How Do I Make Disciples Like Jesus?
Discover how to make disciples like Jesus in this biblical exploration of Matthew 28:16-20. Learn practical, intentional, and relational ways to fulfill the Great Commission by following Christ’s disciple-making methods. Find out how to equip others through inward growth and outward expression, using the Spirit’s power to guide and inspire you.
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The Great Commission
16 Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. 17 And when they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted. 18 And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in[a] the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
Am I Called to Make Disciples?
A healthy New Testament church should be an equipping church. Therefore, how do we, as believers, respond to the command of Jesus Christ to make disciples? Many hear that calling and think this is only something applicable for clergy, however, Jesus was clear that this is a command shared for all of us.
We have a few options for responding to Jesus’ command outside of obedience.
Ignore it.
Rationalize that we have other priorities.
Make excuses that we don’t understand the instructions.
The divine method of “making disciples” isn’t cryptic or mysterious. To put it succinctly, we can hear Jesus’ command and simply disobey it. Jesus had methods of making disciples, and we need to pay attention to them. In his book The Master Plan of Evangelism, Robert Coleman persuasively argues that Jesus’ methods are just as divine as His message. This is why we must make the kind of disciples that Jesus made and make them the way that Jesus made them.
Jesus had 12 people that He spent time discipling. He didn’t assemble groups of 30, 50, 70 and greater, instead, He gathered 12 or less. In social organizational theory, humans cannot have more than 12 to 18 deep and abiding significant relationships with other people. We may have many friends, but most of them will, ultimately, be acquaintances. Jesus poured into 12 people, which is deliberate, and we can learn:
Intentional: Jesus was deliberate and guided by a master plan.
Relational: Jesus was personally engaged, guided by a cross-shaped, agape love for people (John 13:34–35).
Formational: Jesus formed his disciples by teaching the Word, equipping, de-briefing, modeling, and challenging them so they could grow as disciples.
While Jesus taught, it wasn’t just passive learning. The Discipleship Method of Jesus has a dual thrust: inward and outward. Jesus poured into 12, that’s inward. But Jesus poured into the 12 so they could go outward to the world. Thus, the inward development is unto outward expression. Following this divine pattern of Jesus, we develop disciples in our church family (inward) so that we’re equipped to go and make disciples outside the church (outward).
When we read the Great Commission, Jesus wasn’t telling these 11 guys to pair up and disciple each other until Jesus returned. Instead, He told them to reach people who haven’t been reached with the gospel and to be intentional about helping them develop as disciples. This is why you have the Spirit of God inside you, so you can speak the gospel and God’s Word (Acts 1:8)!
JESUS: “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” Acts 1:8
Jesus commands us to reproduce. But He also promises that His power is at work as we move out in faith. He declares that He will fill us with all of His power to do the thing that He calls to. Curtis Sergeant said, “It is natural for some in a marriage to choose not to reproduce; it is not natural for a Christian to not reproduce.” Discipleship that does not reproduce disciples is sterile discipleship.
How Do We Become Disciple-Makers as Jesus Instructed Us?
“For God is not a God of confusion but of peace. As in all the churches of the saints.” 1 Corinthians 14:33
There’s an ordered way to step into being a disciple-maker. Consider this: If you coach athletics, there’s always a system for developing a football, basketball, baseball, volleyball, or soccer team. We see this in so many avenues, such as there’s a system for justice and law at your bank and even the restaurant you go to for lunch. So, yes, there’s an order in how we practice the methodology of discipleship in light of Jesus’ commands.
Four Fields Training
To begin, I want to encourage you to make a list of 100 friends. Now, again, only 12 to 18 of them will be close, but this 100 should be people you know who are preferably outside of the church. Then, ask all 100 if they would be willing to join a Bible study you will lead. For many, you’re already out of your comfort zone! But if you ask 100 people to study the Bible, only a percentage of them will say yes.
Let’s clear something up: God is at work in everyone. When you walk through the airport, God is at work in every person around you. Often, those you think will won’t and those you think won’t will. Move with those who want to move with God.
So, because you’re potentially already out of your comfort zone, my encouragement is to remember to follow Jesus into territory that’s outside of your comfort zone. This is why He calls us to be people who move in faith.
Discovery Bible Study
Disciple-making isn’t about sharing the gospel with people and leaving them to figure out the Christian life independently; That’s malpractice. Instead, we show them how to follow Christ on a day-by-day basis.
As you invite people to study God’s Word, here’s how you do that. Discovery Bible Study is a simple, reproducible method for you to lead others in being engaged in the Scriptures without much preparation because your dependence is on the person of the Holy Spirit bringing the light and life of Christ through God’s Word.
To begin as a crowd breaker, invite people to share what they’re thankful for, what’s causing them stress, or how they see the Spirit moving in their lives. This is a way for people to open up and begin to share their lives with one another.
The first step of Bible study is having a pre-selected passage of Scripture to walk your group through as you journey together to study Scripture. Following the guide, you read the passage aloud and then ask the group to retell the passage in their own words.
Next, you have someone in the group volunteer to read the passage again and ask these questions:
What does this passage teach us about God?
What does this passage teach us about Jesus?
What does this passage teach us about His plan?
Then, you have someone read the passage for a third time and invite the group to discuss how this passage teaches us about us, humanity, and our needs. As this conversation happens, trust that the Holy Spirit is present, as is promised in Scripture, and that God is revealing Himself as you journey together in this discipleship paradigm.
The final question you ask the group is: If this is God’s will for my life, how will I respond to it and obey? This question invites them to share this message with someone else. Has God laid someone on their heart to share this message with?
As a reminder and to remove some pressure, you’re not the primary teacher in this method. The purpose is to allow the Holy Spirit to lead the group. You don’t have to be qualified with a seminary degree to do this. Jesus wouldn’t tell us to make disciples if it wasn’t something a believer was incapable of doing; that’s not God’s nature.
What Do We Teach as We Make Disciples?
As we move forward in selected Scripture passages in new groups, we want to posture ourselves and our groups to let the Scripture speak to people. That falls into nine growth categories for people as they hear God’s Word. Let’s look at what we want God to teach them as we make disciples:
Teach them to love Jesus.
Teach them to love His Body, the Church.
Teach them to love Scripture.
Teach them why the Means of Grace are important:
Means of Grace: Reading, meditating and studying the scriptures, prayer, fasting, regularly attending worship, healthy living, and sharing our faith with others
Teach them to walk in the Spirit, grow in sanctification, and discover the joy of holiness.
Disciples aren’t transformed by trying really hard to change.
They’re transformed by maintaining a connection to Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit.
Teach them to discern good teaching from bad teaching.
“Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God because many false prophets have gone out into the world.” 1 John 4:1
Teach them to do what the Lord requires.
“He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God” Micah 6:8
What does it mean to act justly?
What does it mean to love mercy?
What does it mean to walk humbly with God?
Teach them that what they are learning is unto making new disciples.
Teach them to love reaching the nations with the Gospel and making new disciples.
If that list of nine things overwhelms you and causes you to say, “Whoa, pastor, I’m not even sure I’m there on all those nine things!” Be reminded and encouraged that you, too, are in development. Jesus is aware of that, and as you seek to make disciples, you, too, are being cultivated and developed as a disciple of Christ.
In his book No More Spectators, Mark Nysewander states:
“In the early 1800s, Methodism was the fastest-growing Christian movement in the United States. Fueled by the camp meeting revival, there was rapid multiplication through the class meeting. It was a hot house for new leaders. A person could start out as a class member, become a class leader, then become a circuit rider. There was no limit. Even the first Methodist bishop in the United States, Francis Asbury, had come up through this disciple-making track.
By the late 1800s, however, at the general conference, two subtle decisions had been passed. These decisions exposed a significant plate shift in Methodism. It was changing from a disciple-making movement into a church of spectators. The general conference decided that attendance at class meetings should no longer be obligatory. To be a Methodist you just needed to attend the worship event. They shifted their base community from a group of a few to an event of the many. The second decision was to start a theological seminary. The primary form of leadership was shifting from everyone a leader to only a few educated leaders who governed the many. The disciple-making discovery of John Wesley to aim for a few and enable the few to lead was quickly unraveling.” No More Spectators (Sovereign World, 2005), p. 63
Reader, please find comfort in knowing that God made you special. You’re made in God’s image and raised for good works and fruitfulness because you are His workmanship. God prepared these good works for you even before you were born. In John 15:8, Jesus said, “By this is my Father glorified, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be my disciples.”
God doesn’t want to guilt you into being a disciple-maker, and that’s not my heart in sharing any of this. However, God has given us the opportunity to be fruitful for His glory. The genius of the Methodist movement was expressed in our roots of intentional discipleship. If we’re to see a discipleship resurgence in our future, it will require a rediscovery of the life-giving patterns of our discipleship roots.
The author and professor Howard Snyder pulls from our history and reminds us of a day when intentional discipleship was once a life-giving priority among a people called Methodists:
“The class meeting (intentional discipleship)…became the sustainer of Methodist renewal over many decades. The movement was in fact a whole series of sporadic and often geographically localized revivals which were interconnected and spread by the society and class network, rather than one continuous wave of revival which swept the country…Without the class meeting, the scattered fires of renewal would have burned out long before the movement was able to make deep impact on the nation.” Howard Snyder, The Radical Wesley (Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press, 1980), p. 57.
There are practical ways to live into this because out of the inward and expressing the outward, discipleship groups can be birthed during your lunch hour at the office, meeting early before your pickleball groups, or the friends you play golf with every week. You can weave this into your schedule with a little bit of intentionality.
Believer, you are the salt of the earth. Your saltiness should make the people around you thirsty to know the reality that you experience of salvation through Jesus Christ. Whether you’re aware of it or not, there are people around you who sense the saltiness of Christ in you, and they thirst for that same reality to be ignited within them. You can be responsive to the people around you for God’s glory. God has strategically placed you in relationships, situations, and environments. In His sovereignty, there’s a reason that you’re rubbing elbows with certain people.
As a church, we want to equip you in practical ways to live this out for the glory of God. We exist to make disciples of Jesus Christ among all peoples for his glory in Jesus’ name.
