Discipleship and the Great Commission

Introduction

My journey into vocational ministry began as a church-based youth worker. My motivation was to share the good news of Jesus in such a way that young people would be persuaded to trust Christ for their salvation. Giving witness to the Gospel took varied forms of creative engagement, and with time we saw results. Increasing numbers responded to the invitation to receive salvation by faith. It was an exhilarating experience.

Soon, however, questions regarding sustainability emerged. A significant number of these new Christians seemed to lack enthusiasm and direction in their relationship with Christ. They appeared overly-dependent on our programs to stay motivated. I became increasingly uncertain about what ought to be my priorities in ministry.

It was against this backdrop that I was reading Paul’s letter to the Colossians one day. My eyes fastened on these words: “We proclaim him, warning and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone fully mature in Christ. To this end I strenuously contend with all the energy Christ so powerfully works in me” (Col. 1:28-29). It was a transformative moment. I could see how all of Paul’s efforts were directed to a singular goal: to present every individual in his care as “fully mature in Christ.” Achieving this goal, Paul explains, would consume all his energy, both in evangelistic proclamation and evangelical teaching. 

This fresh realization made me reset the focus of ministry for me. The emphasis needed to shift from organizing effective events to nurturing effective disciples. I had to learn how to develop ministry as an integration of witness and discipleship, and so to align it more accurately with the aim of Christ’s Great Commission (Matt. 28:19-20). 

After a brief lesson from history, this essay will first define discipleship, and then reveal why discipleship is crucial to both individuals and churches. 

The Evangelical Awakening: Sustainability or a “Rope of Sand”

Two men stand out in the story of the great evangelical Awakening in the British Isles: John Wesley and George Whitefield. Among their contemporaries, there was no doubt that the more popular and effective preacher was Whitefield. He drew crowds of fifty thousand to hear him preach. But Whitefield’s impact faded with his passing, whereas the influence of Wesley continued to expand long after his demise.

Because of the priority of discipleship and disciple-making in Wesley’s ministry strategy. Whitefield had been content with the remarkable conversions that were the hallmark of his preaching ministry. Wesley, however, was determined to see every individual that responded to the gospel nurtured into “Christian perfection.” Whitefield himself candidly compares the outcome of Wesley’s work to his:

John Wesley no doubt found such wisdom in the revelation of Scripture. He could see that two priorities dominated and occupied the minds of the earliest Christians: being witnesses to Jesus and being disciples of Jesus. The priority of being a witness came about from their keenness to share (with their neighbors and unreached people-groups) how Jesus can save them from their sins. The priority of discipleship came about from the realization that every Christian needed to constantly grow into greater maturity as a follower of Jesus.

Where there is effective witness, the church may grow in numbers. But it is only where there is effective discipleship that the church will grow in maturity. When Christians are marked by Christlikeness, they will be able to reproduce their character in others. This is what made the early apostolic church so influential, drawing the attention of the mighty Roman Empire and eventually bringing about its transformation from the inside out. It was discipleship, then, that had the power to transform the fruit of apostolic witness into a harvest of personal godliness and social good.

What is discipleship?

“Disciple” (mathētēs, “learner, pupil”) is the most frequent designation in the New Testament for those who committed themselves to Jesus and his public ministry. Over 300 occurrences of this word are found in the Gospels and in Acts. In its original Greek sense, a mathētēs was someone who bound himself to another in order to gain his practical and theoretical knowledge. He/she was an “apprentice in a trade, a student of medicine, or a member of a philosophical school.” Discipleship was only possible in the company of a “teacher” (didaskalos).²

Rabbinic Judaism developed this concept further where the learner-teacher relationship was more intense: “The talmîd now, as originally the Gk. mathētēs, belongs to his teacher, to whom he subordinates himself in almost servile fashion.”³ Jesus adopted and transformed these fundamental notions of discipleship. Whereas Greek and Rabbinic disciples volunteered to come under a teacher, Christian discipleship was contingent on the “call” by the Master. And whereas disciples usually attachedthemselves to a teacher for a limited period of time, that is, until they could separate to become independent teachers themselves, the call to Christian discipleship was absolute, demanding a lifelong commitment of loyalty and obedience to Jesus Christ.

It is this unique character of Christian discipleship that comes through in all the Gospels. But Matthew seems to be the most focused on this theme. In comparison to Mark’s use of “disciple” forty-six times, and Luke’s thirty-seven, Matthew mentions “disciple” seventy-three times. Significantly, he employs the more rare verb, mathēteuein, “make disciples” on three of the four occasions in the NT (cf., Matt. 13:52; 27:57; 28:19 and Acts 14:21). In the climax of his Gospel, he presents Jesus’ final commission to the eleven disciples: “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 that I have commanded you” (28:19). Here, the participles “baptizing” in the name of the triune God, and “teaching” to obey are subordinate to “make disciples,” the main verb used with imperatival force.⁴ 

The only occurrence of the verb mathēteuein (“make disciples”) in Paul (Acts 14:21) is significant because it expresses Paul’s commitment to the integration of witness and discipleship in his praxis of ministry: “After they had proclaimed the good news to that city and had made many disciples, they returned to Lystra, then on to Iconium and Antioch” (NRSV).⁵

What makes discipleship crucial for the sustainability of Christians and the Church?

Never before, since the early centuries, has Christianity grown so rapidly in previously un-evangelized societies. But unlike the apostolic and post-apostolic period, the modern church’s commitment to witness has not been accompanied by a concomitant commitment to discipleship and disciple-making. As a result, Christian spirituality today may be a “mile long and an inch deep.” In the evangelical Church’s enthusiasm to emphasize the necessity of evangelistic proclamation, has she failed to prepare for the harvest of new believers that would emerge? 

In 1974, following the historic gathering of 2700 global Christian leaders at Lausanne, evangelicals covenanted to a fresh impetus in world evangelization, and Christian mission towards unreached people groups was energized and accelerated on an unprecedented scale. There is no doubt, historically speaking, that the Lausanne Movement played no small role in catalyzing the dramatic increase in conversions to Christianity globally. But was there adequate forethought about how new believers would be protected and nurtured towards Christian maturity? The evidence suggests this wasn’t the case, and little emphasis was placed on the vital importance of Christian discipleship for spiritual formation.⁶

In a global survey conducted over a 10-month period (September 2020 – July 2021), involving dozens of “listening calls,” a team of leaders from Lausanne Movement pursued responses to five key questions. The first of these was, “What are the most significant gaps or remaining opportunities for the fulfillment of the Great Commission?” The notes from all the listening calls, amounting to over 104,000 words were scientifically coded and analyzed. The data yielded eleven significant gaps globally.

In ascending order of importance they were: marketplace and workplace ministries, contextualization, cross-cultural missions, creation care, Muslim evangelism, unreached people groups, unresponsiveness of churches to the external world, diversity in leadership, love and unity, and reaching younger generations. The concern that came out on top globally was the need for discipleship!⁷

The survey confirmed that the most critical “gap” in global Christianity was the lack of clarity and commitment within evangelicalism to nurture authentic Christian disciples. This was the cry from the ground, and after years of neglect, the rich harvest of new believers around the world faced the two

Threat #1: Misbelief

The first is the risk of misbelief, that is, confusing the essential message of the Gospel of Christ. This burden is evident in the NT. In almost all of the Pauline epistles, Paul argues against some heretical tendency or the other, urging God’s people to “not be deceived by fine-sounding arguments” (Col. 2:4; cf. 2:8; Phil. 3:2; Gal. 4:17; 2 Cor. 11:1-4). The recognition of heterodox teachings and the grave danger these posed to the early Christians come into sharper relief in the later documents of the NT, such as the Pastoral letters and the letters of John and Jude. The purpose statement of the brief epistle of Jude states:

Similarly, millions of Christians in the majority world are currently bombarded by heterodox teachings that distort and pervert the truth of Christ’s Gospel. Unlike the Early Church, however, there is little recognition of their insidious power to cause the Church to implode. Only a few alarms are raised by church leaders tasked with shepherding the faithful.

On the heels of the greatest global expansion of the Christian faith since the apostolic period,⁸ we see the emergence of false teachers and false teachings. They are filling the space that ought to be occupied by dedicated pastors and teachers instructing young believers on “what is appropriate to sound doctrine” (Titus 2:1).

Threat #2: Misbehavior

The second grave danger of the lack of committed disciple-making is the risk of misbehavior. When Christians are not grounded in the knowledge of God’s Word and have not become disciplined in the application of the principles of Scripture to everyday living, ethical and moral distortions emerge. Over time, these distortions then become normalized. Ungodly behavior gradually and decisively influences the wider body of believers because of the natural openness that exists in Christian relationships. Soon, whole communities are incapable of discerning what is wrong or even scandalous to Christ, such as sexual immorality, conflictuality, racism, and materialism. It is this danger that prompted Paul to warn the Corinthians: “Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump?” (1 Cor. 5:6).

Conclusion

We are living in remarkable times, when the proclamation of the gospel in previously unreached regions of the world is meeting with dramatic responses, and millions are being added to the Church. But we are also living in perilous times, where the wellbeing and sanctification of so many Christians in spiritual infancy hang in the balance, with opportunists and charlatans looking for ways to exploit their trust and take them captive with distortions of the gospel. 

The global church can be commended for taking the Great Commission seriously enough to “go” to “all nations” proclaiming the message of salvation, so that those who believe may be saved. But the task remains alarmingly unfinished. It is imperative that with fresh conviction and energy, we become intentional about the spiritual maturity of these new believers. We need to disciple them through dedicated pastoral care and responsible biblical teaching: “warning and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone fully mature in Christ” (Col. 1:28).

Endnotes

1. . H. Gilder, The Philadelphia Repository and Religious and Literary Review, Volume 1 (Philadelphia: Orrin Rogers, 1840), 189, cited in J. D. Walt, “The Bond of a Band vs. The Rope of Sand,” Seedbed, July 28, 2023, https://seedbed.com/the-bond-of-a-band-vs-the-rope-of-sand (Internet accessed 23 May 2024).
2.  On this see, D Müller, mathētēs in Colin Brown ed., New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, Vol 1: 483-490.
3. Ibid, 485.
4. On this see, David Bosch, Transforming Mission (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis, 2003), 73-74.
5.  Also NASB, NAB, Amplified, and NLT; but “taught many” (KJV), “won a large number of disciples” (NIV).
6. This is the subject of a PhD thesis, which laments the lack of integration of spirituality and missional action by Lausanne and the broader evangelical world. See, Sarah Louise Nicholl, “Toward Integrated Mission for the Evangelical Lausanne Movement,” Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of Queensland, Bribane, Australia, 2021.
7.  “Analysis of Lausanne 4 Listening Calls”, (esp. p.13), https://lausanne.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/The-Evangelical-Church-Interacting-between-the-Global-and-the-Local-Global-Listening-Team-Report-21.11.03.pdf (Internet accessed May 23, 2024).
8. Timothy C. Tennent, Invitation to World Missions (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Kregel, 2010), 256: “During that period [the Great Century], which is roughly coterminous with the nineteenth century, more new Christians emerged from a wider number of new people groups than at any previous time in the history of the church.”