Disciple-Making.
No Expert Skills Required.
Friends, I’m so delighted to share this from Substack-friend Kevin E Beasley. I’m always up for championing a fellow disciple-making disciple, so I pray this article both encourages and blesses you. And then maybe, when you’ve finished reading, you should grab his new book (25% discount code for those in the USA included)!
Cheering you on,
Em 💛
Can you imagine lying on your deathbed knowing you were about to breathe your last breath? Your family is by your side, and you have the mental capacity to utter one more urgent plea to your children and grandchildren. What would you tell them?
It blows my mind that scripture records the very last words of Jesus before He ascends to His Father. These must have been the most critical words that summed up His plans for that rag-tag group of disciples who would launch His Church and carry the BEST NEWS that ever had been: that Jesus died and rose again to give us life to the fullest.
“Go, and make disciples…”
I recently heard a story I will never forget of a REAL woman living in REAL tension.
She’s 72 years old. She loves Jesus with everything in her. She has been in church her entire life, shown up, served, given, sung every worship song more Sundays than most of us can count. And she was standing in front of a group of twenty-somethings who were asking her to disciple them.
Her private response to our mutual friend?
“I can’t disciple them. I don’t even know where to start.”
Seventy-two years of faithful Christian living. And she had no idea where to start doing the last thing Jesus commanded us to do before He ascended to the Father.
If that feels a little bit like you right now, you are not alone. And that feeling, that mix of deep desire to follow Jesus mixed with crippling inadequacy, is exactly the problem that I want to talk about for a few minutes. I want you to leave this article feeling encouraged to do what it takes to obey Jesus’ final command just before He left us to finish the work He began.
The Problem Isn’t You. It’s the Model We’ve Been Given.
Most of us have been trained, consciously or not, to believe that disciple-making is what happens inside the church building, in programs, curricula, and classes led by people who have been professionally trained to do it. The rest of us show up, consume, volunteer, and hopefully become better people in the process.
But that is not what Jesus commissioned.
He said, “GO AND MAKE DISCIPLES.” Not, “Come to the right program and invite people to come with you.” The call is to take ministry into your life. Into the grocery store. Into your neighborhood. Into your workplace. Into your ordinary Monday. That’s the first paradigm shift I want to challenge you with. And it changes everything.
Your Life Is Already the Mission Field
Here’s what trips most people up: they think disciple-making requires a completely different life from the one they’re already living. They think they have to go into “full-time ministry” in order to live fully into their Kingdom purpose. That maybe someday they will have the time and energy to do disciple-making. Surprise, you can take disciple-making into every activity that you are ALREADY doing and experience fulfillment and joy in the disciple-making journey.
NOW! NOT LATER.
Acts 17:26-27 tells us that God “determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live.” And not just so they’d exist there, but so that people would “seek Him and perhaps reach out for Him and find Him.” Your neighborhood isn’t random. Your workplace isn’t accidental. The people in your relational web of neighbors, coworkers, classmates, and anyone tied into your everyday life are in your God-ordained mission field.
You don’t need to become someone different. You don’t need to quit your job or go to seminary. You need to start seeing differently what’s already on your calendar and in your everyday activities.
Where do you start?
Simply name two or three people in each of your everyday spaces. Pray for them by name using the B.L.E.S.S. framework. Pray for their Body, Labor, Emotions, Social life, and Spiritual journey. You cannot consistently pray for someone and keep treating them like a background character. Prayer changes how you see people, and that changes how you embrace disciple-making activities in the everyday grind. And after you pray, just look for the Spirit’s work and listen for His leading. Let the next steps come naturally.
Stepping Stones, Not Canyon Jumps
Why do people hear the Great Commission and feel condemned rather than called?
It’s because we’ve been expected to take canyon jumps instead of stepping stones when it comes to disciple-making. Some time in your life, you have stood on one side of a creek or ravine and thought, ”It’s just too far, I can’t make the jump.” Meeting Jesus’ standards for making disciples may have felt that way to you.
The standard hasn’t changed: become like Jesus and make disciples who make disciples. But the pathway makes that standard accessible to ordinary people. It removes the “I don’t know how” and replaces it with “Here is the first stepping stone.”
Jesus himself modeled this. He didn’t hand the twelve a syllabus. He showed them, sent them, debriefed them, and sent them further. Luke 9, then Luke 10. Twelve sent, then seventy-two. Each step of the pathway was experienced before the next step was introduced. That’s not a Sunday school program; that’s the Jesus pattern of making disciples.
Step one. Execute. Return. Step two. Execute. Return.
In my new book, Hand to the Plow, I lay out some accessible and non-threatening tools, such as the Three-Thirds model, the prayer map, the 3-Minute Story, and conversational stepping stones, that exist precisely for this reason. They’re not complex strategies that require years to master. They’re practical handles that ordinary people can pick up and use this week.
If you’re in the USA, you can use code GROWANDGO for 25% off.
The Book of Acts Is Not a Museum Piece
That 72-year-old woman I mentioned? She’s not the problem. She’s the symptom of a system that has done a remarkable job producing sincere believers and educated parishioners, but a less impressive job producing disciple-making multipliers.
But here’s the good news: it is not too late!
The same Spirit who fell on 120 people in an upper room and ignited a movement that turned the world upside down lives inside every person who has genuinely surrendered their life to Jesus.
Same power. Same promise. Same commission.
The only thing missing has been a simple pathway for a disciple-making lifestyle.
Hand to the Plow gives you that pathway. And it starts exactly where you are, with the people already in your life, the mission field already on your doorstep, and a God who never once said you had to be qualified before you could be obedient.
Have you ever felt too ill-equipped or overwhelmed to make disciples? Like that 72-year-old friend of a friend. You’re not alone. But it’s not as difficult and intimidating as you think. It just requires a little intentionality and skill-building.
Find someone who can and will walk alongside you, coaching and helping you on the journey.
It is not a hobby or a side-gig, it’s the ONE THING JESUS COMMANDED as He was leaving. And guess what. WE ARE THE NEXT GENERATION of Jesus followers who are responsible for continuing the work that began 2,000 years ago. And through us, it will be completed before Jesus descends to the very place where He ascended, as He breathed those last, most important words to His followers.
So, let’s GO and make disciples and teach them to obey Christ’s commands. And as we do that, remember we’re not alone.
“And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” - JESUS
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Great vision cast and practical handholds! Thanks for this