Discipleship

While leaders give guidance, our decisions over who to follow determines who guides us.

Jesus builds every Christian up to become a self-leader:

Discipleship is one-on-one mentorship, teaching, and advising.

  • You simply don’t have enough resources to disciple and mentor more than 3-4 people at any one time.
  • If you’re a parent, your non-adult children are part of those 3-4 person limit.

Be Prepared

Even by secular standards, spiritual mentors are leaders.

Developing as a Christian is inward (exoteric) much more than outward (esoteric).

  • The greatest two commandments God gives us are to love Him, and to love others (Mark 12:28-34).
  • To put it another way, loving starts as a type of contract with God, which then extends outward to kindness and love for all His creation, meaning our results should be defined by how much we advance others’ collective interests.
  • If we ever wish to guide other people in that endeavor without falling into heresy, we need at least a good decade or two of healthy spiritual exercises for God to change us.

God judges leaders more harshly than non-leaders (Matthew 18:6).

  • Not everyone should pursue leadership, since God holds leaders to a higher standard than everyone else (James 3:1).
  • God doesn’t take a teacher’s role lightly (Acts 20:28).

A leader guides others’ issues beyond themselves, so they must have a few desires before they even consider the role:

Mentoring takes endurance, and will often feel like a second job.

  • You’ll spend quite a lot of time giving input and sharing.
  • A spiritual father never technically retires until they move on to the next life.

Choosing Disciples

Good spiritual leaders are picky about who they decide to teach.

  • Focus on quality, not quantity.
  • If you have children, they’re your disciples until they’ve reached adulthood.
  • Even Jesus only closely mentored 12 people (Luke 6:12-16).

A good disciple must be teachable and faithful.

Avoid mentoring a few demographics relative to yourself:

  • Discipleship of the opposite sex can create sexual immorality or, in a relationship, unhealthy codependency.
  • Leading someone the same age or older (within 5-10 years) becomes a lopsided relationship from relative differences in life experience.

Nurturing

You must use the simple truths of God to encourage, comfort, and instruct (1 Thessalonians 2:11, 2 Corinthians 1:3-4).

Nurture them in their comparatively newer faith (1 Timothy 1:2).

Set the pace by showing them your example (2 Timothy 3:10-11).

Do not micro-manage, since they will have a different generational culture and their approach on some things will be different.

Avoid employing any shame.

What They Must Know

New believers must learn a few things:

  1. God faithfully forgives (1 John 1:9-10, 2:1, 2:12).
  2. Not everything is the way it seems (1 John 2:18-28).
  3. A person’s lifestyle shows their spirituality (Matthew 7:20-21, 1 John 3:5-10).
  4. We must love in action, not just words (1 John 3:17-19).
  5. Believers don’t need to fear the devil (1 John 4:1-4).
  6. Idolatry is an incessant danger (1 John 5:21).
  7. God’s kingdom gives progressively more rights and privileges as we grow in Christ (Ephesians 3:11-12).

Disciples are responsible to act on truths they’ve learned (2 John 4, 3 John 4, James 1:22).

Successful discipleship makes them partners in ministry, not subordinates (Romans 16:21).

Own Your Failures

You won’t get it precisely correct.

You will be a hypocrite.

  • Any fallible person who teaches the importance of living in Christ’s full righteousness will not always practice what they preach.
  • Quickly admit your failings, and openly show them to your disciples.