Disciple-making Is a Team Sport

You may have heard that I have tested positive for Covid. I am quarantining at home and hope to be back to work week after next. My symptoms have been very mild and Nanette has tested negative, so we’re grateful that this experience has not proven to be difficult so far. Thank you for your prayers.

“Disciple-making is a team sport.”

I’ve used this expression before, so it may sound familiar. But the more I think about it, the more convinced I am that we will carry out Jesus’ mandate as a team, not as individuals. And thinking about ourselves as a team matters.

There are many who argue that disciple-making happens best in one-on-one or in micro-groups. In this model, every believer must be equipped to take the lead in these kinds of relationships, one person discipling one or two others in small, intimate group settings. They reason that this is as close as we can come to Jesus’ method of making disciples; he spent three years pouring his life into his small group of men before sending them out as his apostles.

But that approach has always seemed too individualistic to account for what we see in the Book of Acts, where we see the church growing because of what they did together: they cultivated a vibrant, attractive community life.

Those early believers “one-anothered” so well that outsiders noticed the depth of their compassionate care for one another. I believe the nearly sixty “one another” commands in the New Testament actually describe this aspect of disciple-making in the church.

In this sense, everyone in the church was involved in disciple-making. Everyone contributed to that vibrant community life according to their gifting: mercy, administration, giving, service, teaching, leadership, etc.

As outsiders observed the way believers loved one another, they grew curious. And when they inquired, believers had the chance to proclaim the Gospel, the Good News about Jesus. And as outsiders responded to the Spirit’s promptings in their hearts, the church grew.

Why it matters if every believer sees him/herself as part of the disciple-making effort

When we participate in ministries, we must see ourselves not as consumers of religious programming but as participants playing our part in the fulfillment of Jesus’ mandate to make disciples.

I was reminded of this team approach to disciple-making when I read an article someone sent me recently. The title caught my eye: “I Searched for the Key to Discipleship,” by Melissa Edgington. As pastor of discipleship for our congregation, I’m always looking for good resources for our people. And I’ve always wondered if there might be some “key” I’ve been missing all this time.

I think Edgington is onto something. Her article argues that disciple-making is something that happens in all the varieties of Christian fellowship, not just in formal settings like worship services and Bible studies and small group meetings. Disciple-making also happens in the thousands of interactions believers have with one another and with their non-Christian friends, all the ways we encourage and support one another.

Edgington says she saw discipleship in her own congregation “in the way that women spent all morning in a hot church kitchen, preparing to comfort families who would bury loved ones later that afternoon. I saw it in the way a friend wouldn’t allow someone in tears to leave Sunday school without a hug, an encouraging word, and a plan to meet later in the week to talk. I saw it in the way a man counseled his co-worker during breaks at work after a moral failure. I saw it in a deacon’s passion to organize a plan to pick up children for church. I saw it in one woman’s willingness to answer her phone at all hours of the night for those who needed her reassurance and care.

“I saw it in the hours of conversation, the thousands of thoughts of others, the quiet actions that showed love, the millions of moments of being involved in others’ lives, invested in helping solve others’ problems, in the sitting with the grieving without words, in the planning of a budget with a newly married couple. In so many ways, our church taught us what discipleship really means. It isn’t as clean and neat and tidy as I once wanted to believe it would be. In truth, real discipleship is being there for each other.”

I think she’s right. When I trusted Christ, he made me part of his family. And I must discern how I can best play my role in the “one-anothering” that makes Christian family life so attractive and so compelling.

We see this in our own fellowship week after week as we hear of how our people rally around hurting and grieving families, one-anothering so very well.

Not everyone needs to be able to teach a class or lead a small group or play a musical instrument or lead a discipleship group. But everyone does need to discern how they can use their gifts and skills and passions to serve others, playing their role as part of the disciple-making team that is the church.

Persevere. 
Paul Pyle
Discipleship Pastor