13: 13 Misconceptions about Discipleship

**SPEAKER_1** (0:10)
Hello, ever been confused about discipleship?
Jesus had how many? 12 disciples, He lost one, then He added one, and ever since then, the church has grown through discipleship. So today, we're gonna talk about 13 misconceptions related to discipleship. And this is a true chopping block coming off of Dave's great talk on relating to disciples or relating to discipleship. So welcome to The Chopping Block.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:37)
Welcome. Yeah, so we've got a number of different items that we weren't able to address during that teaching. Hopefully, this will be helpful to you. There's some reasons, I think, why many of us are confused about disciple making and discipleship. So historically, discipleship, it started out, that was the main missions and equipping vehicle of the church right from the get-go. They followed Jesus' commands, but very quickly, they started letting go of disciple making, right? And so a lot of that had to do with heresy and teaching was creeping into the church.
But very quickly, they started kind of locking down on this stuff, started making a lot more hierarchical, centralizing power, more in leadership. And so when that happened, increasingly so, every member of minister, every normal Christian being a minister of the gospel kind of got lost, right? And so it makes sense that very quickly, about 2,000 years ago, if disciple making got lost, it makes sense why a lot of folks refused about it. And with some notable exceptions throughout history, the church has largely left discipleship and disciple making on the wayside, along the wayside. And it hasn't been until really, the early mid 1900s, with Dawson Trotman and the Navigators, that disciple making has really been pushed back into the forefront of the Christian church's ideas, especially here in the West.
So it makes sense if you're confused.

**SPEAKER_1** (1:59)
Yeah, a little shout out to the Navigators.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:01)
That's right.
That's right. All right, so today we're going to jump in, and we're going to talk about 13 misconceptions that you may have, and that many folks have, about disciple making. Hopefully this will be helpful to help you take a next step with what the Lord calls us to as believers. So should we just go ahead and get started? Number one. First one is, you have to be young or in college.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:24)
You do, right?

**SPEAKER_2** (2:24)
You do.
No, that's a misconception. It's a misconception. Now, it makes sense in part because the resurgence of disciple making, especially here in America, like we said, came along with the navigators in college ministries, specifically.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:39)
And in military environments.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:40)
That's, yeah, okay, yeah. A lot of younger folks in these environments. So it makes sense that a lot of folks would think you have to be in college.
But that's just really not true. It's not true at all. Have you found that to be true in your experience, that most folks think that, or a lot of folks think that?

**SPEAKER_1** (2:55)
Yeah, I think there's, college students are more available than those who are married with kids and with high demanding jobs. So maybe it's a little easier to go after, but it's definitely not just for college students.

**SPEAKER_2** (3:07)
That's right. So college students may have a little bit more time, may even be able to disciple more people at the same time.
Great, if you're in that stage of life, rock it.

**SPEAKER_1** (3:15)
Make the most of your college years.

**SPEAKER_2** (3:16)
But if you've got a lot of young kids at home, if you're in a job, and you can only engage with maybe one person over a number of years, great.
At the end of the day, it's not about production primarily, but about faithfulness and moving forward in relationship. Okay, so that's number one. Strike that one down. You don't have to be young or in college. Number two, you don't have time.

**SPEAKER_1** (3:37)
Wait, I don't have time.

**SPEAKER_2** (3:39)
You don't?

**SPEAKER_1** (3:40)
Wait, maybe that's a misconception.

**SPEAKER_2** (3:42)
No, well, I guess you could answer it either way.
But we all have the same amount of time, right? No matter where you live, no matter what culture you live in, no matter how many kids you have, you have the same amount of time. So that's a little bit of a tongue in cheek answer, but it's profound as well. It all comes down to how we prioritize and allocate our time. So you do have the same amount of time as everyone else. And like we said in number one, it may be that you can't disciple as many people at the same time as someone else who has more availability. But at the end of the day, that's really not what counts. It's not what matters.