Does Your Church Have a Discipleship Culture? How to Cultivate It

Years ago, while still aspiring to local church ministry, a pastoral mentor told me, “If I run into you years from now, I’m going to ask, ‘Who are you discipling?’” I cannot un-hear those words. As a local church pastor, I regularly ask myself, “Who am I discipling?” and “Are the people I discipled discipling others?”

Discipling others is essential to ministry. As one pastor well explains, “Churches don’t need programs so much as they need cultures of discipling, cultures where each member prioritizes the spiritual health of others.”¹

But if this is the case, how can a church build that culture of discipleship?

What is discipleship?

At its simplest, Christian discipleship means helping others believe and obey Jesus. A more complete working definition might be: Christian discipleship is spiritual friendship, primarily in the context of a local church, grounded in God’s Word, aimed in a Christ-ward direction, occurring over a long period of time.

A handful of scriptural principles inform this definition. These include:

1. Spiritual friendship is friendship informed by the gospel (John 15:15).
2. The local church is the primary context for Christian life and discipleship (1 Cor 1:2).
3. Scripture is authoritative for such relationships (2 Tim 3:16–17).
4. The aim of these relationships is conformity to Christ’s image (Eph 4:17–24).
5. Disciples are called to endure and persevere (Heb 12:1).

What is a discipleship culture?

Assuming the definition above, a culture of discipleship emerges when it becomes normal for a church to collectively value helping one another follow Jesus. This shared value will consequently shape the norms, expectations, and practices in a congregation. The aim will be to see every member (disciple) discipling and being discipled—leaving behind no undiscipled disciples.

What commitments inform a discipleship culture?

But what does it actually mean for a church to collectively value discipleship? It doesn’t emerge by accident. Several commitments work together to foster this shared value and expectation.

1. Word-centered gatherings

If discipleship is grounded on the authority of Scripture, then Scripture should rule our congregational gatherings. The Word should be front and center in what the whole church reads, sings, prays, and preaches.

Moreover, these things should be understood as the ordinary elements of Christian discipleship. What should members value in their discipling relationships? The same thing the whole church values when they gather: God’s Word. What should they do with God’s Word in these relationships? They should mostly do what the whole church does every Lord’s Day: Read the Word, interpret and apply the Word, pray the Word, and even sing the Word.

2. Exposition of Scripture

At the center of the church’s Word-centered gatherings is a commitment to expositing Scripture. I’m persuaded that right and regular exposition of Scripture is the most effective starting point to shape shared values, norms, and practices.

A discipling culture emerges where the Word is faithfully preached and then reverberates through the members’ ministry to one another.

As such, expositional preaching should arguably serve as the normal diet for a discipling church. One particular value of expositional preaching is that it helps the congregation understand Scripture for themselves and cultivates their confidence and competency to use it faithfully when discipling others. A discipling culture emerges where the Word is faithfully preached and then reverberates through the members’ ministry to one another.

Tune in to David Helm’s interview on expository preaching.

3. Exemplary leadership

Culture tends to flow downstream from leadership. The church’s members will typically value what its leaders value, and not value what their leaders do not value. For instance, non-evangelistic churches are often led by leaders who don’t evangelize. So too, non-discipling churches are typically led by leaders who don’t actively disciple others.

So if leaders want to build a culture of discipleship in their churches, they must begin with themselves: Do we practice what we preach? Are we currently setting an example in our ministry for others to follow, or are we asking others to do what we are unwilling to do?

A church’s discipling culture will only go so far as its leaders are committed to actively discipling others.

4. Meaningful membership

One of the most important if underappreciated elements of a church discipleship culture is meaningful church membership.² Consider two important implications:

First, Christian discipleship can only be performed by actual Christians because being a disciple and discipling others are both spiritual activities. Individuals who are not indwelt by the Holy Spirit cannot do this work (1 Cor 3:16; Eph 3:16).

Second, church membership strengthens a discipling culture by defining who specifically the church is called to disciple. Who is specifically responsible for discipling you? Your own church. Who are you specifically responsible for discipling? Other church members.³

What practices shape a discipleship culture?

With these commitments in place, what specific practices then serve to cultivate a culture of discipleship?

1. Demystify discipleship

Time and again in ministry, I’ve heard people say, “I’d love to do that, but I can’t do what the pastor does.”

Many Christians mistakenly reduce discipleship to formal teaching reserved for a small group of well-equipped and gifted specialists. But if discipleship simply means helping others believe and obey Jesus, then every disciple can disciple others in ordinary ways, such as one-on-one Bible reading, prayer, hospitality, mutual encouragement, and more.

A discipling culture can only emerge when discipleship becomes the ordinary ministry of all members, not just the work of a few “specialists.”

2. Shift mindsets

Years before the COVID pandemic, Collin Marshall and Tony Payne presented a (then-)hypothetical situation in which churches were forced to shut down due to a pandemic: “All of your church’s public meetings and formal programs are cancelled indefinitely. No men’s or women’s or children’s ministry; no evangelistic courses; no outreach events. Nothing.”⁴ In such a situation, how would your congregation grow in the grace and knowledge of Christ? How would they be encouraged to persevere in love and good deeds (especially under such trying circumstances)? What about evangelism? How would new people be reached and followed up with? If ministry relied on every member—not just the “professionals”—to minister to each other outside of the church’s formal programs, would ministry continue? Would it flourish?

Would your ministry model survive a pandemic? How we answer that (not-so-)hypothetical question can reveal our approach to ministry.

Programs themselves do not constitute a discipling culture. Nor does a discipling culture need programs to survive (even as certain programs may be useful). A culture of discipleship is one where its value and practice is woven into the ordinary life of the church’s members. “Discipleship” is not a class, program, or event they attend. A discipler is who they are and discipleship is what they do.

Cultivating a genuine culture of discipleship then requires shifting from a program-centric approach to one that aspires for every member to be engaged in personal discipling relationships.

3. Build slowly

In response to their (at the time, hypothetical) pandemic scenario, Marshall and Payne propose the following. They suggest beginning with ten of your most mature Christians and meeting intensively with them to train them in prayer and how to read the Bible. Their role would then be to meet with others in the church to train and encourage them to do the same, eventually involving the rest of the church in regular Bible-based encouragement through these initial ten and those they subsequently train.⁵

I’m not prescribing that exact method (and neither are they), but the principle to be learned is this: Start small with faithful and mature believers. Train them to disciple their families and others, who then do the same with others, and so on. Over time, this multiplication ensures that every disciple is both discipling and being discipled.

What metrics evaluate a discipleship culture?

But how do you know a culture of discipleship is actually taking root in your church? The following questions can help you assess the results.

1. Are leaders setting the example?

If a member came to you and asked, “What does it look like to disciple others?” could you say, “Look at elder so-and-so and do what he’s doing”?

Are your elders exemplary disciplers in the church? Are they discipling others? Does their discipleship equip and encourage others to do the same kind of ministry?

2. Are members evangelizing?

Growing disciples aren’t just hearers but doers of the Word (Jas 1:22). Consequently, as Christians meet together for discipleship, they will pray for open doors to share the gospel with others (Col 4:3), whether personally or by inviting others to church. They will also joyfully share stories of evangelism and celebrate God’s grace in each other’s ordinary faithfulness.

3. Are members meeting together?

If you sent a questionnaire to your members asking whom they regularly meet with for mutual encouragement, prayer, and Bible reading—beginning with their own families—what would the results be?

4. Is attendance increasing?

One result may be that more saints are committed to gathering with the whole church each Lord’s Day. As they grow in their knowledge of the Word in the context of spiritual friendships, they yearn to be under the Word with fellow members each week. They come to understand that, if discipling relationships are the veins and arteries of the church, then the weekly Lord’s Day gathering is the heartbeat that circulates its lifeblood: God’s Word.

If discipling relationships are the veins and arteries of the church, then the weekly Lord’s Day gathering is the heartbeat that circulates its lifeblood: God’s Word.

5. Are leaders multiplying?

A church with a discipleship culture should be marked by a growing number of competent and qualified elders and deacons.

If you’re a program-oriented church, your elders are likely program managers, and there are only so many programs to go around. But when the whole church is engaged in discipling one another, the most godly, mature, and fruitful can be recognized and raised up as future leaders.

Conclusion

Friends, building a discipleship culture in your church is possible—by God’s means and depending on God’s power. Wherever individuals prioritize the spiritual health of others, a Word-centered culture of discipling will emerge.

Every disciple discipling and no undiscipled disciples. That’s the goal.

Jeff Wiesner’s suggested resources for further study

• Marshall, Colin, and Tony Payne. The Trellis and the Vine: The Ministry Mind-Shift That Changes Everything. Matthias Media, 2009.

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