Discipleship: notes toward intentionality

The following notes are from a message I gave to our Leadership Community at Eastbrook Church on August 12 as we launch into a more intentional focus on discipleship as a church in this current ministry year. Some of the thoughts are specific to our church, but I felt like a lot of the data is applicable to other settings, which is why I decided to go ahead and post it here. I hope it’s helpful and leads to some consideration of what it means to be growing as a disciple personally but also for churches to intentionally move toward growing disciples.

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When I was in elementary school, I played Little League baseball. I was a pretty good fielder and a really good baserunner, but there was just one problem. I was not a very good hitter. In fact, I was often afraid of the ball. When a pitcher would throw, I would sometimes back out of the batter’s box. Other times, I would close my eyes and swing with all my might. From time to time, I would get a hit with that methodology but more often than not it would lead to a strike out.

When we consider the topic of discipleship within the church of North America, we often take a similar approach. We hope that discipleship is happening but we don’t often give too much attention to whether or how it is happening. We will often closer our eyes and hope that we’ll hit it out of the park, but more often than not we miss.

Part 1: Discipleship – what is it?

This ministry year we want to put special focus on growing disciples. Here are some key questions we should all wrestle with: What does it mean to be a disciple?; How do disciples truly grow?; What does it mean to engage in discipleship?

Perhaps the most famous Scripture on discipleship is Jesus’ statement at the end of the Gospel of Matthew. Speaking to His disciples, Jesus says: 

“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Matthew 28:18-20).

This statement is known as the Great Commission because it is seen as the defining mission of Jesus and His disciples after His ascension. It reveals the authority of Jesus, in which authority He now sends His followers. That authority gives them power to go, and as they are going, to make disciples or apprentices of Jesus. Not just of some, or just those in their immediate vicinity or people group, but all of the disciples are to and make disciples of all nations. One of the marks of discipleship will be a visual symbol – baptism. That visual symbol marks a change of life, radically reoriented around the being and identity of the Triune God. Another of mark of discipleship will be knowledge of Jesus’ teaching and obedience to that teaching; there is an informational and transformational aspect of discipleship. Another mark of discipleship is the ever-abiding presence of Jesus; Jesus will ascend but He is always with us.

This is a brief glimpse of discipleship according to Jesus; there’s so much more we could say. I imagine none of us would downplay discipleship. In fact, I imagine that most of us would say we want to be about that in one way or another in our lives. Dallas Willard, one of my favorite writers on the topic of discipleship, once described what he saw as the greatest challenge within North American Christianity as the idea “that we can be ‘Christians’ forever and never become disciples.” This is what Willard describes as “The Great Omission” within “The Great Commission.” ^[1]

So, what is happening in our nation and setting at this time in relation to discipleship?

Part 2: The State of Discipleship in the United States

A survey from 5-years ago commissioned by the discipleship-focused ministry, Navigators, in partnership with the Barna Group indicated that only one in five Christians say they are involved in some sort of discipleship activity.^[2] In that same study nearly all respondents indicated spiritual growth was important, but they lacked clarity on how spiritual growth happens or there wasn’t any activity indicated in the survey that corresponded to their desire to grow.^[3] A 2019 study by Lifeway Research indicated that nearly two-thirds (65%) of Protestant pastors say they are satisfied with the state of discipleship in their local church, but 44% are not regularly evaluating discipleship progress in order to inform that opinion.^[4]

There is a lot of confusion and flux around the topic of discipleship within North American churches.  At the same time, religion in North America is in decline. In 2017, before the pandemic, the Pew Research Center reported a decline in religious affiliation, with only 65% of American adults self-describing as Christian (down 12 percentage points from 10 years previous) and 23% now describing themselves as atheist, agnostic, or “nothing in particular” (up 9 percentage points from 10 years previous).^[5] Americans with no religious affiliation were already on the rise before the pandemic. But a study released one year after the onset of the pandemic in the US revealed the lowest percentage of church membership in eight decades of research at just 47%.^[6]

Where is Eastbrook at? Like other churches, we experienced what some have called “the Great Sort” during the pandemic, where some people left our church and others came to our church. Where some people became more involved and others became less involved. After the pandemic, we are, in some ways, the same church we were before and, in other ways, we are a different church than we were before. At Eastbrook, we want to do everything we can do to make sure we are moving in the right direction with growing disciples.  We don’t want to leave discipleship to chance or to hope. Amidst the many things happening in our lives and in our cultures, as best as we can, we’d like to be intentional about growing disciples as a church family.

And that’s why we want to put the focus on discipleship for this coming Fall and beyond.

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^[1] Dallas Willard, The Great Omission (San Francisco, CA: Harper San Francisco, 2006), xi.

^[2] “The State of Discipleship in the Church,” Navigators, October 1, 2016, https://www.navigators.org/the-state-of-discipleship/.

^[3] “New Research on the State of Discipleship,” The Barna Group, December 1, 2015, https://www.barna.com/research/new-research-on-the-state-of-discipleship/.

^[4] Carol Pipes, “Most Pastors Satisfied with Discipleship Efforts, But Recognize Room for Growth,” Lifeway Research, April 11, 2019, https://research.lifeway.com/2019/04/11/new-research-most-pastors-satisfied-with-discipleship-efforts-room-for-growth/.

^[5] Pew Research Center, “In U.S., Decline of Christianity Continues at Rapid Pace,” October 17, 2019, https://www.pewforum.org/2019/10/17/in-u-s-decline-of-christianity-continues-at-rapid-pace/.

^[6] Jeffrey M. Jones, “U.S. Church Membership Falls Below Majority for First Time,” Gallup, March 29, 2021, https://news.gallup.com/poll/341963/church-membership-falls-below-majority-first-time.aspx.