The Key to Turbo-Charging Your Discipleship Efforts

As I debriefed 2016 with a friend, we reviewed one of our greatest disappointments. We sent a team off with high expectations. For a while they thrived, but then, as the year wore on and the pressure came, they buckled and ended poorly.

We were left to ask “why?” And I came back to the example of Paul and what he said to his son in the Lord, Timothy.

I can relate to Paul. He spent half his life getting it wrong. The last half his life he imitated Jesus and discipled a few people. And along the way he learned a discipleship secret that he shared with Timothy.

Here it is: Paul invested in his disciples until they became reliable. Then he pressure-tested for reliability to see if his discipleship had taken root.

Then he invested in a few of them until they became sons. And then he invested in those sons until they could stand in for him as Timothy did.

That’s it. Not a seeker-sensitive church or a better worship band or some tech solution. Just a focus on getting disciples to a place of deep relationship and dependability. 

As Paul neared the end of his life, he wrote letters to Timothy giving him counsel. I’m posting this blog post today on 2/2/2017 in honor of this secret Paul shares in 2 Tim. 2:2. “The things you have heard me say…entrust to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others.”

We see that there are four levels of disciples: Paul, Timothy, reliable people, and others. We all start as untested new believers. Many drop out and don’t graduate to the next level: reliability. And most reliable disciples never make it to the kind of deep partnership that looks like a father working with his son. That’s what Paul and Timothy had.