Devotion 2 - Why the Neglect in Discipleship?

Acts 11:25-26 – “Then Barnabas departed for Tarsus to seek Saul. And when he had found him, he brought him to Antioch. So it was that for a whole year they assembled with the church and taught a great many people. And the disciples were first called Christians in Antioch.”

“Christians” and “disciples” are synonyms. Discipleship sums up Christ’s plan for the world, yet sadly, it is the one essential aspect of the Great Commission that most churches have neglected. We have lost the art of disciple-making. Many sincere Christians today may have the desire to fulfil the mandate of the Great Commission, that is, to make disciples, but struggle to find the path to do so.

Like two wings of an airplane, both elements of the Great Commission matter—reaching and teaching.  The church that emphasizes reaching but neglects teaching has neglected the Great Commission altogether.

Supplemental vs Fundamental

Many tend to see discipleship merely as a supplemental ministry in the church rather than its fundamental foundation. Moreover, discipleship is time consuming and unspectacular, and it takes a long time to yield results, as well as being difficult to measure. Living in a consumeristic culture, we are gravitated toward result and outcome-based church growth. Thus, we tend to focus on speed rather than direction (where God want us to go) and efficiency rather than destiny.

We are mesmerised by the success syndrome or the quick way of growth, rather than by following the tedious process and time-consuming ministry of discipleship. As a result, we conveniently compromise the important for the urgent. Discipleship does not warrant our priority as we are distracted to put second things first when we should be putting first things first, thus, missing God’s main redemptive purpose for the Church. At the heart of the matter, we lack a core biblical conviction for discipleship, which leads to a lack of intentionality. Hence, discipleship is way back in the queue of priorities.

Sometimes, we may question if discipleship is worth it when we see those we discipled fail badly, despite our heavy investment in them. Remember, even Jesus’s disciples failed. Judas did not make it to the end and Peter made big mistakes too. Discipling is a frustrating ministry, and our impatient, efficiency-oriented society looks at frustration as something to be avoided.

Discipleship requires costly effort and time and sometimes painful, long-term commitment to individuals. Christians in this fast-moving society are often reluctant to take such commitments on. To restore genuine discipleship back into the church, loving God and loving people must first and foremost be restored in our hearts so that discipleship becomes a passion rather than a duty.

In her book, “Unclutter Your Life”, Katherine Gibson offered us a great insight. She wrote “Unclutter first, then organise – or you may fall into the trap of organising clutter.”

We must learn to “major in the majors”, and not “major in the minors”. Sadly, many Christians buy into the notion that church health is measured by church size. We are not criticising the big and celebrating the small. However, we caution that we can grow big without growing deep, and thus miss out the destiny of God for the church. Church size is not necessarily an indicator of health. If the mandate of discipleship is missing in the growth process, it can be merely an illusion of health.

Consumerism & Carnality vs Consecration

We live in an age of consumerism in which the defining features are our rights, our choices and our convenience. Sadly, the same spirit has subtly seeped into the Church. We come to church expecting a good program, inspiring preaching, great music and children’s program, etc. We want to enjoy all these provisions while guarding our privacy by having no one interfere with our personal lives. Dismally, because of this, many Christians are living double lives, looking fine in their public lives, while struggling with sin, serious problems or discouragements in their private and inner lives which no one in church knows about.

Moreover, we have been taught and believe that we can become a Christian without being a disciple of Christ. This is the default gospel. Discipleship is too difficult, too demanding and thus we opt for simple and easy discipleship programs into church structure. Lamentably, often it becomes a structure without relationship depth and love. We have merely added discipleship ministry into the church structure instead of discipleship as a lifestyle. We fit Christ into our overcrowded schedule, paying Him lip service instead of anchoring Him as Lord of our life and schedule.

If we reduce discipleship to mere programs and materials, we are merely doing recycling ministry rather than discipleship ministry. Discipleship is not about a better program, a better curriculum, a better material, it is about producing a better and authentic disciple maker. Discipleship is “life upon life”. In fact, materials are immaterial if the one using it is not personifying its value. We reproduce who we are and some things in life are better caught than taught. We are not called to just transfer knowledge; we are called to transform lives.

We are tutored and discipled by the world more than the Word and has thus become conformed to it. Being deeply conditioned by our culture, our worldview and values are no different from the non-believers. We have lost the biblical worldview!

Discipline cannot be divorced from discipleship. Unfortunately, discipline is what modern disciples need the most but want the least. We are too busy, in fact, compulsively busy, but yet addicted to and love this lifestyle of busyness.

Christian vs Discipleship

The call to salvation is the same call to discipleship. The term “Christian” (meaning “belonging to Christ”) and the first use of the word “Christian” are in Acts 11:26, “The disciples were first called Christians in Antioch.”

The early disciples are all Christians. Thus, the words “Christian” and “disciple” were synonymous, there is no difference between a Christian and a disciple. Unfortunately, today we have many Christians but few disciples. In our desire to win souls for Christ, we often compromise and offer a softer, comfortable and more accommodating Jesus to receive as Saviour. Conveniently, we water down the Gospel to reflect our culture. Because we do not want to be called radicals, we leave out the more intense parts that might scare people away. This is an easy trap to fall into. We reduce the Gospel and its expectations to a matter of simply believing, not involving Lordship and demand of allegiance. We preach a gospel that says we can believe in Jesus and still continue to be the master of our life. However, the truth is, if Jesus is not the Lord of all, then He is not the Lord at all!

A.W. Tozer has put it aptly, “Christianity has been watered down until the solution is so weak that if it were poison it would not hurt anyone, and if it were medicine, it would not cure anyone.”

Making disciples is not a special call or gift of the Spirit to a few saints; it is a lifestyle of obedience expected of the whole household of God – a living demonstration of the priesthood of all believers. Unfortunately, it is this essential ministry that is most neglected.