We’re all familiar with the words of the Great Commission where Jesus tells his followers to make disciples of all nations.

Our own denomination takes that seriously; the heart of its mission statement is “The Global Methodist Church exists to make disciples of Jesus Christ and spread scriptural holiness across the globe.”

The importance of discipleship to Jesus and to early Christianity is visible in a simple statistic: The word “disciple(s)” appears 294 times in the New Testament, after appearing only twice in the Old Testament. It is the way Jesus consistently refers to his followers, both the inner circle and those beyond it.

Discipleship has two aspects. In Mark 8:34 we read, “Then he [Jesus] called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: ‘Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.’” We are called both to be and to make disciples. Being disciples involves doing all that disciples do.

We often think of disciples as students, but it’s more than that. It’s not like modern schooling where you go through a time of learning, then graduate and move on to a time of doing. Instead, the learning and doing are intertwined; you never do one without the other, and you never stop doing either. Discipleship is more like apprenticeship. The apprentice learns through the teaching of someone who has mastered the craft, and also learns by doing. First efforts are usually tentative and clumsy, but they provide more learning than just listening to the experts ever could.

This fall we will focus on discipleship in both Sunday morning worship services and Wednesday evening discussion times. But the real classroom will be what you do in between those times, learning to do by doing, and teaching by being and example.

Yours in peace,

Mark Fleming