Make Disciples

by Gary Johnson

Here we are – at the halfway point through 2025. Month-by-month, our focus is to live like Jesus. To help us do so, we identify and pursue a trait in the life of Jesus. Why? We want 1 John 2:6 to be real in each of our lives; if we claim to be Christians, we must live as Jesus lived. In June, we focus on Jesus’s command to make disciples. 

While growing up, our family watched a television show called Mission: Impossible. Every Sunday evening, Jim Phelps was introduced to what seemed to be an “impossible mission” to pursue, and before the compact reel-to-reel recording tape would self-destruct, Phelps heard the voice say, “Your mission, Jim, should you decide to accept it…” 

Jesus has given us a mission, and to many of us, it seems impossible. What is the mission? We are to “make disciples.” We call this the Great Commission of Jesus, when He said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations; baptizing (i.e., immersing) them in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And surely, I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:18-20). 

When hearing this, many Christians today are intimidated by the task, thinking that it is beyond their ability. Yet, the Great Commission comes with the Great Companion! Jesus promised that He will be in this endeavor with us, as He will never leave us. The mission is entirely possible! The question is: will we, as individuals, decide to accept it? 

The New Testament refers to elders as “overseers” (i.e., episkopoi). Elders oversee the local church, and we do so from an overview, such as from a plane cruising at 36,000 feet, overlooking a landscape. When we look at making disciples from that vantage point, we can readily see three distinct challenges. 

Mission Drift 

In 1636, a ministry was established that continues to this day. Its founders then declared that their mission was “to be plainly instructed and consider well that the main end of your life and studies is to know God and Jesus Christ.” Harvard University was founded as an institution of higher learning to educate and equip ministers. Harvard has suffered mission drift. 

Mission drift is subtle, yet significant. Mission drift is invisible, yet discernible. It is a cultural current that carries the local church away from her mission, which was given to her by none other than Jesus Himself! As the spiritual leaders of a local church, elders must be vigilant, making sure that the church they serve is not drifting from the Christ-given mission of making disciples. Everything is secondary to this one primary purpose of the church. 

Desired Destination 

Advances in technology have enabled us to use GPS (global positioning system) in our daily lives. After we input an address, the system takes us to our desired destination. Similarly, do we know the desired destination the Lord has for us spiritually? Paul wrote, “For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters” (Romans 8:29). 

Reason with me. The good news we preach is reflected in the disciples we make. If we preach a prosperity gospel (i.e., “name it—claim it” theology), we will produce consumer-driven, self-centered disciples of Jesus who are content with convenient, comfortable Christianity. This is found nowhere in the Scriptures. 

To the contrary, Jesus defined a disciple like this: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23). A Christ-follower is willing to die daily for Jesus Christ. Dietrich Bonhoeffer did die for his Christian faith at the hands of his Nazi captors. In his landmark book, The Cost of Discipleship, Bonhoeffer declared, “When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die.” 

In some nations (i.e., China, North Korea, Iran, etc.), disciples of Jesus do literally “come and die” when they become a Jesus-follower. Tens of millions of Christians live under constant threat to their physical safety and well-being. For us, it may be that we put to death wrong thinking as to what it means to be a Christian. Some people think of themselves as nominal Christians, being Christian in name only. Yet, this is not being a Christian at all. The suffix “ian” means that we are a follower of Christ. Conversion and discipleship go hand in hand (Matthew 28:18-20). Proof of our conversion is evidenced by our becoming like Jesus (i.e., the making of disciples). 

Many Christians try to live a Peter Pan kind of life; we live in a fiction, Neverland, where we never grow up. The late evangelist and author Juan Carlos Ortiz said, “The great threat to the church today is the perpetual childhood of the believer.” In other words, ‘Peter Pan Christians’ who never want to grow up in Christ are a far worse threat to the mission of the Church than any external opposition from the evil one.  

Our desired destination is to become fully mature in Christ (Colossians 1:28-29), obeying the final command of Peter prior to his death as a martyr when he wrote: “But grow in the grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be glory both now and forever. Amen” (2 Peter 3:18). 

Essential Relationships 

Transformation happens in relationship, and there are two essential relationships for us to become mature disciples in Jesus Christ. First, we must be filled with Holy Spirit (Ephesians 5:18). When we were immersed, we received the gift of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:38) and He began His life-long work of sanctification with us, and to be filled by Him, we must yield to Him as God in us (1 Corinthians 6:19-20). It is HIS power that produces HIS fruit in us (Galatians 5:22-23), thus making us increasingly like Jesus. 

The second relationship we must have is with one another. “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another” (Proverbs 27:17). To make disciples means that we invest in deep, authentic, transparent relationships in which we hold one another mutually accountable to become more like Jesus. And remember, we cannot take someone where we ourselves have not yet been. We make disciples who make disciples, and they in turn, make disciples. 

Is this mission impossible? Not on your life! We have the Great Companion who enables us to pursue the Great Commission! Jesus said to His followers in the first century, and because He does not change (James 1:17), to His followers in the twenty-first century, “As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you” (John 20:21).