Discipleship

Discipleship is becoming my passion.

Over the past few months God has been working me over about my lack of true discipleship. I was Spirit-baptized when I was twelve years old, I've grown up attending and working in church and my spiritual heritage is stellar. However, the vast majority of my life has been spent in the futile attempt to be more Pentecostal rather than actually imitating Jesus Christ.

This is what God has been working on in my life.

Around six months ago my wife and I began discipling a young couple. The subject of God wasn't necessarily new to him, but she was brand new. We met weekly for what was supposed to be an hour-long Bible study and discussion, but—because of their hunger—the sessions lasted longer and longer each time we met. Probably the most impacting day was the Saturday that we spent over twelve hours together, talking about God and His purpose for our lives. The next day she was Spirit-baptized.

Now, I have no inclination that her finally yielding to God had anything to do with me or what I said to her the previous day, but I do believe that the time that my wife and I spent with her, allowing her to question us (really God, we were just the people she was looking at) brought her to the point where she was ready to surrender to God's purpose for her life. Olga and I are continuing to disciple them two-to-three times a month, and I can't express in words the awesome feeling that we all experience in each session. I am blown away each time that God illuminates a different aspect of Himself to both them and us, and I thank Him for the opportunity to fulfill the call He has given to my family.

Why is it that we (a collective moniker applied to the Apostolic Movement as a whole) have spent so much time focusing on making converts and building churches rather than discipling people to God?

A convert is someone that we've swayed to our way of thinking by the veracity of our argument, not necessarily the content of our position. This is fine until the day comes along—and we all know that these days will come—that someone presents a better argument. At that moment we've lost our convert. Sometimes it doesn't even take another argument to move our converts; it may be the underlying questions that eat at them night after night that slowly move them away from our position.

Conversely, a disciple is an individual with whom we've spent time with, taught, shared, Jesus Christ. We haven't convinced them with our argument, we've taught them what we've learned (and nothing else until we've we've learned more) and walked with them as they process the information.

A disciple can't be swayed because they are a believer.

God is calling us to stop converting people to pentecostalism and to begin making disciples. This is the Commission He gave us in Matthew 28:19-20. It's time to stop building our churches and grow His Kingdom, one disciple at a time.