A few weeks ago I made a post on “what is a disciple?” That post covered what Jesus was doing when he called his disciples. It was looking at the issue of discipleship from the perspective of a disciple. Now I would like to take a moment to take a look at the issue from the other side. In Mathew 28:19, Jesus commanded his disciples to go out and make other disciples. This command is important to keep in mind as we go out and share the gospel. If we lose sight of this, then we will be converting people to a religion rather than sharing our relationship with Jesus Christ. We will be asking people to follow us and our ideas rather than give all of their life to our King.

When we talk about making disciples, it is important to remember that we are not discussing the making of converts. I often see churches where they have learned to appeal to what people want to hear. They persuade a few people to come to the front at the end of the service and pray a prayer. They call this success and add their names to the church roll. Another fault that I am often guilty of is going out and grappling with people on an intellectual level. I am a philosophy major, so my natural tendency is to try to prove to people why their system of beliefs is wrong. Both of these approaches are wrong. We do not need to make converts to the Christian religion; we need to help people follow Jesus Christ with everything they have.

Toward this end, it is important that we help people become disciples of Christ, not disciples of us. When we hear a message about making disciples, we are often eager to go out and do it. We come back the next day with some young Christian who wants a mentor. We teach them all the things we think we know about Jesus and think to ourselves that we are bearing fruit. I’m pretty sure that this is not what Jesus was talking about. We don’t need to be people’s teachers, or the person they follow, we need to help people follow Jesus.

If we follow Christ’s command to go out and make disciples, we will soon find that it costs something. Any kind of worthwhile work for the kingdom costs something. We find that pretty soon these people that we are trying to help have issues. There are messed up lives all around us that need work to clean up. It costs us time, emotions, effort and fun. Pretty soon we find that the work is beyond us. That we are incapable of really helping people. If we are really going to engage in discipling others, it requires deeper levels of brokenness and dependence upon Christ. If we abide in him, however, we will bear fruit.

Here’s the alter call. Look at your life. Do you see fruit of eternal significance? Are you bringing Christ into relationships around you? What are you living for? I think we need to really take a look at our lives and see where our time and energy are going. When you come before the Judgment Seat of Christ, what parts of your day will be worthless?