christian with 2 or 3 younger Christians who were students and to meet regularly to work through the ‘Fundamentals of Discipleship’ material.
In any case, each person is free to decide what works best for them in terms of group format. The key things are what we’ve seen above that discipleship necessitates time and sharing one’s lives with others, and also that spiritual growth needs not just theory, but also faith put into practice. I have grown and learnt the most as a Christian when I actually had to trust God and do something rather than when I just sat and heard the theory. For example, when I went to another country to get involved in Christian work, I grew a lot because I had to trust in God every step along the way.
In terms of discipleship, taking on the responsibility of discipling others or indeed the other way around, excepting to be discipled by someone else could be considered as practical steps of faith. Once the discipleship process is up and running though, it would be good not just to meet and talking about things, but also to have some practical sessions evangelising or getting involved in some sort of ministry together.
Following on are some more concrete principles about what to include in a discipleship relationship taken from ECC lesson 7 on, appropriately enough, discipleship.

A spiritual parent:

-prays for his spiritual children (e.g. Philippians 1:4) Helping someone grow in their Christian life is spiritual work and so no matter how well we do things, if God doesn’t work by the Holy Spirit there won’t be any fruit. Thus, we need to pray for those we are hoping to disciple. In any, case it’s natural that if we view someone as our spiritual child we should want to pray for them in much the same way that we naturally pray for those in our biological family. Prayer also helps strengthen our loving bond to those for whom we are praying.

-loves his spiritual Children (e.g. John 13:1). Jesus gave the supreme example of love by giving up everything He had, living amongst us on earth with all the difficulties that presents and then sacrificing His life on the cross, none of this for any good of His own, but rather for the good of those who believe in Him. In other words, love means to sacrifice what you have for the good of others and that not for any personal gain. Humanly speaking this is not possible, but if we are disciples who have experienced Jesus’ love and sacrifice for us then it is natural that we should want to share this love with others and He gives us the strength to do this. Thus, Christian discipleship means sacrificing what we have; time, energy, knowledge, experience, finances and the like and sharing it with our disciples. In other words, it costs something to do discipleship, but if we love are disciples than we should want the best for them and so the price is worth paying.

-Feeds his spiritual children (e.g. John 21:15). Here, there is a very clear analogy with biological children. Little babies need regular feeding in order to grow healthily. Likewise, new Christians need to start practicing and experiencing the aspects of the Christian life for themselves in order that they begin to develop them in their own lives. Jesus talks about being born again in John 3. No one is born fully mature, but rather as a helpless babe that needs constant care. With time, the baby grows and gradually starts doing things for itself. Eventually, all being well, it reaches adulthood, when it can fully look after itself and even start thinking about looking after others. The same is true from a spiritual point of view. After conversion, we don’t become perfect. We still need to start learning what the Bible teaches, how to read it for ourselves, how to pray and do evangelism etc. These things are not automatic. The aim of a discipler is to find good ways of helping their disciples to make progress in these areas and more.

-Protects his spiritual children (Luke 22:31-32). There are many temptations and difficulties that new Christians face, so an important task is to help them learn about what challenges they will face and how to deal with them.

-Instructs his spiritual children (Acts 20:27). A little bit similar to feeding new Christians, an aspect of discipleship is to teach new Christians the basics of the Christian life. There is a lot of overlap here with the feeding point, maybe a slight difference in that feeding has the aim of helping new Christians get to a point where they can do things for themselves, whereas no matter how mature we are, we will never be perfect and also need instruction and guidance from others.

Sharing all these things with new Christians is always going to be a challenge and we are rarely going to succeed in everything. However, God can take our weakness and make something glorious out of them (2 Cor. 4:7).
The fruitfulness of our discipleship efforts is going to depend to a certain extent on the receptiveness of those who we are discipling. Obviously, there is potentially a limited number of candidates for us to disciple, especially if we are concentrating on a certain category of people, such as students or are in situation where there aren’t many new believers around. So, I guess we need to pray and start discipling those who God gives us. That being said there are a few characteristics that we can look for which might help us nevertheless discern the potential of prospective disciples.
We can ask ourselves if they are seeking to follow God in their lives. They could well be difficult to disciple if they aren’t.

Are they faithful, dependable? (2 Tim. 2:2) Can we rely on them to take on board what we are sharing with them and eventually, one day, pass it on to others?

Are they available? They might be great potential disciples, but if they aren’t prepared to spend time with us, it’s going to be hard to disciple them.

Are they teachable? We they want top learn from us or do they think they already know it, or even want to teach us a thing or two?

In any case, the key thing is to pray and let God guide us to those who He would have us disciple, even if they aren’t perfect raw material!

Finally, there are a few little things we can take into account to help us in the discipleship process.

It’s important that our discipleship relationship is mainly based on the Gospel, but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be interested in other aspects of someone’s life or, indeed, that we can’t do other things together. A bit of football doesn’t hurt anyone (as long as there aren’t too many fouls, devious tactics or big thrashings!), but it’s important to know the limits. In Moldova, students can spend endless hours playing board games, but after a few minutes of Bible study some are agitating and that’s if they have even come at all!

Try not to forget what your disciple is telling you. In Moldova, as an English person, you meet many Moldovans and they all remember you because there aren’t many English people in Moldova. However, as an English person it’s not so easy to remember them, as there are obviously lots of Moldovans in Moldova (although not as many as they would like!). I have had many a conversation with someone who knew me, but I didn’t really know who they were. That’s a bit uncomfortable and even more so if it’s someone you are trying to disciple!

One more thing is the importance of getting the balance right between being a friend and a spiritual leader. Our aim is neither to be so authoritative that we can’t develop a proper relationship with our disciple, nor so friendly that they don’t respect what we say or that we can’t correct certain inappropriate behaviour.

Overall, the key is balance. We need to encourage, teach and advise or disciples. This means sometimes discussing and dealing with problems. Indeed, it’s often better to address a problem in it’s embryonic stage, before it becomes a full blown burden. Nevertheless, it’s important to not get caught up all the time in such things, so that the whole disciple relationship becomes more of a counselling session than any thing else. It’s bet to deal with what deals dealing with in terms of problems, but to identify and concentrate on that which is most helpful for spiritual growth and to spend most of our discipleship time busy with that.