LIBERTY UNIVERSITY
SCHOOL OF DIVINITY
Spheres and Stages of Discipleship
Submitted to Dr. Micheal Pardue, in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the completion of the course,
DSMN-500
Discipleship Ministries
By
Andrew Alber
July 10, 2022
Contents
The Stages of Discipleship ………………………………………………………………………. 1
The Spheres of Discipleship …………………………………………………………………….. 4
Submission to Christ …………………………………………………………………………….. 5
ii
1
The Stages of Discipleship
For any believer, the ultimate goal and mission of life is to glorify God and submit one’s
life to God in such a way that others would see Jesus in them and come to know him for
themselves.1 Practically, this is the combination of spiritual formation and discipleship. Spiritual
formation is the process of a believer moving more into relationship with God himself.
Discipleship can be thought of as spiritual formation in community, or, passing on spiritual
formation to others. Discipleship has also often been described as a process, a linear progression
even. This is not to say that discipleship does not have its ups and downs and quirks, but over
time, if a believer is continuing to grow, they will move through a recognized sequence of sorts.
While there are many ways to break down and describe this process, one of the best is “The Five
Stages of Discipleship” detailed by Jim Putman, Bobby Harrington, and Robert E. Coleman in
their book DiscipleShift: Five Steps That Help Your Church to Make Disciples Who Make
Disciples.2 For clarity, the following is a summary and analysis of these five stages.
The first stage or “level” in the five stages of discipleship is someone who is spiritually
dead.3 If that sounds a little bit morbid, that is because it is. Someone who is spiritually dead is
someone who does not yet know Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior, and therefor are not
walking in relationship with him. If we are to believe God’s Word to be true, then that means that
this person is destined for an eternity in Hell, separated from the God that made them and loves
them deeply (Matthew 25:31-46, Revelation 21:5-8). There is no more morbid reality than this.
Thankfully, upon accepting Jesus Christ for oneself as described in Romans 10:9-10, one steps
1 Dave Earley and Rod Dempsey, Spiritual Formation Is: How to Grow in Jesus with Passion and
Confidence (Nashville, TN: B&H Academic, 2018), 14.
2 Jim Putman, Bobby Harrington, and Robert E. Coleman, DiscipleShift: Five Steps That Help Your
Church to Make Disciples Who Make Disciples (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2013).
3 Ibid.
2
out of stage one and into stage two: spiritual infancy.4 Just like real life birth, this is the most
beautiful and glorious transition of stages. There is now a new member in the family of God and
the “capital C” Church has officially grown. This is an incredibly exciting moment in the life of a
new believer, no doubt, but the work of discipleship has only just begun. Throughout this stage, a
new believer will spend a great deal of time learning truth and new habits that were previously
unknown to them.5 It is a time of intense learning and growth primarily through consumption.
Level three of the discipleship journey is characterized by a child-like faith, a faith that is
mostly self-centered and largely built around establishing healthy spiritual connections.6
Community during this stage of the journey is incredibly important, and some of the
relationships that will be built could have permanent impacts on the life of this newer believer.
The fourth level in the discipleship process is where one begins to transition out of a purely
following-learning role, and begins to experience little pieces of leadership. This effectively
mirrors the “young adult” stage of life, where a believer begins to train for and learn how to lead
and minister to other people.7 Throughout this stage, it is vital that a believer begins to establish
true personal ownership of their walk with the Lord, and is given opportunities to share their
influence and their faith with others.
The last of these five stages is the one that I, the author, would most identify with myself.
This is not to say that I view myself as having “arrived” in my spirituality, because I most
certainly have not, but it most lines up with where I am in the process of faith, which is spiritual
parenthood. The spiritual parent is one who has been released to be a disciple-maker, and is
going about the process of equipping those in levels one through four to be disciples and
4 Putman, Harrington, and Coleman, DiscipleShift.
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid.
3
disciple-makers as well.8 At their best, spiritual parents are imperfect people who are still in
process, but have spent some real time learning and growing, making mistakes, and figuring out
how to lead people well. Just like in regular life, once you are a parent you are a parent for life,
continuing to grow and learn, but passing on the things you know to the next generation and your
peers.
As a staff pastor and church leader, I have the privilege of dedicating a significant portion
of my time and energy directly to spiritual parenthood for a large group of people. Specifically, I
directly oversee all of the NexGen ministries in my local church (middle school through young
adults), serve on our elder team, and do about thirty percent of our teaching in our weekend
services. One of the verses that I try to lean heavily on, especially in our NexGen ministries but
also in my own life and leadership, is 1 Timothy 4:12 which says, “Let no one despise you for
your youth, but set the believers an example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity.”
(English Standard Version). By most people’s standards, I am incredibly young for the position
that I am in, about ten years shy of what my own church was looking for when they hired me, but
physical age is not a prerequisite to spiritual parenthood. I had to stand before our church and
before our elders to be evaluated and was found to be imperfect, as I will always be, but ready to
lead as a spiritual parent in the role that I was given. I tell the same thing to my students,
“continue to grow, and God will use you to lead his church, even as students!”
The Spheres of Discipleship
Alongside the five stages, another way to break down discipleship is into four areas of
growth referred to as the four spheres of discipleship. The first of these spheres of discipleship is
8 Putman, Harrington, and Coleman, DiscipleShift.
4
also the most important, because it is the foundation for health in the other three spheres, and this
is the sphere of personal relationship with God.9 John 15 goes to great lengths describing the
centrality of this sphere and our absolute need to abide in and remain connected to Christ. The
second sphere is relationships between an individual believer and the rest of the family of God,
the Church.10 God designed us as human beings to be in relationship (Genesis 2:18), therefore the
Church is not meant to be a burden on a believer, but actually a gift to all of us. It is a spiritual
ecology in which we can grow, stretch, and learn new things as we move closer and closer to
what God has for us.11
The third and fourth spheres of discipleship begin to move away from outright spiritual
relationships with God himself and God’s people, to more unique and personal relationships for
individual believers, with the third sphere being relationships within the home.12 This sphere in
particular is one the has become incredibly personal to me over the past two years as I have
learned more and more to submit this sphere to the Lord, both in my heart and in my actions. My
wife and I both come from backgrounds with incredibly painful things, me with mostly decisions
I made that left me in very dark situations and her with a very broken family and ugly
circumstances around her. As two extremely different and equally broken people, we have had to
work through a lot of healing in our marriage. For me specifically, I have had to learn, as
Bonhoeffer describes, that obedience and belief go hand-in-hand.13 As a practical example, I
must both believe that God is good and that he will help us move towards each other and him,
9 Putman, Harrington, and Coleman, DiscipleShift.
10 Ibid.
11 Stephen D. Lowe and Mary E. Lowe, Ecologies of Faith in a Digital Age: Spiritual Growth through
Online Education (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2018).
12 Ibid.
13 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship: PART ONE: CHAPTER TWO: THE CALL TO DISCIPLESHIP, ed.
John D. Godsey, Geffrey B. Kelly, and Martin Kuske (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2003).
5
but also obey him in treating and leading my wife the way that he has called me to in his word.
Without belief or obedience, they both fall apart.
These same principles are true when examining the fourth sphere, relationships with the
world, in my life as well.14 In order to effect any real change in the hearts and lives of my
neighbors and those in my community, I have to both believe that God is going to reach them
with his truth, and obey him in reaching out to them with his truth. Both obedience and belief are
built upon each other and mutually dependent on each other.15 So my personal challenge as I look
through the stages and spheres of discipleship is to continue to grow as a spiritual parent and
work toward submitting my earthly relationships to Christ, especially at home and with my
neighbors. But what does it really mean to be in submission to Christ?
Submission to Christ
With something that is as deeply personal as discipleship, one might ask the question,
“how do we prove that real discipleship is taking place?” Dave Earley and Rod Dempsey answer
this question rather eloquently in their book, Disciple Making Is: How to Live the Great
Commission with Passion and Confidence when they say, “The proof of discipleship is
continuous fruit bearing (John 15:8). The power to bear fruit continually flows from Jesus as the
disciple stays vitally connected to Him.”16 Jesus himself describes this connection in John 15 as
“abiding” or “remaining” in him. But what does it mean, practically, to abide in Jesus?
Ultimately, one of the key ways that one abides in Christ is by submitting themselves to him
(James 4:7). Another word that is used closely in connection with submission to Christ is
14 Putman, Harrington, and Coleman, DiscipleShift.
15 Ibid.
16 Dave Earley and Rod Dempsey, Disciple Making Is: How to Live the Great Commission with Passion
and Confidence (Nashville, TN: B&H Academic, 2013).
6
humility, a key character trait necessarily for biblical submission. In 1 Peter 5:5-6, the Apostle
Peter talks about submission within the family of God, and how ultimately that comes out of a
submission to God himself:
Likewise, you who are younger, be subject to the elders. Clothe yourselves, all of you,
with humility toward one another, for “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the
humble.” Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the
proper time he may exalt you, (1 Peter 5:5-6).
Just like in the spheres of discipleship, the success of other areas of one’s life is dependent first
on what their relationship with God himself looks like, and how effectively they are submitting
themselves to him. Beyond just simple submission of the mind, this kind of humility leads to
submission of one’s life too in the form of obedience (Hebrews 13:17).
Over the past few years in particular, God has broken and humbled me in more ways than
I can count. He has used my ministry and my marriage more than anything to show me how
absolutely incapable I am on my own, and my desperate need for him. This has brought me to a
place of imperfect but beautiful reliance on and submission to Christ that I had never fully
experienced before. It continues to lead me into a deeper obedience to and trust in him that I
struggled with greatly for my first twenty years or so. I am looking forward to seeing more of
how he will draw me closer to himself as I learn to submit to him.
7
Bibliography
Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Discipleship: PART ONE: CHAPTER TWO: THE CALL TO
DISCIPLESHIP. Edited by John D. Godsey, Geffrey B. Kelly, and Martin Kuske.
Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2003.
Earley, Dave and Rod Dempsey. Disciple Making Is: How to Live the Great Commission with
Passion and Confidence. Nashville, TN: B&H Academic, 2013.
Earley, Dave and Rod Dempsey. Spiritual Formation Is: How to Grow in Jesus with Passion and
Confidence. Nashville, TN: B&H Academic, 2018.
Lowe, Stephen D. and Mary E. Lowe. Ecologies of Faith in a Digital Age: Spiritual Growth
through Online Education. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2018.
Putman, Jim, Bobby Harrington, and Robert E. Coleman. DiscipleShift: Five Steps That Help
Your Church to Make Disciples Who Make Disciples. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan,
2013.
Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)
