Why It's Time for an Age of Discipleship

On cheap grace, "barcode" Christianity is a lie. The Great "Scanner in the Sky" is a lie that will not pass you on into Heaven. Being a Christian is synonymous with being a disciple, a follower of Jesus Christ instead of ascenting in name only.

Ask a roomful of churchgoers, "Are you a Christian?" and most hands go up without hesitation.

Now ask, "Are you a disciple?" and watch the hands waver.

That hesitation is the whole problem.

We've Made Peace with an Unbiblical Distinction

Two generations ago, Dietrich Bonhoeffer warned the church that we were settling for what he called cheap grace, a brand of Christianity without a cross. He called it "easy believism." Affirm the right doctrines, nod along to justification by faith alone, and you're "in the club."

Dallas Willard had a sharper name for it: barcode Christianity. The idea that if we can be "rung up by the great scanner in the sky," eternal life is assured, then no transformed life required.

Michael Wilkins came at the same problem from another angle. In his survey work, people would readily call themselves Christians but resist calling themselves disciples. Why? Because the labels carry different weights:

Being a Christian is a statement about what Christ has done for me. Being a disciple is a statement about who I am becoming in Christ by His Spirit (Romans 8:1-8).

And somewhere along the way, Christian leaders gave us permission to choose the first without the second. We expect that only a small percentage of Christians will ever "graduate" into discipleship as if it were an elective rather than the whole point.

We are now reaping the harvest of that false notion.

The Data Tells the Story

George Barna and George Gallup have been telling us the same thing for years: in moral values and lifestyle choices, there is little measurable difference between Christians and non-Christians. We are compromised at the core.

The Bible doesn't recognize this distinction. Read Acts:

"The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch." Acts 11:26

The two words describe the same person. We need to recalibrate where we set the bar.

What Discipleship Actually Looks Like

When I sat down to write Discipleship Essentials, I wanted to ask four basic questions about what a follower of Jesus is meant to be:

• Practice — What spiritual disciplines anchor a disciple's life?
• Comprehend — What core biblical and theological truth must be understood?
• Become — What character and lifestyle marks a disciple?
• Do — How does a disciple engage the church and the world?

That's the content. But content alone doesn't make a disciple. The deeper question is the context: How are disciples actually made?

The Program Approach Has Failed

Here's what most churches do: Pastors stand up and announce the latest enrichment opportunity. The same 20 percent show up. We shout "Y'all come!" and most stay away in droves.

Programs aren't how disciples are made. Disciples are made in relationships, through personal, eyeball-to-eyeball invitation.

The difference is the difference between a mass email and a hand-written letter.

A Different Kind of Invitation: How to Begin

When I begin a new discipleship group of three or four, I don't post a sign-up sheet. I pray.

I pray for a sense of call to a specific person. Then I sit down with them and say something like this:

"I've been praying about who to ask to join me and a couple of others on a journey together to grow as followers of Christ. The Lord has put you on my heart. Would you come along with me over the next year, so we can grow together into what it really means to be a disciple of Jesus?"

It feels completely different to be issued a personal call rather than a mass invitation. Because it is completely different.

The "Ah-Ha" of My Ministry

I said it at the start of my book Transforming Discipleship, and I'll say it again here: The transformation that happens in these small, reproducible groups of 3-4 has been the great "ah-ha" of my ministry.

For more than 30 years, almost every week, I've had at least one of these groups on my schedule. They are consistently the highlight of my life.

And the best part? Watching those same people turn around and disciple others. Watching a multi-generational tree grow where disciples who are making disciples make disciples.

It doesn't get any better than that.

A Hope for the Century to Come

To everyone who has written to me with a story of transformation, thank you. From the bottom of my heart. Knowing that the call to write this material has been met by hungry hearts who take the work of disciplemaking seriously is more fulfilling than I can say.

Here is my hope and my prayer:

That a century from now if Christ has not returned when church historians look back on our time, they will not call it the age of programs, or the age of platforms, or the age of bar codes.

They will call it the age of discipleship.