How do we make disciples?

Question 11020.

Jesus told His followers to make disciples, and the church has spent two thousand years discovering how easy it is to do something else instead. We gather crowds, run courses, fill diaries, and quietly hope that formation happens somewhere in the middle.

So this is a practical answer to a practical question. What does it take to make disciples, who is supposed to be doing it, and why does so much church activity leave people much as it found them?

The command to make disciples

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you (Matthew 28:19-20).

In the Greek there is one main verb, matheteuo, to make disciples, and three participles hanging off it: going, baptising, teaching. That grammar is worth noticing. The command is not to go, nor to run services, nor to teach in the abstract. It is to make disciples, and the other activities describe how that happens.

Notice too that the object is nations rather than individuals only, and that the endpoint is obedience rather than assent. Teaching them to observe, not teaching them to know. A church can be full of people who understand a great deal and obey very little, and by this measure it has not yet done its work.

Converts are not the finish line

Much evangelical energy goes into the moment of decision, and then stops. We count professions, celebrate the response, and move on to the next campaign, as though the birth were the whole of the parenting.

Paul thought differently. He described himself as in the anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in the Galatians (Galatians 4:19), and told the Colossians that his labour was to present everyone mature in Christ (Colossians 1:28-29). The aim was maturity rather than a signature.

So to make disciples is to commit to a person over years rather than an evening. That is why it is so often neglected. Decisions can be counted and reported; formation cannot, and it takes place mostly in conversations nobody will ever hear about.

Who is meant to do this

Everybody, in the ordinary sense. The commission was given to the eleven, but the pattern that follows in Acts and the letters is of believers teaching, correcting and encouraging one another, with pastors and teachers equipping the saints for the work of ministry rather than doing it on their behalf (Ephesians 4:11-12).

Paul told Timothy to entrust what he had heard to faithful men who would be able to teach others also (2 Timothy 2:2). That is four generations in a single sentence, and none of it requires a title or a budget.

If your church waits for the staff to make disciples, the arithmetic defeats you before you begin. One minister cannot form two hundred people. Twenty ordinary believers each walking closely with two or three can, and that is how it has always actually worked.

The method is shared life

Jesus appointed twelve so that they might be with Him, and then to be sent out (Mark 3:14). Everything else followed from proximity. They watched Him pray, saw Him deal with hostility, heard the private explanations after the public parables, and failed in front of Him repeatedly.

Paul used the same approach without embarrassment. Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ (1 Corinthians 11:1). He reminded the Thessalonians that he had shared not only the gospel but his own self with them.

So to make disciples is less about transferring content than about letting someone close enough to see how you handle money, disappointment, apology and prayer. That is uncomfortable, and the discomfort is precisely why the method works.

What it looks like in practice

Start with one or two people rather than a scheme. Meet monthly, or fortnightly if you can manage it. Read a portion of Scripture together and talk about it honestly. Pray together, aloud, which is where most of the real formation happens.

Ask questions that matter and be willing to answer them yourself. How is your prayer life actually going? What are you finding hard to believe at the moment? Where are you tempted? A relationship in which only one person is exposed is a lecture with extra steps.

Expect it to be uneven. Some months you will meet and nothing much will happen, and then a single conversation will move someone further than the previous year of teaching. Formation does not arrive on a schedule, and the meetings that felt wasted are often the ones that built the trust the important conversation needed.

Do ordinary things together as well. Take someone with you when you visit the sick, do the accounts, or set up the hall. People learn ministry the way they learn a trade, by being alongside somebody doing it, and you will teach more in a car journey than in six talks.

What to actually teach

Cover the foundations without assuming they are known. What the gospel is and why assurance rests on Christ’s work rather than on feelings. How to read the Bible. How to pray. Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Giving. Forgiveness. Sexual purity. What the church is and why membership matters.

Then follow the person. If someone is drowning in anxiety, work through what Scripture says about it rather than sticking to your syllabus. To make disciples is to teach a particular human being rather than to deliver a curriculum, and the curriculum should serve the person rather than the other way round.

And teach obedience rather than information. Ask what will change this week because of what you have read. Then ask about it next time, kindly but actually. Nothing exposes the difference between our stated beliefs and our real ones faster than being asked twice.

Where churches go wrong

The commonest error is substituting attendance for formation. People are invited to more meetings, and a full diary is mistaken for a growing believer. Busyness in church is not discipleship, and it frequently prevents it.

The second is professionalising it. Once discipleship becomes a course with a leader’s manual, ordinary believers conclude it is not for them, and something that ought to be as natural as friendship acquires a barrier to entry.

The third is impatience. We want visible results in a term, so we chase numbers and drop anyone who progresses slowly. Jesus spent three years with twelve men who were still arguing about who was greatest at the last supper, and only one of the twelve was a loss. That is the timescale, and I have written more about what discipleship actually is.

Where the family fits

The first place most Christians will make disciples is at home. Moses told parents to teach the words diligently to their children, talking of them when they sit and when they walk (Deuteronomy 6:6-7), and Paul tells fathers to bring children up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

That is not achieved by a formal family service. It is achieved by praying at meals, reading a few verses together, answering questions honestly, apologising when you are wrong, and letting children see that God matters to you on Tuesday as well as Sunday.

If you are a parent and feel you are failing at this, you are in good company. Do something small and consistent rather than something impressive and occasional, and remember that they are watching your ordinary conduct far more closely than they are listening to your explanations.

So, now what?

Name one person you could invest in. Not the whole church, one person. Ask them for a coffee and suggest reading a Gospel together over the next few months.

Then name one person you could ask to invest in you, and ask them plainly rather than hinting for six months. Most Christians have never been discipled by anyone, and there is no shame at all in asking an older believer to take you seriously.

And do not wait until you feel qualified. Nobody is, and the requirement is not expertise but a few years’ head start and a willingness to be honest about the journey. The wider charge behind all this is worth reading again in the Great Commission, where the order to make disciples comes bracketed by Christ’s authority and His promised presence.

The command was to make disciples, and it was given to a small group of unimpressive men who had recently deserted Him. He has never needed better material than that. Who is the person God has already put within reach of you?

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.

Matthew 28:19-20, ESV