By: Benjamin G. Campbell
For the past ten years or so, discipleship has become a buzz word in evangelical Christianity, and rightly so. For too long, the American church has sidelined its most vital ministry for the sake of pragmatic ministry practices that draw people to the wrong things with the wrong affections. We have replaced Word-centered ministry with Word-sprinkled programs.
A call to discipleship is a call to self-denial. A call to discipleship is a call to biblical priorities in all of life. Discipleship is not, and has never been, a life lived in half-hearted service to the Lord and His Church. As J. Hudson Taylor has famously said, “Christ is either Lord of all, or He is not Lord at all.”[1] In other words, there is no in between when it comes to being a disciple of Jesus. You are either His disciple or you are not.
“There is no in between when it comes to being a disciple of Jesus. You are either His disciple or you are not.”
Tweet
The challenge in the American church is not whether or not we disciple our people, for we disciple them one way or another. The challenge in the American church is whether we will disciple our people to be followers of Jesus – that is, to deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow Him.
In this blog post, I want to look at what I believe is the biblical model of discipleship which focuses all of our attention on the people whom we disciple rather than the ways in which we disciple them. Rather than looking at a corrective course for discipleship that critiques different models within different churches and denominations, I will simply give what I believe to be the biblical model for discipling men and women to follow Jesus in the local church.
What is biblical discipleship?
There are several different definitions of discipleship that you may find, especially if you have read a Christian book written in the last ten years. Everyone seems to want to take a stab at discipleship and how we ought to define it. For whatever reason, pastors and preachers will oftentimes try to make up their own definitions for every little thing. At the end of the day, whichever definition you want to affirm, my preferential definition is one from Mark Dever. It is simple, concise, yet firm and concrete. Dever says, “We try to help others follow Jesus; we proclaim God’s words, and we do all this for the sake of the Last Day.”[2]
Dever’s definition of discipleship really gets at the heart of what biblical discipleship looks like in everyday life – it is our everyday following of Jesus. Think of Paul writing to the Corinthian church, “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ” (1 Cor. 11:1). Paul’s endearment to the Corinthian church actually was through Timothy. Notice that Timothy’s pastoral example is because of how Timothy was “[Paul’s] beloved and faithful child in the Lord” and Paul sent him to “remind [them] of [his] ways in Christ (1 Cor. 4:16-17). Jesus to His own disciples prompts the same response: “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men” (Matt. 4:19).
The biblical model for discipleship is simple: we follow Christ and encourage others (through our lives lived in faithful community) to do the same. Timothy was urged by Paul to not allow his youthfulness to discourage him, but, instead, to “set the believers an example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity” (1 Tim. 4:12). It is no small coincidence that the command to live an exemplary life to Timothy comes after the command to “train [himself] for godliness” (1 Tim. 4:7). It is our godliness, made possible by faith in the Son that shines brightly through the Spirit within us, that influences others to follow Jesus as closely as we do and ought to do. And our godliness is a product of our closeness to Christ.
Therefore, discipleship according to Scripture is one’s complete, whole, and total devotion to Jesus as Lord of their life. Taylor’s aforementioned quote rings true here again: “Christ is either Lord of all, or He is not Lord at all.”
Dear friend, there is only one throne on which the authority of your life must sit. Every single day the greatest decision we all must make is to allow Jesus to be King rather than ourselves. “Walk by the Spirit,” Paul writes to the churches in Galatia, “and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh” (Gal. 5:16). Walking in the Spirit is waking up every day and making the conscious decision that Jesus is King and Lord of my life. The word for walk is the word peripateite which indicates the way in which one lives their life. Thus, when Paul commands believers to “walk by the Spirit,” he intends to exhort us to live in full devotion to King Jesus all our days.
That is the heartbeat of biblical discipleship. The question now shifts from what discipleship is to how it is played out in everyday life. Disciples, like vines, ought to grow as they are nourished.
Every single day the greatest decision we all must make is to allow Jesus to be King rather than ourselves.
Tweet
How do people grow as disciples?
In The Trellis and the Vine, Colin Marshall and Tony Payne work out a ministry paradigm shift from programs to people. For good or ill, the ministry mindset for most of the past twenty to thirty years has been a more pragmatic approach to ministry – i.e., youth lock-ins, Winter Jam concerts, young adult retreats, etc. All of these events – as inherently good as they may be – are geared toward a more programmatic approach to ministry instead of focused on fostering godly living through Word-centered means.
Think about it this way: these events, while possessing the possibility of building community among the people of God, gear their purpose toward the what rather than the why or how. In other words, these types of “events”[3] are more about what they can do for the people rather than being geared for the people themselves.
But that is not how disciples of Jesus are to grow in His grace and likeness. Paul, just a chapter earlier in 1 Corinthians, writes that the only way believers in Jesus grow in His likeness is by following Christ and God granting the growth (1 Cor. 3:1-6). Marshall and Payne show us, “Christian ministry is really not very complicated. It is simply the making and nurturing of genuine followers of the Lord Jesus Christ through prayerful, Spirit-backed proclamation of the word of God. It’s disciple-making.”[4]
There it is! Biblical discipleship is Word-centered ministry. It is the act of entrusting the Word of God to others. It is being a product of God’s indwelling Spirit and a conduit for the gospel going forth and affecting others as the Spirit comes forth from the living out of our lives in gospel-centered homes and community.
Since biblical discipleship is a Word-centered ministry, then it follows that the way disciples of Jesus grow is – yes, you guessed it – by the Word of God. “Train yourself for godliness,” Paul exhorts Timothy in 1 Timothy 4:7, so Timothy can “entrust to faithful men” what he heard from Paul (2 Tim. 2:1-2). The Bible is adamantly clear: if we are to grow as believers, we must grow into the Head of the body, which is Christ (Eph. 4:15-16), we must attach ourselves to the True Vine (John 15:1-6), and we must strive for godliness because it has value in this life and the life to come (1 Tim. 4:6-8).
Implications for the Church
The question, then, becomes: How does the church accomplish this mission?
John Power, in his review of The Trellis and the Vine, says, “And even though the Sunday morning sermon is vital and non-negotiable, it cannot do all the work on its own. Instead, a Richard Baxter-like ministry is required, with an emphasis on “personal catechizing and instructing the flock” (105, quoting Baxter’s The Reformed Pastor). Vine work is inherently personal.”[5]
I think Powers’ reference to Marshall and Payne’s work is very convicting in his summary of the Baxter-like ministry of which he describes. If vine work is personal and involves personal catechizing and instruction, then vine work (discipleship) should be the focal ministry in the local church. Here are a few reasons why:
1. Vine work only happens through the Word of God. As we have seen earlier, the only way the church might grow is through God granting growth through His Word. You see, the only way the church grow is through the Word, therefore, the only way believers grow is through the Word. Paul told Timothy to immerse himself in the Word, “so that all may see your progress” (1 Tim. 4:15). If we are to be truly honest about this verse, we have an understanding that: 1) vine work is ultimately God’s work; 2) vine work happens only on purpose; 3) vine work is progressive, not linear; and 4) vine work will prove fruitful as we devote ourselves to the Word of God.
2. Preaching is vine work, but not all of vine work. While preaching is not everything, it also is not for nothing. Preaching is the most sacred act, but it is not the only act of the local church. In fact, I would proffer it this way: preaching is the most sacred act of the gathered church. However, one ministry that is just as important as preaching is the entrusting of the Word of God to the people of God by the Spirit of God for the glory of God. Yes, we disciple through preaching, but only partially. There is no confession of sin or accountability to spiritual disciplines that happens during the sermon – but all of these are present in discipling relationships. You can think of this through the lens of Ephesians 4:11 that the Word preached is used to “equip the saints for the work of ministry,” and the preached Word equips the saints to disciples others in this Word. Which is why the next point is so important…
3. Vine work is done best in community. True vine work – true discipleship – is done best in community, among the family of God. Notice how Paul concludes the section in 1 Timothy 4 – “For to this end we toil and strive, because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe” (1 Tim. 4:10). I emphasize the pronoun in the verse – “we,” for Paul does not say for this end “I” toil, but “we” toil. Vine work is the work of the gathered church! Dear believer, your best bet at gospel fruit is done in the local church with the people of God; it is done with your brothers and sisters. Gospel saturated community is at the very heart of vine work.
4. Vine work is a ministry for every believer. Most importantly, though, is the reality that vine work is a ministry for all believers of Jesus Christ. This ministry is not a ministry for only a few; all believers are called to “go and make disciples” (Matt. 28:19). No one is exempt from this mission. Therefore, it must be the beckoning call of our lives to nourish and care for the vine of our own lives in order that we might aid in the caring and nurturing of the vines of others.
Conclusion
All in all, discipleship is not rocket science. Yes, you need structures in place for good discipling relationships to take place, but it is not necessary to constantly build and rebuild structures. If the vine is not nourished and fed, it will not grow. You can put all your effort into a structure for your plant to wither and die.
The same is true in the life lived in Christian community. If all effort is only given to the structure of ministry rather than the ministry itself, the vine will die. Therefore, let us always remember that our job is to feed and nourish the vine, while always maintaining a sound structure on which our vine will grow. The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. May it be said of us that we are a part of the “few.”
[1] While the source is unknown by me, this is a quote from Hudson’s book, God’s Man in China. See “Lord of all, or not Lord at all” Cost of Discipleship, accessed August 18, 2023, http://cost-of-discipleship.blogspot.com/2008/10/lord-of-all-or-not-lord-at-all.html
[2] Mark Dever. Discipling: How to Help Others Follow Jesus (Wheaton: Crossway, 2016), 35.
[3] I am simply using the word as a descriptor of all things related to a more pragmatically focused approach to ministry.
[4] Colin Marshall and Tony Payne. The Trellis and the Vine: The Ministry Mind-shift that Changes Everything (Sydney, AU: Matthias Media, 2009), 151.
[5] John Power, “Book Review: The Trellis and the Vine, by Colin Marshall and Tony Payne” 9Marks.org, accessed August 19, 2023, https://www.9marks.org/review/trellis-and-vine-colin-marshall-and-tony-payne/.
everydaytheologyco.com 