Chapter 2
DEFINING A DISCIPLE
What does it mean to be a disciple of Jesus?
Anytime you gather a group of people to accomplish a goal, you first need to get everyone on the same
page. You need to define what you want to accomplish and how you are going to do it.
Picture a football team. When the quarterback gathers the other players in a huddle and calls out, “Slant
86, double cross 99 right,” every other player needs to know what play the quarterback is talking about
and the part they are to play in it. Otherwise, when the huddle breaks, and they get set at the line of
scrimmage, and the ball is snapped, it’s just chaos on the field.
This same principle is true
• For sailors navigating a ship.
• For workers assembling cars at a factory.
• For soldiers advancing on the enemy.
• For a band playing music.
Whenever any group sets out to work together to accomplish a goal, the tasks, methods, and objectives
need to be defined, clearly communicated, and understood by everyone involved.
Have you applied this commonsense principle to your church? In your gut-level-honest times of self-
assessment, is every leader in your church on the same page? Do they all agree on what success looks
like?
A POTENTIAL POWDER KEG
Church leaders frequently come as a team to our training seminars at Real Life Ministries. We encourage
the pastors, staff, and elders to work together as they progress through the training. In the past, one of
the first exercises we’d go through is to ask each team two assessment questions. They had to answer
these questions as individuals, writing them down on a piece of paper, without discussing their answers
with the rest of their group. We then asked them to give their answers to the person facilitating the
group.
The first question we asked is simple: “What’s the purpose of the church?”
Since this is a training seminar about discipleship, most everyone would already have that idea in mind—
discipleship. Or they’d add some caveats and clarifications to this answer, emphasizing a specific area of
church they championed or worked in. An evangelism pastor would write something like, “The purpose
of the church is to reach our community for the glory of God so we can make disciples.” A worship pastor
would add, “We need good worship that captures the attention of the lost who may come to a weekend
service.”
The second question was a bit more difficult for them to answer … and I’ll tell you what it is in just a
minute. But first you need to understand that how each person answers this second question is crucial to
the exercise. We asked individuals on the team to write their answers down anonymously, because this
reveals what people really think about their church. The second question, in particular, can be dangerous
because it surfaces different understandings about what the team believes they have agreed upon. In
other cases it reveals that each group may be frustrated by the rest of their teammates because they, in
their minds, have not done their job. Sometimes, even if you can’t see it from the outside, a church
leadership team is sitting on a powder keg. The fuse has been lit, and it is quickly burning.
So what is this second question? It’s the next logical question to ask! Since most of the teams have come
to agree that the purpose of a church is discipleship (or something close to it), we followed up that
question by asking, “What is a disciple?” In all our years of asking this question, we encountered only
two churches in which the entire team of leaders agreed on the same definition.
This second question brings the team face-to-face with the heart of their purpose and values as a
church. Below, we’ve listed several definitions we commonly see. As you read these examples, ask
yourself how members of your church’s leadership might answer this question. Also think through what
problems can be created if everyone has a different definition of a mature disciple.
• A disciple of Jesus is a person who is becoming spiritually mature. This occurs when a Christian knows
his Bible inside and out. That’s what’s most important in our church: knowing the Bible.
• A disciple is a person who cares for the lost. He regularly invites his friends, neighbors, and unsaved
family members to our church so they can hear about Jesus. That’s what’s most important: getting
people in the door of the church so they hear the good news! We want to make the weekend events as
