The best way to make disciples is with patience. It’s also the only way to make a community, multiply a community, and plant new communities in a healthy way. But it’s also not the American way, nor the American church way. We want to treat discipleship like it functions on a factory assembly line, having people line up at the front, add specific theology, life, and behavior along the way and come out the other end as a perfectly equipped disciple. That’s a program for education and not a process of discipleship.
Discipleship is a process of becoming like Jesus Christ in our affections, our thoughts, and our behavior. If we begin to see discipleship as a process with many iterations, we would find more peace, joy, and hope in the struggle of everyday life. Each day then allows us to experience more of God, realize more of our need to be conformed and trust that God’s word is true and that He will conform us to Jesus.
