Discipleship Should Be Freeing
Every team being a discipling experience sounds great…unless you’re the leader. There seems to be a weightiness to the charge that can sap the joy out of the role you signed on for. If that is the case, if you are feeling that as a leader, allow me to submit a few reasons and practical helps on why and how discipleship should be the opposite, because the pursuit of discipleship on our teams should be freeing.
One caveat: me, or anyone, telling you discipleship is freeing is not going to be enough. You are going to have to internalize these truths and take action on them.
Discipleship aligns you and your team with God’s heart and will.
There is nothing that is more freeing than aligning with God: The Creator and Sustainer of all things. God sent His Son into the world and could have had him do any number of things. What He actually did in real life was make disciples who would in turn go and make disciples. Then, before ascending to the Father, Jesus commissioned his disciples to go about doing this with all of his authority and power—and remember, we are talking about the creator and sustainer of all things. That’s a fair amount of power and authority you have at your disposal in disciple making.
We pray the Lord’s Prayer routinely and rarely reflect on the words we are saying and our own relationship to them. What does it mean for God’s Kingdom to come? For His will to be done? What is my role in this? Well, I will offer a reflection: it is disciple making. God established His Kingdom by saving the world through His Son and His will is for all to know Him and live in a right relationship with Him. Discipleship is just that—the process of dying to ourselves and being resurrected to fullness of life. It is a freeing reality to live in.
Disciple Making helps us in our own process of becoming who Jesus would be if he were you.
We are all in different parts of the process, and awareness of the journey should be freeing in and of itself. But some of us—probably you if you are reading a ‘church blog’—are at the point in the journey where we need to be intentionally making disciples. The reason we may feel stuck, discontent, burdened, etc., in our leadership is because we have stopped the process and are therefore not experiencing Jesus at the level we should be enjoying.
It may seem counterintuitive that by adding responsibility you are freeing yourself, but here’s the thing: If you are leading without discipling, you are leading without your biggest helper. The Holy Spirit is the gift we have been given in our leadership. Bu if we are leading toward human goals (finish this job, fill this role) then we will use human means (ourselves) and ultimately land at a human end (burnout). When we work towards disciple making we step into God’s goal (Kingdom citizenship) and draw on God’s means (His Spirit) and land at His end (experiencing Jesus). And when we are experiencing Jesus we are being set free.
Disciple makers are not experts.
The truth is, Jesus is the disciple maker. He is the Master, the Rabbi, the Teacher—and most importantly—the Transformer of lives. Our role is actually just a response in the process of our own transformation: helping others take steps in their own journey by modeling and sharing where we are in the process. This is incredibly freeing because it means we are only responsible for the input, not their output. Ultimately the movement toward Jesus of the people on your teams is not contingent on you. Be freed from that!
Want another freeing thought? Jesus Christ himself was 11 for 12 in his disciple making. Take it easy on yourself and realize that just like anything worth doing, you will probably do it poorly as you grow and learn. There is nothing worth doing more though, so keep trying, keep failing, keep adjusting—all out of the joyful overflow of your relationship with Jesus and the peace that comes from the knowledge that it is not what you have to do, but a response to what he has done.
Read part 2: 3 Helpful Practices to Grow in Discipleship Freedom