Discipleship

Discipleship is the transforming process that God wants to do in every person, no matter their age, personality or experience.

Discipleship has a similar meaning to apprentice, so when we become a disciple of Jesus we enter into the process of learning to live a life like his.

It's more like learning a skill - the skill of living - than it is learning information. Discipleship isn’t something that happens in classrooms or on courses. It is a process we enter into as we live our everyday lives.

In fact, the simplest way to understand discipleship is this: it is the creator of the universe teaching us to become more fully alive; to be shaped into the person God created us to be, someone who reflects the character of God and lives a Jesus-sized life.

Discipleship happens gradually and takes time. It is unique and individual, but there is always something new to learn.

To make a religious sounding word more understandable we define a disciple as someone who:

  • Is developing a deeper loving relationship with God

  • Which then increasingly saturates every area of their whole life

  • Which then overflows more and more into the world around them

We imagine this as a process, each element leads to the next and this loop happens over and over again as we increasingly discover God is more and more involved with us, in our lives and the people and situations we find around us.

To help grasp what could be an abstract concept we also have a way to assess our discipleship - how secure we are.

This is a great way to think about Jesus - when we look at him we see he was incredibly secure in every aspect of his life; never pretending to be something he wasn’t, never trying to cover up, never treating certain people differently, never defensive, never self-justifying, never giving into fear, never manipulating or trying to control people.

Because being a disciple isn’t just about doing things, by thinking about our security we get to think about who we are in the core of our being - what the Bible calls our heart.

We think about how secure we are in five different areas of our life.

There are five areas:

  • That he lavishly loves us. We don’t need to earn it or deserve it. Nothing can separate us from God’s love

  • God is working good into our lives. Even the worst news in our lives can’t compete with God’s good news.

  • Church is a family where we are accepted as we are, no need to pretend or qualify. It is a place of welcome, love and acceptance.

  • There is no area of our life that God isn’t interested in or involved in. There is no secular/sacred divide.

  • We are Kingdom people, whose presence, words and actions should bring God’s Kingdom to the people and situations around us.

Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.

— Matthew 28:19-20