A Promised Privilege

Pastors may well find themselves faced with pressure to count statistics of new disciples in local congregations. Pressure exists to show increased numbers as we work to grow local churches. But too often we forget that every number represents a human being for whom Christ died. Every number is a person, someone who needs the love of Jesus Christ and who needs to be challenged to grow in faith and in Christian maturity. Ultimately, discipleship is a privilege that leads us to the heart of God.

Counting disciples is more than maintaining statistics. Read on and you will engage in real-life stories of how the Church of the Nazarene is actively making Christlike disciples in the nations.

As we reach out to one another, we find mutual accountability and mutual spiritual growth. This discipleship process may take on many forms as spiritual practices are shared and developed.

The community of Christian faith around the world sees a deep need for serious discipleship of the laity. Research shows a real loss in basic Christian knowledge and practice, a loss evident even in older church members today. Discipling Christians, particularly the laity, remains one of the key challenges for the church.

What is Discipleship?

Discipleship defines our daily walk with Jesus Christ, anchored in God’s grace, with Christ our guide, and the Holy Spirit our support.

Discipleship describes our journey both as individuals and as communities of faith.

Discipleship forms us into Christlikeness, challenges us to discern God’s will in the church and for the world, and calls us to missionally engage in the world.

As members, both clergy and laity, we learn to become disciples through the church and live out our discipleship at home, at work, and within our communities. As disciples, we draw upon resources found in the Bible, through the Body of Christ, the church, and in our daily lives as we follow Christ. This shaping-seeking-serving process calls us to obedience, understanding, and dedication to the kingdom of God embodied in the teaching and ministry of Jesus.

Of course lay people engage in other aspects of congregational life beyond discipleship. Lay members engage through worship and prayer, gather in fellowship, witness through evangelism and compassionate ministry, and serve each other in local ministry. Still, without robust discipleship, the church faces the constant challenge of losing its identity, its direction, and its vision of the kingdom of God.

A History of Discipleship

Every time the church faced challenges throughout history, she responded with innovative models of discipleship. Even before Jesus’s day, the Jewish people knew education proved important for Israel.

While in exile, synagogues preserved Old Testament Scripture and rallied around the study of the Word of God. The Jewish people realized that neither the power of the nation nor the sanctity of the Temple protected them from their own sinful, self-destructive tendencies. Only their knowledge of God would preserve their way as the people of God.

Jesus modeled discipleship not only for His twelve disciples but also for anyone who would follow Him. Jesus taught through stories (parables), He gave direct instruction in the Sermon on the Mount, and He prophetically modeled life in the kingdom of God through prayer, healings, and wise admonitions. Jesus also sent up to 70 disciples to live out His message through word and deed. He shaped all those who followed Him and encouraged them to seek and serve the kingdom of God.

The early church definitely embraced discipleship at this key time, both in initiating new Christians into the church and deepening their ongoing Christian conviction. Historic doctrinal formulations, alongside Scripture, served as resources for the instruction (catechesis) of potential believers and ongoing members. All of the early church leaders passionately invested in discipleship.

Augustine, an early Christian theologian and philosopher, believed teaching new members remained one of his central duties each year. The church needed a laity that knew the faith since they often lived in a deeply pluralistic and divided world. The early church did not even know “how” to separate evangelism and education, witness and discipleship, since congregations required a literate laity just to survive.

Yet, even by Augustine’s day (AD 354-430), discipleship waned due to the rise of Constantine and the creation of a “civil religion” anchored in Christian language and identification. When people “joined” the church, rather than “became” disciples, soon civil religion infected both laity and clergy. Early on, the church discovered that to forsake educating lay people it risked becoming a cultural institution rather than a convicted community. When the church failed to educate its laity it soon became captive to the political and cultural forces in the world, and soon found itself a servant to the dominant culture rather than a church of dedicated, passionate, informed “people” of God.

When civil religion could no longer sustain either churches or their civilization, it took laity who dedicated themselves to withdraw from society, live austere lives, and regain the role of church teacher in monasteries. Many early monastics were lay rather than priests. These lay teachers partnered with religious orders to maintain the faith by preserving the church’s teaching through the spiritually and academically dry period known as the Dark Ages. The Reformation revealed the need for a literate laity. Rome failed in responding to the Reformers. The church of this era failed initially to prepare a laity that could withstand the excesses and manipulation of the indulgence system. Laity lacked the resources to discern the faith. Religious imposters manipulated laity as the church de-emphasized teaching and critical thought.

Martin Luther’s renewal (Reformation) remained a challenge to educate people to the faith. Luther knew the importance of a literate laity to the point he translated the Bible into the German language, wrote and published sermons, wrote catechisms, created family resources, pressed for universal education of boys and girls, and exchanged the vestments of the priest for the robes of the teacher.

Collectively, the Reformers provided a discipleship that resisted not only external cultural forces but also manipulation from within the church.

John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, also understood the need of an educated laity to preserve a movement of God. Wesley’s ministry occurred during a powerful evangelical renewal across the U.S. and England. Thousands responded to Wesley, evangelist George Whitefield, even preacher and theologian Jonathan Edwards in the U.S. Wesley distinguished himself through his dedication to ongoing discipleship as a part of evangelism. Methodist scholars like Tom Albin noted Wesley not only conserved converts through Methodist classes and bands, people actually underwent conversion through those small groups.

Albin’s review of Methodist diaries revealed many people went through spiritual transformations in the class meetings. The ongoing learning and accountability that followed grounded those conversions into daily discipleship. Wesley reported Whitefield claimed his own evangelistic thrust yielded a “rope of sand” that did not survive. John Wesley created a movement based on educating as well as evangelizing the laity.

Methodism also relied on educated laity as part of what David Hempton calls “The Empire of the Spirit.” Methodist laypeople carried the gospel as they served as sailors, soldiers, and merchants during the rise of the British Empire.

Circuit riding preachers, following America’s western expansion, relied on lay helpers to sustain churches. In Britain itself, the second generation of Methodists abandoned education and accountability, and the movement fell victim to cultural forces. Methodist historians note, for a season, British Methodism resembled more a political movement than of a vital church.

Elsewhere a literate laity partnered with clergy around the globe, and Methodism became the fastest growing evangelistic movement of the modern era. Discipleship not only conserved evangelistic outreach, this literate laity insured the stewardship of God’s work for generations.

Stewardship might be the last historical theme.

The rise of the British and North American Sunday school movement might be seen as an attempt to steward resources to insure an educated laity.

Many know the Sunday school movement primarily as an evangelistic effort. Sunday school organizers often entered towns before pastors arrived from denominations. However, the Sunday school movement cared about the stewardship of resources.

Leaders desired to see a maximum number of laity educated simply and at low cost. In an era with a large number of curricula, church members often missed the most important aspect of the original Sunday school “Union” or convention movement. Many early Sunday school movements remained local ministries with homegrown materials. These curriculum materials represented local contexts, but lacked staying power over time.

The early movement’s resources often repeated the same themes, revealed the limitations of the experiences of local teachers, and resulted in fragmented efforts. The creation of Sunday school unions, and conventions, stewarded regional efforts, cross-pollinated ideas, and raised the visibility of educating the people of God as its sole priority. These conventions sparked an ongoing movement until fragmented later through denominational and professional associations.

Throughout this historical review we see the discipleship of laity proves crucial for the church. Discipleship conserves the Christian faith, protecting laity from forces outside and within the church. Like Jesus, authentic discipleship uses many approaches for teaching about the kingdom of God and connecting with people where they live.

Authentic discipleship provides a “good beginning” as teachers cultivate and sustain new Christians. At the same time discipleship provides a framework for ongoing missional outreach. Ultimately, discipleship efforts steward resources to maximize educational efforts for everyone, resulting in an effective, literate laity.

A Different Accounting

We started this conversation with the accounting points of discipleship. We close with a different kind of accountability, one shaped in the economics of the kingdom of God. Pastor Mark Walker from Lansing, Michigan, Woodview Church of the Nazarene recounts the story of Lindsey, a new Christian on the journey of discipleship for two years. The journey has not always been easy as she has dealt with attitude, temper, forgiveness, tithing, alcohol abuse, and difficult family relationships.

Recently Lindsey took a trip to a major conference with her church. One of the women on that trip (a brand new Christian battling addiction) stole some of Lindsey’s medication and ended in the hospital. However, Lindsey and the other women rallied around her. Later Lindsey said, “All I know is that the church loved me as I was and I want her to experience that love as well.” For Lindsey, discipleship entailed “giving away” the love of God. Lindsey’s bounty remains anchored in the riches of the kingdom of God.

As church laity follows Jesus’ plain command to “make disciples,” they discover that amazing things happen in history—and today. Every Christian should be a growing Christian, one who engages in the privilege of being discipled and discipling others.

Dean Blevins is professor of practical theology and Christian discipleship at Nazarene Theological Seminary in Kansas City.

Please note: All facts, figures, and titles were accurate to the best of our knowledge at the time of original publication but may have since changed.