What Is Discipleship?

• ✦Come is an invitation to salvation by accepting Jesus — although to Peter and Andrew it was simply an invitation to follow after Jesus.
• ✦Follow Me is a call to be a disciple.
• ✦Make you fishers of men — as disciples of Christ, we become fishers of men: no longer engaged solely in the world, but doing the job of the Kingdom.

Both evangelism and discipleship are important, and they overlap more than people realize. Good evangelism is simply introducing people to Jesus, while discipleship means sharing Jesus and the Word with faithful people consistently, so that they grow in Christ and are able to tell others and disciple others as you did.

The word “disciple” comes from the Greek word that means “to learn.” We see Jesus pouring Himself into His disciples (more than just “the 12”) by spending time with them, eating and fellowshipping, and modeling ministry to them. He also sent them out to proclaim the Gospel and to do good works.

Much later, Paul poured his life into Timothy — training and modeling — and encouraged him to continue the process:

This is an awesome model of trans-generational discipleship — a kind of spiritual leadership development. The goal of discipleship is to produce leaders who can disciple others.