Disciplemaking 101

Disciple-making is a term I’ve often heard thrown around a lot, and never really understood what it truly meant- sure, I knew about Jesus’ disciples, that they were followers of Jesus, looking at the example he set, and trying to live it out in my life, and I’ve always known that I myself am meant to be a disciple of Jesus in my own life, but I’ve never really known how this applied to my own life in terms of making and shaping disciple, and to be honest, not something I’d devoted a lot of thought too; I lived my life content to just live it out how I wanted, maybe I was an example to some people, but I never put any effort into this, or thought at all about the impact my actions were having on others.

When I stepped into my role as a Greenhouse student, I was told that I would start discipling some youth, this was a prospect that excited me, as although I’d never mentored anyone as such before, and never really thought of myself as a disciple-maker, I have always enjoyed being there for people and helping them with issues; so when I found out I would have this opportunity, my ego beamed due to my ideal as a self-proclaimed ‘helper of the people’.  A few weeks into the work, Darin and I invited a few guys from Costa to come to a local arcade with us to play a few games of pool and a few arcade games.  It was at this point that my ideals of disciple-making were shattered.  Without realising, I’d gotten into my head that I’d been given 2 or 3 teenagers who were keen to learn about God, who would be coming to me as a wise oracle figure who had all the answers, but in reality I discovered that the type of disciple-making we were doing was more about taking kids who had never seen the need for God in their lives, and building a relationship with them.  Don’t get me wrong- I do enjoy what we’re doing, and building the relational with them before embarking on the spiritual.

By the end of the evening two things had surprised me, they both came out while we were carrying out an exercise.  While we were eating Nachos, Darin challenged each of them to take a Nacho, and place it in relation to bowl depending on how often they thought about and prayed to God, so that if they put it next to the bowl, they thought about God a lot, and the further away they placed it, the less they thought about God.  The first thing that surprised me, was how far they put themselves away from the bowl, particularly as I’d assumed some of them were in a place where they were on the cusp of taking a bigger commitment, so it surprised me to see how little he played on their minds.  The second thing that surprised me was how open these guys were about where they were with God, and how much they thought about him, and how honest they were about it.  I know personally at their age I wouldn’t have been as honest, and placed myself a lot closer than where I actually was feeling like it was expected of me.  So all-in-all I feel like no discipling experience will ever be duplicated twice, that it’s about going with what’s needed, but seeing how open people who weren’t ready to make that commitment are, really encouraged me, and I’m excited at the prospect of the journey we’re undertaking with these guys.