What is Discipleship?

Christians toss around "lingo" a lot. Many times we use words which if we were asked to define, we are unable to, or we find that our definition differs from how others would define it.

Discipleship is one of those words. What is discipleship? How we answer that is pretty important because the Great Commission (another lingo phrase) as it is given in Matthew has "making disciples" as the central, focal thing for us to be engaged in "till the end of the age". By contrast, Mark's version focuses on "preach the gospel" to all creatures.

Now if we unpack those two accounts there is a wide difference in how they are fulfilled. Theoretically, if we could rent helicopters and fly over every habitation of mankind and broadcast the message, the Four Spiritual Laws, or the Roman Road or some other device, the job would be done -- if we go by Mark's version. Conversely, unless we confine the term "making disciples" to a my-mouth-to-your-ear activity, there is a lot more to it. The first involves words, the second involves living life, in fact, as I will deal with in future posts, it is all about life, not just words.

I have been keeping up with a series of articles written by John Armstrong of Act3 Ministries dealing with this subject. What is discipleship?

Armstrong says, "I am convinced that we have reduced the meaning of this extremely important word to: (1) Learning information from the Bible, or content about faith, and; (2) To relating our lives to the local church and its programs. In the process we have emptied the word disciple of deep meaning and allowed people to profess a faith that does not require them to imagine what can or should be done as radical followers of Jesus Christ."

In other words, we have removed discipleship from the messy arena of daily living and we have made it a matter of passing on information and participating in church activities.

Being a disciple is life-engaging. Making disciples should be, too.

In my next few posts, I will try to follow the theme of discipleship through the narrative of the Bible and show that it is "baked in" to spiritual life, not tacked on.