2025 Spiritual Wellness Month
Characteristics of Discipleship
Pastor Trevor M. Crenshaw
March 2025 is Spiritual Wellness Month. The theme is “Characteristics of Discipleship.” Discipleship means becoming more like Jesus Christ (Rom. 8:29). It involves learning from Jesus, following His teachings, and living a life that pleases God. Christian discipleship is not a destination but a lifelong journey.
This journey begins with belief in the Lord Jesus Christ. After a person becomes a believer, he must surrender and commit to a lifetime of learning more about Christ through Bible study, prayer, and fellowship with other believers. No believer can grow and develop as a disciple without obedience to Christ’s teachings and the directives found in the New Testament letters. As followers of Christ obey His teachings, they can experience spiritual development that becomes the impetus for transforming the believer’s character and conduct. Every believer should approach the discipleship process with the mission and objective of helping others to believe and know Christ through sharing the Gospel.
In the Lost Art of Discipleship Making, Leroy Elms used the following diagram to capture the essence of the discipleship process.
Evangelizing Establishing Equipping Empowering
Converts Disciples Workers Leaders
Elms’ approach to discipleship is commendable because it moves a person from conversion to leading and empowering others. This spiritual growth can keep a believer from becoming self-centered instead of others-centered. Thus, the goal of every believer should be to serve in a role where they can empower others to live a new life in Christ Jesus. This new life is free from worldly expectations and erroneous pursuits that lack purposeful and meaningful living. Another notable point about Elm’s method is that it can help believers visualize where they need to be after surrendering and committing to a discipleship process.
Trinity Missionary Baptist Church uses a similar five-fold approach (The Five Bs) for making mature disciples.
Believing —> Belonging —> Becoming —> Blessing —> Behaving
Believing (conversion) represents when a person surrenders their life to the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation and eternal life. Belonging (community) highlights the value of being part of a Bible-based community of believers. Becoming (consecration) shows a deep commitment to becoming more like Jesus Christ. Blessing (contribution) identifies how believers contribute to the church by serving people, supporting the church’s vision, and sharing their faith to encourage other believers and help the lost know Christ. Behaving (conduct) emphasizes the behavior needed to glorify God and make Jesus Christ real to others. Trinity’s process for making mature disciples is carried out through its Christian Becoming Ministry, which focuses on various needs of participants who attend Christian Becoming Ministry Sessions. This process helps to ensure that Trinity has a strategic plan to foster the spiritual growth and maturation of members and others who attend and participate in our Christian Becoming Ministry Sessions.
In Conformed to His Image, Kenneth Boa provides an eleven-part paradigm for a biblical philosophy of discipleship.
1. We must be disciples to make disciples. Prioritizing disciples occurs only for those prioritizing an intimate relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. Boa rightly says, “We teach what we believe, but we reproduce what we are.”
2. Discipleship is a dependent process. It must involve the believer’s dependence on the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit. Without His transforming power, the believer lacks the ability to overcome any strongholds, impediments, and sins that prevent spiritual growth and maturation.
3. Concentration is crucial for multiplication. Some Christians desire to influence change in crowds of people. Jesus attended to the crowds. However, He always concentrated His time and energy on an intimate group of followers. Boa highlighted this truth when he posited, “Our Lord concentrated on a handful of people who were teachable and committed.”
4. People are not our disciples. God calls people in the body of Christ to play a nurturing role. However, this nurturing role should never encompass everything the believer receives along their discipleship journey. When nurturers try to fulfill their role from this perspective, it can lead to attempts to control others, focus followers on the nurturer instead of Christ, and followers can become overly dependent on the nurturer instead of totally dependent on Christ. I agree with Boa when he observed, “We are invited to participate in a slice of what the Spirit of God is doing in their lives, but we never have the whole pie.”
5. Reproduction is a mark of discipleship. No believer should claim to be a disciple of Christ unless they are passing on to others what they have received about developing and nurturing a relationship with Christ. Every disciple of Christ must prioritize developing other disciples who replicate the discipleship process. Boa pointed out this truth when he wrote, “Biblical discipleship equips people to dig their wells and to develop the skills to minister to others. We become generational links when we show disciples how to train people who will reach others.”
6. There is no maturity without ministry. When believers use their spiritual giftedness to serve others in the body of Christ, opportunities for spiritual growth are abundant. As believers serve others, they often encounter challenges that can help them develop in areas where there are weaknesses, insecurities, insufficiency, and/or self-centeredness. Some believers resist this aspect of their discipleship journey because they think the ministry service is strictly reserved for professional ministers. Boa opposed this ideology when correctly arguing, “For the follower of Christ, the ministry is never optional—it is a calling for all believers, not merely a subset of professionals.”
7. We cannot measure our ministries. Some believers erroneously think that ministry success is measurable through numbers and data reports. However, one cannot truly measure what God is doing to change and transform people into the image of the Lord Jesus Christ. Even though some church leaders and followers assume that a large number indicates ministry success, God is more concerned about what has eternal implications rather than earthly measurements. Boa shared that we should engage ministry to do what pleases God rather than thinking we are doing the work of ministry for results that are “impressive in the eyes of people.”
8. Discipleship is more than a program. When believers view discipleship from a programmatic viewpoint, they tend to focus on events and programs that can take away from the goal of being ministry-driven instead of program-driven. Boa was on point when he stated that we cannot reduce discipleship to “a program or even to a process; it is…the growing presence of a Person.” Discipleship is a means for allowing Christ’s presence to grow and consume our lives.
9. Discipleship requires a servant’s attitude. Whenever God calls believers to nurture discipleship in others, He never desires the nurturers to call attention to themselves. The nurturer’s role is that of a servant who calls attention to Christ. Thus, as believers serve and draw attention to Christ, the potential for self-promotion decreases, and the emphasis on Christ increases.
10. Spiritual friendship is a component of discipleship. It is needed in the body of Christ but can be difficult to form. As an introvert, when left to my natural inclinations, I am not quick to befriend others. However, because of the necessity of spiritual friendships, I rely on the Holy Spirit’s power for courage and the desire to move beyond my introversion to befriend others in the body of Christ. In the process, I have developed relationships that provide mutual and fruitful benefits that are not readily experienced outside of spiritual friendships. Boa identified this distinctiveness when he wrote, “Discipleship is a two-way street where the discipler and the disciple both give and receive.”
11. Effective discipleship requires more than one method. Diversity should be the goal of disciples. Without attention to diversity, churches can mistakenly think their method is the best method. Boa pointed out this fallacy when he stated, “A teaching method or training method that inspires one person may be unrealistic and inappropriate for another.” I am grateful that Trinity has various Christian Becoming Ministries catering to various learning styles (Visual, Aural, Reading, and Kinesthetic).
Every church should identify and implement a discipleship process that helps people develop an intimate and close relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. Without an identifiable process, churches can unconsciously make a haphazard attempt at obeying Christ’s command to “make disciples” (Matt. 28:19-20).
I look forward to the messages God will inspire during Spiritual Wellness Month as we consider the theme: “Characteristics of Discipleship.” May the Lord bless us to learn, understand, embrace, and implement the discipleship characteristics we highlight and explore for March 2025.