Five Things to Learn from the Discipleship of Jesus

Abstract

The development and progression of Christianity for more than two thousand years has created many variations in terms of views regarding how to run a church and do discipleship. As a result, there are many debates and frictions when people of different backgrounds and demographics meet as fellow workers in local churches. There are different opinions about how discipleship should be done, from a wide range of backgrounds and scales of local churches whose number of members vary. This paper is written with the purpose of examining several principles of discipleship that Jesus demonstrated in the gospels, as well as seeing their implications for churches in the modern era. This paper discusses the definition of biblical discipleship, and how the initiation for discipleship should come from the disciple maker. When discipleship is forced, there will be discomfort that needs to be embraced in the process. In serving, a disciple maker should take the posture of a servant, not a superintendent, towards the disciple and be involved in the life of the disciple to share life with him or her.