Recovering the Missing Element in Discipleship
This article was originally published in the Baptist Trumpet on May 5, 2026, as part of my column, “Green Pastors, Seeking Greener Pastures.”
By conservative estimates, if we tallied all the discipleship resources available to churches today, the total would exceed 3,000. There are literally hundreds of prominent ministries producing discipleship materials. Each of these ministries produces multiple curricula and series. Despite this abundance, only 28% of churches have a clear, reproducible discipleship process, and fewer than 5% actually reproduce disciples.
Those statistics raise an uncomfortable question for us. Have Christians not yet written a good resource for discipleship? They certainly have, but we’re missing a key ingredient: the church needs disciple-makers. I’m not talking about people who are willing to go through a curriculum; I’m talking about people who will be patient as the aspects of discipleship that can’t be taught take root and shape their disciples’ lives.
In discipleship, more is caught than taught. We should invest time in people’s lives by working through their thinking. We should build up disciples who truly know the Word of God. These things can be accomplished in a classroom-like setting (whether formal or informal, as the culture demands). But stopping at the cerebral falls short of making disciple-makers. We must also form our disciples’ affections. While we can teach people what their affections should be, developing those affections in a disciple’s life happens through life-on-life doing.
The task of the disciple-maker is to demonstrate how love for God is lived. Truth must move from the pages into the posture of each Christian’s life. This is why so much of discipleship cannot be reduced to a lesson plan. It must be observed, absorbed, and embodied.
The Incommunicable Attributes of Discipleship
While we can describe many of the essential elements of Christian maturity, it is easy to see that many of them are difficult to impart through a lesson plan.
• A Lived Prayer Life — Yes, we teach our disciples how to pray. But let’s take it a step further. When I mention the impact of great prayer warriors, you likely already have someone in mind. People who naturally pray before difficult conversations or after receiving bad news. We can teach models of prayer, the theology of prayer, and categories of prayer, but they must learn to pray honestly and through distraction by experience. Lingering before God is learned by proximity, not prescription.
• Emotional Maturity Under Pressure — The Bible offers a beautiful guide to conflict resolution. Nevertheless, the old idiom holds true: hurt people hurt people. Most conflicts are escalated by flippancy and reactive attitudes. It’s through being around stable people that we learn how mature believers respond to criticism, disappointment, betrayal, stress, and chaos. How a person handles frustration says volumes. Likewise, a disciple’s reaction reveals their formation. Stability is contagious.
• The Ministry of Hospitality — Hospitality is more than cultural etiquette. It is the overflow of a heart shaped by the presence of God. It is shown in the ability to make others feel comfortable in our presence. Our expectations for being a good host are largely shaped by culture. We could turn to an etiquette book, but our preferences for formality or informality are shaped by how we grew up and where we live. Biblical hospitality is a universal calling. The art of making people feel comfortable in our presence cannot be mastered in theory. We learn hospitality in the life of another.
• Evangelistic Instinct — We could take someone through a program that models evangelization. But I’ve found that sharing our faith is really about instinct. Noticing spiritual openings and asking good questions that move ordinary conversations toward eternal things can’t be taught. That’s the product of spending stray hours meditating on the Word, delighting in the hope of glory, and praying for strangers whose stories we may never know. We don’t need a script as much as we need a lived-out faith.
• Pastoral Presence — If you hand someone a certificate commemorating their completion of a discipleship course, they’re likely to be full of their newly acquired credentials. Pastoral presence demands silence at hospital bedsides, a steady tone in difficult conversations, and, many times, restraint in seeking the right answers. It’s just as important to learn when not to speak as it is to learn what to say when we do. Presence is apprenticeship work.
• Humility in Leadership — Most of our aims in leadership development are achieved through faithful time invested in people. There are excellent books that describe best practices. Disciples need to observe leaders who do unnoticed work and defer credit. Real leaders absorb inconvenience and empower others without insecurity. People can’t learn humility.
The Vision We’re Missing
Discipleship has the potential to shape a vision for Christian living that encompasses godly marriages, parenting, aging with grace, finishing well, and multigenerational faithfulness. But it only gets there if we stop trying to find a program to fill the vacuum of disciple-makers. When discipleship is reduced to content delivery, it shrinks our vision of the Christian life.
Become a Disciple-Maker
The solution is not complicated, but it is costly. We need men and women willing to invest deeply in others. People who will open their lives, not just their Bibles. People who are willing to be seen, known, and imitated.
You can be a disciple-maker. It may require admitting that you’ve never been discipled yourself. Start praying that God would bring someone into your life with whom you could pursue an intentional relationship to shape you beyond lectures and lessons. If you know who that person might be, go to them and ask them to pray about this with you. It won’t happen overnight, but good things come with steady discipline.
Be a disciple-maker. Remember, the things that shape a disciple most deeply are not what we say, but the life they see.
Living This Out in France
This conviction about discipleship is also shaping the way our family thinks about missionary work. Michelle and I are preparing to serve in France, where we hope to share the gospel and invest patiently in people through relationships, hospitality, discipleship, and the life of the local church. We are not going with the notion that the right program can manufacture mature Christians. We want to live close enough to people for the gospel to be heard, seen, questioned, and eventually lived. That’s how we disciple believers who, in turn, disciple others and help establish healthy local churches.
If you would like to learn more about why we are going to France or become part of the churches, families, and individuals helping send us, I would love to invite you into that story.