This GROW 2012 excerpt is taken from Vineyard College’s Next Level on Discipleship which you can download in it’s entirety here

Answer: Disciple (mathetes in Greek) means a pupil of a teacher or an apprentice of a master craftsman. It has the connotation of a learner but also of a “doer”.

It could be large numbers, as in Luke’s description of the Sermon on the Plain (Luke 6:17), or those who followed Jesus in itinerant ministry. A disciple of Jesus was someone who adhered to His teachings and did them, and thus they were spoken of as those who imitated Jesus (John 8:31, 15:8). This could be quite openly, as with the apostles, but also secretly, as with Joseph of Arimathea (John 19:38).

This concept is further exemplified by the fact that early Christians in the book of Acts were called “followers of the Way”. In other words, they were known by their behaviour or way of life. In John they are described as those who “abide” in His Word, ie, live in adherence to His way of life, whereas in Acts they are described as those who believed upon him and confessed him.

The term disciple is not used in the epistles. Instead, we find, “brothers, sisters, believers, saints and church”. In the Gospels, the term is used both of those who stayed and worked at home and of those who gave up normal life, left home for some time and walked around with Jesus. There are, of course, large numbers of the former and fewer of the latter.

In the book of Acts, we find established churches of believers in towns and cities and fewer comparatively who are able or called to pursue an itinerant lifestyle. Of those who are itinerant, the most mobile appear to be single and the married are more inclined to settle somewhere during their travels. John, for instance, seems to have settled and lived in Ephesus for many years and Philip, despite his earlier adventures in Acts, settles and lives with his prophetic daughters in Hierapolis, a resort and medical town about a day’s walk inland from Ephesus.

We do not find the term disciple in the Old Testament, although the concept is implicit in the companies or schools of the prophets. Another example is the apprenticeship of Samuel to Eli. Elijah, Isaiah and Jeremiah also had underlings who represented them and sometimes, as with Elisha, replicated them. Joshua also succeeded Moses after serving a term of apprenticeship. In another sense, the image of the people of Israel being in covenant relationship with their God is an early pointer to the relationship we have with Him.

At its core, though, I think discipleship flows out of the kingship of Jesus. From the Garden of Eden, God reveals himself to His people as Creator, as the King of Israel, as the One and Only God before whom we should have no other Gods. In the Exodus, He is portrayed as overwhelmingly more powerful than the gods of Egypt. By the time of the Psalms, He is described as the Lord of heaven’s armies. The church is in one sense an inheritor of this relationship as the “New Israel”, the “Israel of God” (Gal 6:16) with Jesus Christ as its head. In Romans, we are saved if we believe in our heart that God has raised Jesus from the dead and confess Him as Lord. Confessing Christ as Lord is more than just repeating a formula and saying those words, it is making him the King, the Ruler of one’s life. Discipleship is based on this fact, Jesus is the King and we are not, and by virtue of His Kingship we are to submit to his rule and obey Him.

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Tags: Mark Brickell, Vineyard College, Discipleship

This GROW 2012 excerpt is taken from Lloyd’s Leadership Letter Leadership Overview, which you can download in it’s entirety here

“Christian leadership is closely related to discipleship. In fact, discipling, mentoring, teaching, coaching etc are all forms of leadership. They are all about helping a person move from who they are and what they are doing, to becoming a different person doing different things. It is an incredible privilege to influence another person.

Leadership happens in the home – husbands and wives have a profound influence on each other, and one of the important goals of marriage is to serve each other in such a way that we become the man or woman God intended us to be. Marriage is the most effective discipling and leadership training programme given to humanity!

Raising children is all about leadership – we use leadership of our children to help develop them into the people God intends them to be. We give them support, nurture, challenge, resources, opportunities in order to move them from one degree of development to another.

As Christian leaders, we also are given an incredible opportunity to influence other people, who are not part of our family, to be all that God intends them to become, and to do all He intends for them to accomplish.”

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Tags: Lloyd Rankin, Leadership, Discipleship, Influence

We have probably heard the saying “it takes a whole village to raise a child.” In the same way it takes a whole church community to make a disciple. Making disciples is the “business” we are in as Christians and as churches. I would like to draw our attention to 2 key words in this article.

Firstly “disciple.” Essentially a disciple is someone who is becoming an apprentice of Jesus. We are called to partner with God in making full-time students of Jesus. Our privilege is to transform ordinary people into disciples / apprentices whose ordinary lives are immersed into the reality of God. Apprentices of the King who routinely do the continuing work of the Kingdom – preach heal, deliver, etc.”

We are called to turn lost people into missionaries!

I am very grateful for 2 men who invited me, as a brand new believer at the age of 20, into their busy lives to give me some of their time, wisdom and experience, and to receive from their spiritual gifts. One did Bible study with me and gave me an enduring love of study and appreciation for the transformative power of the Bible. The other showed me how to grow in my faith and give what I had experienced away to others, by inviting me to join him on the streets in sharing my story and faith experiences in “open air” preaching and in personal witnessing. I learned the value of continually growing and freely giving away what I had learned, which led me into a lifelong adventure of “joining God in His mission.”

I still have their finger prints on me, which have been joined by many other finger prints over the years of following Jesus. You and I are the result of the people who have discipled/influenced us over the years.

I urge you to be very deliberate about starting or continuing to be deliberately discipled, and as part of that, deliberately discipling others that you can give your life and experience away. This is the main way the Kingdom advances, and we must give full attention to it.

The second word I want to draw our attention to is “community.” When we grasp the importance of the practice of being a functioning part of a church community and serving each other and our surrounding communities as a cohesive whole rather than a group of individuals it spares us 2 almost inevitable undesirable Christian extremes – the super Christian and the non functional Christian.

Sometimes Christianity is portrayed as each individual Christian needing to encapsulate the whole gospel in themselves. So we feel this pressure to be a great evangelist, who can counsel deeply and powerfully, and move strongly in the prophetic, perform signs and wonders regularly, teach profoundly, organize proficiently, move mountains by faith, pray up storms, and generally be a super-Christian who is always happy, who perfectly portrays the whole image of Christ at all times! Of course that is too heavy a burden for the vast majority of ordinary Christians and can lead many to the opposite extreme of non- functioning because its all too far beyond mere humans.

Being part of a community frees us to simply bring the aspect of Christ that we best reflect, and to use our gifts in the community-wide process of making Kingdom disciples.

Tags: Lloyd Rankin, Discipleship