In the initial call of his disciples, we encounter discipleship insights that are both simple and comprehensive as it pertains to real discipleship. For starters, it is paramount that we respect the difference between a call and an invitation. True discipleship is not an invitation from Jesus Christ to the believer to follow him. If it is an invitation, when Jesus called Simon Peter and his brother Andrew, he would have asked them, "Will you follow me?" Instead, it was, "Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men” (Matt 4:19). When it comes to considering true discipleship, the punctuational difference between a question mark and a period is not to be dismissed. Therefore, from a leadership perspective, every local church must agree with Christ that true discipleship is not an elective. When the leadership is unanimous on this, the culture within that local church becomes one where true discipleship is not viewed as optional.
At this point, it is vital that we define "true discipleship." To do this, we look to the Master, the Lord Jesus Christ, who has done just that. To the Jews which believed on him, he issued a clear condition, "If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:31-32). Disciples indeed are true disciples who follow Jesus Christ by continuing in his word.
Discipleship begins with believing on him, but for it to be true discipleship, there must be a deliberate continuation. While discipleship is not optional, it is conditional; to be a disciple indeed, the believer must continue in the word. The tragedy that exists in far too many churches is that of people believing on the gospel but not deliberately continuing in the word. The words "follow" and "continue" imply spiritual movement. True discipleship is never static, which is this case when discipleship is basically a program in a local church. In that practice, people move through a set curriculum academically without much movement in their walk spiritually. It has to be understood that people can continue in a set curriculum without continuing in the word. This gets to the heart of the difference between how Jesus taught in the synagogue versus the scribes. He taught them as one that had authority, which was contrary to the scribes (Mark 1:21-22). He taught the word of God, while the scribes quoted the words of men, which have no authority. This is why Jesus said to those Jews which believed on him, "If ye continue in my word...”(John 8:31) They would not continue in the hollow words of religious men.
After Jesus called (not invited) Simon Peter and Andrew, they moved at once by leaving their nets to follow him. As the narrative continued, James and John followed suit. In that, we see believers continuing in the word by following Jesus, the Word (John 1:1, 14), as disciples indeed. This provides us with a very sound picture of true discipleship because it was not solely academic. They visibly and deliberately followed Jesus, the Word. In doing so, they enlightened us on the call to discipleship:
1. The call was preeminent.
Simon Peter, Andrew, James, John, and Matthew (Matt 9:9), responded to the call to discipleship by walking away from their occupations at the moment he called them. They all demonstrated that Christ and what he desired of them was preeminent (Col 1:18).
2. The cost was immediate.
To walk away from employment and family (Matt 4:21-22) was no light thing then, nor would it be now. Additionally, commercial fishermen earned a healthy wage at this time, and working as a tax collector would have been financially rewarding. But the call to walk away from it all did not come after they had followed Jesus for six months. It was at the moment they obeyed his call to follow him.
3. The conviction was evident.
Their expeditious response to what would have been and is perceived as radical spoke volumes about how they viewed him. Although they had a lot of room to learn and grow, the way they responded to the call to discipleship revealed that not only does Jesus save, but that he is Lord.
When discipleship is mitigated to a program, we basically get the opposite of all of this. Instead of discipleship being the ministry in a church, it functions as a ministry in the church — a program on the buffet line of programs. We should remember that the heart of the Great Commission is to make disciples, not pastors, leaders, church members, ministry workers, or tithers. When a church makes disciples indeed, they will get all of that. But a programmatic approach to discipleship incessantly attempts to use a Bible study curriculum to produce those outcomes.
Another flaw in the programmatic approach to discipleship is lowering the cost. The cost of discipleship as presented by Jesus in the gospels was referred to as our "reasonable service" by the apostle Paul (Rom 12:1). The truth is, some find the cost of discipleship as presented by Jesus to be unreasonable. They find it unreasonable because true discipleship will never cost less than your life, which, according to the apostle Paul, is not unreasonable. In programmatic discipleship cultures, the cost gets lowered by asking for nothing more than completing a series of Bible studies, attending church, and starting to give regularly by the end of the completion of the curriculum. While there is a cost involved with that, it is not as off-putting or unreasonable as having to lay your life down.
Ultimately, the decisions that believers make in churches which make real disciples, as opposed to churches that take a programmatic approach, tell different stories. In true discipleship cultures, decisions are made that would seem unreasonable to many outside of that culture. This is where some choose to walk away from six-figure salaries and the American dream to move to a third-world country to win people to Christ, make disciples, and plant churches. In doing this, they do not believe that they are special or unique. Their walk with Jesus Christ as a disciple indeed compels them to follow him without limits. Where discipleship is a program, though, that type of obedience will be viewed as too much and even unnecessary. It is replaced with something that is far more safe and comfortable. We cannot overlook that the quiet confession here is: Jesus Christ is not worth that level of obedience. Not to exaggerate this point, but it is very Judas Iscariot-like. Judas Iscariot groused over a pound of very costly ointment of spikenard that was used to anoint Jesus (John 12:3-5). In his carnal estimation, Jesus was not worth something that costly. Looking back, we obviously know that Judas Iscariot was not a disciple indeed, but the other disciples at the time did not know that (John 13:21-22). It should provoke us to pause at the fact that someone who knew and walked with Jesus in flesh actually presented themselves as a disciple indeed while thinking that way about him. Church cultures that embrace a program approach to discipleship are ripe to reproduce this heart-attitude.
In those environments, many will get sound doctrine through the academic elements of discipleship and consider it reasonable to continue their studies at the institute level. They will not find it unreasonable to serve in a ministry, tithe, and even give beyond that. This issue, however, is that there is a limit to how far they are willing to follow Him. In other words, once it is deemed unreasonable, they deem that Jesus is not worth it. Where true discipleship is not occurring, this mindset is not only tolerated, it is perpetuated and accepted.
To safeguard against this, it is worth our time and effort to ensure that our approach to making disciples in the local church is biblically, not academically, sound.
Kenny Morgan is the discipleship pastor at Midtown Baptist Temple in Kansas City, where he also leads the Life Fellowship adults class.