four common distortions of discipleship

If you’re leading a college or young adult ministry your primary job is to make disciples of Jesus and equip them to do the same.

There are very few Christians who would disagree with that statement, but there are numerous pastors and ministry leaders who don’t have a clear picture of what a disciple of Jesus is, much less what it means or looks like to make disciples of Jesus.

That’s a serious problem. 

It’s highly unlikely that you’d be able to make (even something relatively simple) if you don’t know what it is. 

If you had no knowledge of wood working and you were given the task of making a miter joint, odds are against you succeeding. If you have no knowledge of French cuisine and were told to make beef bourguignon, my guess is you’d get the beef part right but be stumped by even pronouncing bouruig-what, much less making it.

So what do we do about this? How do we create some consistency and clarity when it comes to disciple-making in our ministry?

When something in language is used commonly and broadly without clear definition, often it can be helpful to start with defining what it’s NOT.

So let’s start with this:

Four common distortions of discipleship

1.Discipleship as information transfer

This is, at least in the western church, by far and away the most common discipleship distortion. The church has bought into the enlightenment mindset that education leads to transformation. As a result the vast majority of our discipleship centers on getting more biblical information into the heads (and sometimes hearts) of those we lead.

How this plays out

Functionally, this looks like:

• The church that has a Sunday School class doing a study through a book of the Bible. 
• The college ministry that has a semester-long book study on The Fuel and the Flame or some other great discipleship focused resource. 
• The pastor who does a sermon series on disciple-making in the Gospel of Luke. 

What’s missing: connection and implementation

All those are great things, right? So what’s missing? Connection and implementation are woefully absent. There’s little depth of relationship developed in a weekly group that is primarily focused on engaging with content. It’s surprisingly rare to find a Sunday school, small group, or Sunday morning church service that does well at empowering those who are a part of it to actually put what they’ve learned into practice.

Jesus makes it clear repeatedly throughout his ministry: it’s not enough to know the truth - we must also respond and implement what we’ve learned. See Matthew 7:24-26 for a good example of Jesus saying this explicitly.

Sunday school, book studies, and sermons are excellent things. However, the way they are implemented in most ministry settings makes them primarily about giving those involved more information about what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. Information is a crucial ingredient in our discipleship pizza, but by itself it’s worth little. 

2.Discipleship as spiritual activities

The second most prevalent discipleship distortion is what I’ll call doing spiritual activities or having spiritual experiences. Functionally this plays out similar to the above distortion, but the emphasis falls more on activity, participation, and experience than the actual content. 

How this plays out

It might look like...

• A young adult group doing a twice-a-month service project in the community
• A church crafting and implementing a list of “spiritual practices” for the congregation to do on a daily or weekly basis
• A college ministry focused on getting people to their prayer and worship nights

What’s missing: information

The ministries that emphasize spiritual activities and experiences as central to disciple-making tend to be low on information. They prioritize people showing up and feeling something. As a result develop malformed disciples who run off of either a sense of duty or the emotional high of experience, neither of which will carry someone through the challenges that are promised for a follower of Jesus in a broken world.  

3. Discipleship as one-on-one mentoring

The churches and ministries that I see with a slightly more Biblical understanding of biblical discipleship tend to get stuck in this category - disciple-making becomes one-on-one mentoring.

We’re getting closer to the actual image of disciple-making that’s given in Scripture. The mentoring model provides depth of relationship (connection), truth being communicated (information), and the challenge and accountability of putting that truth into practice (implementation). But it’s still not a complete pizza. 

What this looks like in practice

• A college senior meets one-on-one with a freshman regularly to discuss what they’re reading in their Bible
• The church creates an “adopt-a-college-student” program to help connect students with Christian families. 
• An older man in the church meets each Tuesday morning with a newly married 22 year old to talk about life, marriage, and faith. 

What’s missing: multiplication

Multiplication. 

Read through the Gospels and try to find Jesus meeting one-on-one with anyone. Do the same with Paul in Acts and the Epistles. In both cases the instances are surprisingly few. Obviously it’s likely there were more instances of one-on-one interaction than are recorded, but if it was a crucial part of the disciple-making process, wouldn’t it be as intentionally communicated? 

Instead what we see demonstrated in Scripture is a discipleship that takes place in a communal context. There’s almost always 2-3 people with Jesus at any given moment. 

Why does this matter? The intent of disciple-making is multiplication. If you’re only discipling one person you’re merely doing addition. However, if you are doing so with two or three people at once, you’re setting yourself up for exponential impact.

4. Discipleship as hanging out 

This distortion is particularly prevalent in groups led by college students or young adults and tends to be in reaction to the first distortion (information transfer). Many younger Christians have realized the insufficiency of information transfer and swung too far in the opposite directions they search for true relational connection.  

What this looks like in practice:

• The community group that gets together each week with no intentional space for engaging with God’s Word. 
• The college student who’s ditched the church and says that they’re getting spiritually fed by having real, authentic conversations with their Christian friends. 
• The young adult ministry that is built primarily around game nights and fun hangouts. 

What’s missing? 

Information and implementation.  Relational connection is absolutely essential for effective disciple-making, relationships are never in place of information or implementation. Instead, the relationships become the context for the communication of life-changing information and the response that leads to obedience  and integration of the truth into everyday life (implementation).