Well 2024 is now here, and our leadership team has been sharing our goals and vision for the next year. For us it’s a time to look again at something we think about every year, but want to push even more focus to in 2024, discipleship. We know that implied in being a disciple of Christ is making disciples.
Discipleship is a central theme in the gospels. Mark’s gospel is a mere 15 verses in before he mentions discipleship in verses 16-20:
“Passing alongside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew the brother of Simon casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you become fishers of men.”And immediately they left their nets and followed him. And going on a little farther, he saw James the son of Zebedee and John his brother, who were in their boat mending the nets. And immediately he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired servants and followed him.”
Mathew finishes his gospel with Jesus’s Great commission, and places discipleship at the center:
“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations” (Mathew 28:18b-19)
We know if we are followers of Jesus, Discipleship will follow. It also has a cost. It may require the placement of our preferences, our traditions, and our comfort at the foot of the cross. We’ve changed the format of our mid-week study from a corporate gathering on Wednesday night to small discipleship groups which can meet at any time throughout the week. For years, it’s been a tradition, but in order to make disciples we’re putting it before the cross and trying something new. What do you need to crucify in order to make disciples in 2024?
Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his effervescent work, The Cost of Discipleship says this:
“When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die. It may be a death like that of the first disciples who had to leave home and work to follow him, or it may be a death like Luther’s, who had to leave the monastery and go out into the world. But it is the same death every time death in Jesus Christ, the death of the old man at his call. Jesus’ summons to the rich young man was calling him to die, because only the man who is dead to his own will can follow Christ.”