The Disciple Cycle

The Disciple Cycle starts with us giving up the task of trying to convert people. Then, we need to learn how to be disciples ourselves. So, when we start making friends, we can invite them into the life of a disciple. It's not an artificial move, but an invitation based on a relationship and natural observation.

Once we're friends with someone it can take months or years before they are ready to have a spiritual conversation. Your job is to be transparent and available without being pushy. They need to know that you love Jesus and that you're his disciple, but you don't try to force them to think or act in any way. You love them as they are, for who they are, with no strings attached.

I'm writing all of this knowing that any of my non-Christian friends may read it. There's nothing to hide here, they should already know who I am and what I do, and (here's the important part) they should feel comfortable being themselves around me. Because I'm a disciple of Jesus, doesn't mean I can't be friends with non-Christians (Jesus was great at being friends with the people labeled sinners by the religious establishment). Guess what, not all of Jesus "sinner" friends were converted by him. Some of them had fun at the party, enjoyed the wine that he provided (he made some good wine) and went on their way. Jesus didn't run and stop them, he didn't make them feel uncomfortable, he just kept loving them and going to parties with them.

However, if a friend is interested in your spiritual journey, you should be ready to share. Here's the trickiest, touchiest and scariest part of the whole process: let them ask any question. Remember that the life of a disciple starts with questions. When you invite your friends to see your life, they get to ask questions too. But their questions may be different from the ones you're used to asking or hearing. That's OK. It's fine. There are no off-limits questions in the disciple life. God isn't afraid of us asking anything.

Here are some of the questions I've heard:

• Why does God hate Jesus and kill him? 
• Isn't the bible controlled by the Vatican? How can we trust it?
• Did Jesus have wet dreams? 
• Don't all religions point to the same goal? 
• Why would you want to go to heaven anyway? 
• Can the church give me money for my marijuana to help me get off meth?
• Isn't God kind of like an abusive husband? 

Note, all of these are real questions asked by real people who seriously wanted an answer. You cannot laugh, mock, scoff or scorn questions unless you want to damage the relationship. It's also a bad idea to try to answer the question outright. First off, you probably don't know the answer, and secondly, that's not the disciple process. You don't ask questions and then get answers. The process of searching and discovery is powerful and important. Don't try to short-circuit the process to help your friends or to prove that you're so smart. 

I would respond with: "That's a great question. Can you tell me more about what you mean by it?"

Then, just keep digging as long as you can. What you're doing is acting as a sounding board for your friend to explore their own thoughts on the subject. One of the best ways to start searching for an answer is to have a clearly stated question. If you help your friend to state their question well, then you've invited them to take the next step of the disciple journey. 

What are some of the best questions you've heard? 

How to Make Friends

If you're going to share the life of a disciple with people, you have to meet them first. The problem that I've found is I'm not very good at intentionally meeting new people. Sure I've met a lot of new people, but it has been through activities or groups that made the process easy. I was in school or at church where I was bound to meet people and then develop friendships with them, over time. But now that I'm not in school anymore I don't really have a non-church way to connect with new people.

Meeting new people takes time and intentionality. You won't accidentally meet new people if you don't work on it. It takes shared social space to meet new people. So, first, you need to find a social space that isn't threatening or closed. Then you need to find a way to share that space with other people. One of the best ways I've found to meet new people is through shared interests. It could be a Toastmasters meeting, a community choir, a woodworking club or a basketball league. Whatever your interests, you can find a way to meet people through them. But once you meet someone, that's only the beginning.

Connecting with the people that you meet narrows the number of relationships significantly. You may meet hundreds or thousands of people, but you only connect with a few of those. It might be a shared interest or a carpool or something you can't define. You'll connect with a few of the people you meet in a way that is noticeably different from the majority of the people you meet. From there you need to figure out how to make friends with them.

Friendship doesn't just happen. It may seem like it since most of our friendships weren't planned, but there is a consistent process of making friends that isn't random or mysterious. You obviously need to meet people and then connect with people, but turning the corner from connection to friendship takes time. There's no substitute for time spent together to transform an acquaintance into a connection. You need to find ways to spend time with the people with whom you develop a connection and then a friendship may sprout. Just like the way connections narrow the field of people from those you met, you will only become friends with a limited number of people with whom you develop a connection.

Remember, this process takes time. You will probably be discouraged by spending months searching for connection after you meet someone or waiting for a friendship to develop from a connection. Just keep spending time with people and genuinely loving them for who they are (no strings attached). It's not your job to convert people, your job is to love people, so do it well.

How do you develop friendships with the people you meet?

The Life of a Disciple

Jesus didn't tell us to evangelize, he told us to make disciples. But how can we make disciples if we aren't disciples to begin with?

A disciple is a student, a learner, an apprentice. It's not the same kind of student that we have today in an educational system where there are dozens of people in a classroom learning the information taught by one individual. Rather it's more like the students of Socrates, where a small group of people would live and talk with a wise mentor. The learning process is wrapped up in experience, relationship and conversation. Thoughts are tested, not on papers run through a Scantron 3000Xiii, but with debate, logic and practice. This is the model of learning  that Jesus chose with  his disciples and his final word to them were that they should go and make more disciples.

So, what do disciples look like?

Disciples are free and empowered to:

Question everything. There is nothing in faith or in the world that can't be questioned. The Psalms are full of faithful questions raised by God-followers. Jesus raised many questions about the mindless observance of the Sabbath, worship at the temple and the fundamental understanding of forgiveness. He led his disciples to ask hard questions about everything that they'd always been taught, and then he empowered them to find the answers.

Search diligently. The answers to questions don't come easily, at least not the kinds of questions a disciple asks. It takes time, energy and emotional perseverance to search out the answers to the questions. Jesus taught disciples that didn't get it right away. They would understand one bit, but then be ignorant on something else. He pushed them to keep searching, keep learning and keep questioning. He pointed them to the sources of truth and empowered them to search.

Discover truth. The search isn't over when it gets hard. The search for the answers to the difficult questions a disciple faces continues until they find truth. Often the truth  isn't what they wanted to know. The disciples of Jesus were often confronted with truths that were counter to everything they'd learned and known to that point. They had to deal with women being treated with respect, the Sabbath being re-defined, the Messiah ushering in a Kingdom that's not of this world, etc. The truth you discover will be outside of yourself. It will make you uncomfortable. If you like the conclusion that you reach, you've probably not done the work. There's a reason Jesus said that his followers would have to die to themselves.

Change in response. The life of a disciple cannot ever be just an intellectual process. It must result in changed life and action. The uncomfortable truth that you discover will lead you to realize that you need to do something differently. Jesus' disciples had to change the way they saw the widow at the temple, they had to change how they treated food, and they had to change how they understood the Kingdom of God. It wasn't easy to change. The process took years (and it was never done). The life of a disciple, the process of changing into the truth we discover, is never done. We can't rest, we can't stop.

We need to be these kind of people; we need to be disciples if we want to call other people to be disciples with us. We are calling people to the freedom of questioning everything, the wisdom of searching for answers, the work of discovering the truth and the process of changing in response.

Are you ready to make disciples?