What Is Discipleship? A Plain Answer

Ask ten people in a church what is discipleship, and you'll get ten different answers. Some will say a course. Some will say Sunday attendance. One will say a book they never finished.

I've been teaching in churches and homes across Pakistan for years, and I think the confusion is costing us. If you don't know what the word means, you can't tell whether it's happening to you. So let me give you a plain answer, and then show you what it looks like in an ordinary week.

What is discipleship, in one sentence?

Discipleship is following Jesus closely enough, and long enough, that His way of seeing becomes your own.

That's it. The word "disciple" simply means a learner, but not the kind who sits an exam and forgets it. Think of an apprentice in a workshop. She learns by standing next to the master, watching his hands, and being corrected a hundred times.

So Christian discipleship isn't information transfer. It's formation. And that distinction changes almost everything about how you'd go about it.

Discipleship is not the same as a programme

Here's where I think many of us go wrong. We run a programme, count who came, and call it discipleship. But attendance and transformation aren't the same thing.

A woman can sit in a building every Sunday of her life and never be discipled. And another can be discipled thoroughly in a kitchen, with no building involved at all.

I'm not against programmes. We use them. But a programme is scaffolding, not the building.

How did Jesus do it?

He didn't advertise a series of meetings. He called people by name and said, follow me.

What followed was three years of walking, eating, asking and failing in His company. They learned by proximity. When He finally sent them out, in the closing verses of Matthew's Gospel, He told them to go and make more learners, teaching them to obey everything He'd commanded.

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. Matthew 28:19-20

Notice the word "obey". Not "understand". You can understand a thing and remain completely unchanged by it.

Am I qualified to disciple someone?

This is the question I'm asked most often, usually by women who'd be very good at it.

You don't need a degree. The question isn't whether you've finished a syllabus. It's whether you're close enough to Christ that someone walking beside you would end up closer to Him too. If you're one step ahead, you can turn around and offer your hand.

What discipleship looks like in an ordinary week

People imagine this needs free time nobody has. In practice it's four unremarkable habits.

• Scripture, regularly. Not heroically. A short passage read carefully will shape you more than three chapters skimmed and forgotten. If nobody's ever shown you how, start with our simple method for reading the Bible at home.
• Prayer that's honest. Including the prayers that are complaints. The Psalms give permission for far blunter speech to God than most of us ever use.
• Someone further along. Almost nobody grows well alone. You need one person who'll ask how you actually are and not accept the first answer.
• Someone behind you. You understand what you've been given at the point where you have to pass it on. This is the step people postpone longest and need most.

Four habits. None of them require a building, a budget or a title.

Why this matters especially for women here

Much of our work is with girls and women, and there's a reason for that.

When a woman is taught that she can open the Bible herself, that her questions deserve answers, and that she has something to give, something shifts. She stops waiting for permission. In time she teaches her daughters, then another woman, and the thing carries on without us.

That's the whole aim. Not that people depend on NEPSIS, but that they can stand, and help someone else stand. You can read more about how we disciple girls and women in Pakistan.

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