Jesus was very clear about the mission He gave His Church: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19). For two thousand years, Christians rightly returned to those words as our Great Commission. We’re called not simply to make converts or add people to church membership rolls, but to make disciples of Jesus Christ. But there’s a question we sometimes fail to ask: How do we actually do that?
Most Christians know many of the things we ought to do. We ought to pray. We ought to read the Bible. We ought to repent of our sins, forgive others, grow in holiness, serve our neighbors, and share the Gospel. None of that’s new information. But knowing what a disciple ought to look like and knowing how to become one are not necessarily the same thing.
Over the years, I’ve become increasingly convinced that one of the great needs in the Church is to help people move from the “ought to” of the Christian life to the “how to.” If we tell people to become mature disciples of Jesus without helping them understand how God actually transforms a life, we shouldn’t be surprised when many Christians remain stuck. Discipleship is a process, after all. It begins when we recognize that we can’t successfully lead our lives apart from God. It requires us to trust Him enough to surrender our lives and wills to His care. And then, by the grace of God and the power of the Holy Spirit, we begin the sometimes difficult work of allowing Him to show us what needs to change.
That means repentance. It means confession. It means allowing God to remove defects of character we might rather hold onto. It means acknowledging where we’ve hurt other people and, when appropriate, making amends. It also means continuing to examine our lives honestly, deepening our relationship with God through Scripture and prayer, and eventually helping others discover the same transforming life we found in Jesus Christ. In other words, discipleship isn’t about a one-time event; it’s a pathway towards a deeper life in Christ.
That conviction is at the heart of a new resource I’m excited to share with you. Several years ago, I was inspired by my experience with Celebrate Recovery and developed the idea of a 12-step process for discipleship, along with the DISCIPLESHIP acrostic that guides it. When I shared the concept with my friend, Deacon Dolly McLemore, she immediately saw its potential and wanted to help in developing it further. Here was a familiar step-by-step process that could help Christians think practically about spiritual transformation, not as a program we complete but as a way of continually surrendering more of our lives to God. It was right up her alley, and using her experience in building curriculum, she developed a simple framework through which to present the material.
From that framework came The DISCIPLESHIP Pathway: A Guide to Spiritual Formation in Christ. It follows twelve movements of Christian discipleship, beginning with recognizing our inability to lead our lives on our own and culminating in passing the Good News we received on to others in both word and deed. Along the way, we look to Scripture and the lives of biblical men and women to see what surrender, repentance, confession, healing, reconciliation, prayer, and faithful witness actually look like.
But I didn’t want this to be another book that simply gives Christians more things they ought to know. Each step includes practical spiritual disciplines, reflection questions, opportunities for discussion, and prayer. My hope is that it can be used by an individual seeking to grow more deeply in Christ, by a small group walking through the process together, by a recovery ministry, or by an entire congregation seeking a practical pathway toward spiritual maturity.
And most importantly, these twelve steps aren’t twelve boxes we should check, and then we’ve made it. None of us reaches Step Twelve and graduates from discipleship. We still need to surrender our wills to God, repent and confess when we sin, examine our lives, seek reconciliation, immerse ourselves in Scripture, pray, and share the hope of Jesus with others. And when we finish, we do it again! That’s because the goal of discipleship isn’t completing a program. The goal is becoming more like Jesus through a daily walk forward. With St. Paul, we press forward towards the goal set before us.
And that takes a lifetime.
On Tuesday, September 8, the American Anglican Council will release The DISCIPLESHIP Pathway through our imprint, American Anglican Press. I’m excited to finally put this resource into the hands of the Church, and I’m grateful to Dcn. Dolly for taking my original idea and putting it into a framework that became this book. Our prayer is that this book will help us do more than talk about discipleship. We pray it will help ordinary Christians take practical steps toward the freedom, healing, holiness, and abundant life that Jesus desires for us, and as God changes us, we pray He’ll use us to help others take those steps as well.
After all, Jesus didn’t merely tell us to be disciples. He told us to make them.
COMING SEPTEMBER 8
The DISCIPLESHIP Pathway: A Guide to Spiritual Formation in Christ