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Welcome to Ordinary discipleship with Jessie Cruickshank. My name is Chris. With me is Jacob. And today we are getting together to talk about discipleship. But if you're a pastor out there, you need to listen up. If you're a layperson up there, you need to listen up. Why you ask? Because today we're going to answer the question that so many pastors have and they feel.

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Jesse, you've felt this before. You've been part of a church where it feels like the pressure of discipleship all comes down to you. Right. Because everybody's saying now you need to do this. You need to do this. And to be honest, most people, you don't even know what you're talking about. Right? Right. I think if most people who are following Jesus will say, yeah, I believe we're supposed to make disciples.

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Who's supposed to make this? Who's doing that? What does that look like? What do you even mean? Are we having a potluck? Right. So I have a faith. We had a community gathering in my neighborhood. Yeah. Of people of faith who were all different theology streams and denominations. They just. Their churches were too far away to do, like, small group.

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So they still want to end that kind of an atmosphere. And so we started hosting this community just right there in the neighborhood, in my in my home. We would eat dinner. Wow. And I was working on the ordinary discipleship book. And I was kind of running into some interesting things, like, I think I'm assuming something that I shouldn't be assuming.

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And I asked everybody in the room to go around and define what they thought discipleship was. And they were all these very different answers. So the guy who was Catholic, it was catechism, right? It was discipleship was the classes that I go through until I'm, you know, age. And then I get caught and I'm done. I graduate, you know?

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Like, I would love to graduate from something at the age of eight. That's not a sub tweet. Yeah. No, no, no, no. I got you. Another person in the room thought it was evangelism. Right. So then where does discipleship was becoming a convert in to Christianity? And then you're. And then you're there. And they had a reformed background.

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So there was some. Yeah, just some of that understanding. And then another person thought discipleship was, well, our need, just like telling and praying with the person in the grocery store, like, isn't that discipleship. And and so they all had these very different ideas of what it meant to what discipleship was, what that looked like, which was fascinating because I was assuming that everybody knew that it was just helping somebody be changed by Jesus, like wherever, whatever, whomever, whenever, however long.

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Like, if I'm going to come alongside you and help you be changed by Jesus, that's discipleship. Of course, everybody had that same definition in their mind, right? Well, you bring up an interesting point that a lot of denominations treat it like. It's almost like a program that you complete. Right. That whether it's confirmation or replaces or corrects or we talked about a want class, you know, like can you you're making steps.

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Whereas I think we could agree that discipleship is a lifelong process that you don't graduate from. Right. Which creates then that question. Wait, I'm still supposed to be doing this. Right. Who am I doing this? Wait, What? I can't. I can't disciple. Who am I supposed to say? It's funny. I thought about this story when you were talking about graduating, right?

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And I was working on this family to come to church for, like, six months on Christmas Eve. They came. I was so pumped, Like, they had no church home. They came and the guy has got a Southern accent and he goes, Yeah, that was good. That was good. I'm like, coming back next, next week because now we get we got our church in this week, you know?

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Well, we'll see. Maybe next Christmas. I was like, Come on, man. You know, like, they made the steps, they did the thing, they checked the checkbox. And sometimes Christmas is important, right? But sometimes people feel like that discipleship is the checkbox or whatever, right? Like, it's not just being changed by Jesus, but it's a process that we said, yeah, we're done, right?

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I'm good. I'm converted. I'm done. Yeah, whatever. I went to Christmas once. It's good. So you talked a little bit about how it feels, and that's a really interesting perspective to get a bunch of different people from different faith walks in a room and ask that question. Something you've been studying for a long time. And so what you said that there was some other stories of of people there.

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Can you think of any of those stories like it where people were talking about what it means to be a disciple? Yeah. For them, it was around, Well, what am I learning? What is my church history, what are my doctrinal points in? And it was this very school based thing. And so for me, as part of the leadership of the House Church is a faith gathering.

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It's not a House church. I don't even know what we would call it. Right. Neighborhood faith gathering. You know, I'm thinking, well, wait a minute. If they each have this different idea of discipleship, how am I supposed to disciple them? Correct. Right. Because, I mean, I love the person who is Catholic. And in the we did communion done as part of our thing.

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But but he didn't participate, which is totally fine, because I wasn't an ordained priest in Catholicism, therefore able to administer communion. Sure, everybody was cool with it. You just didn't participate? No. No feelings were hurt. Right. But I'm thinking, wait a minute, they are have different practices than I do. They have different belief systems and ideas like we all love God, but maybe we even think God differently about God.

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How am I supposed to disciple them if I feel like that's the point of this neighborhood gathering? And that led me to this place where I was like, okay, there are some people in this group who we have similar enough idea about what God is doing, and that's not even the right the way to say it. We have a similar enough idea about what we want, what we want next from God, or what the question is that we're asking from God.

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You know, where we where we were in the journey. And I could disciple that person. But for the other people in the room who were whose journey was just different, and the only place we intersected was we gathered in my house once a month. Right. Like, I couldn't necessarily disciple them. Right? I wasn't the right guide for their journey.

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They were. And, you know, I was guiding rock climbing and they were like surfing, you know, like it wasn't the right person for them. And there was no harm or feelings hurt in that. It was actually a really amazing revelation to say, you know what, I actually can't disciple these people. I think that's okay. Yeah. And it's interesting, Jacob, you're you've been a pastor of a church that's growing from the point where how mental how long have you been?

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gosh. Eight or nine years. Eight or nine years, Yeah. And so I'm sure you've struggled with this as well. And the idea that discipleship kind of falls on, I think most pastors would agree. They feel that it falls on their shoulders to do discipleship. But we were talking earlier that really every person can be disciple makers. Well, I think yeah.

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And I think what I like, I think a lot of times like if you're in a more institutional setting rather than like a like a neighborhood faith gathering, it's not so much that people might have different understandings of discipleship, but I think the bigger issue is just a capacity issue. What I mean by that? So what I mean is that like if people when people are a part of a faith organization, like a church with a building and a service and a service time, they're assuming that the pastor will do the discipleship, will do the disciple making, I should say, the discipling of people.

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And and very often the people like the people assume that. And the pastor assumes that. And I think like that's very much like people go into occupational ministry saying, I like discipling people, I like teaching the Bible. And so there becomes this assumption that, you know, 80% of churches in America are under 200. I think I'm even being conservative on that.

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That's about 100 by now. Yeah. So that means most of these churches have a sole pastor, one staff person. Yeah. And those 50 to 150 people all think that that one person should be their disciple her and that person thinks that they should be disciplined, that 50 to 150 people. And when you're sitting in that position, you can start to say like, well, gosh, I can't.

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I don't have the time. So capacity issue of the time to disciple these people. I don't have the energy to disciple all these people, cause you're probably also bi vocational, right? You probably also have a job because the church isn't big enough to give you enough income for that time. Right. Right. So yeah, you have a 40 hour, 20 to 40 hour a week.

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Well, and I'm sure a lot of people listening to this are by vocational as well. Yeah, absolutely. But and that's where you're going next. Like the like that's why around who ology we talk about every person disciple making and and Jesse you were saying usually when we say I can't the answer is, well, God didn't intend you to usually.

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Usually, yes. So if I was say I can't disciple everyone, you would say, well, God didn't intend you to. Right. But in a previous episode, you said in the hero's journey that every hero says no in the beginning anyway. I know, right? That would be dilemma. Is it like, is my resistance my in this that it's supposed to be overcome or is my resistance God actually resisting me?

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And it's always my biggest question. Yeah. And the answer to both is give up and just ask God to do something. I had an interesting thing happen. We there was a guy that was working at the church. He was a young guy and I had recently just started getting deeper in my faith. This was 20 years ago. And he came up to me and he said, Man, I really respect you.

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I appreciate you. Will you mentor me? And I didn't even know what that meant at that point. Like, I went home and like, I'm Googling. What does a mentor do? You know, like and I know that we're going to talk in the next episode about not feeling equipped, but I like what you say so much about, like how you have been pushed to your like you have to have God in your life in order to achieve what you're about to attempt, right?

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Like you've never felt like you've been fully equipped for any position ever in your life. So when somebody comes and they say to you, everybody can be a disciple maker, like practically, what does that look like? I think if we can right size the expectation, okay, Like like we have to start there because if you are a person with a 40 hour, let's say you're the pastor of a church or you even have a small group, I mean, honestly, like 10 to 20 people that that the agreement and the understanding in the group is, is that one person is discipling, you know, a herd of humans.

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Like that's an unrealistic expectation. I can only disciple three people. I have a full time job. Jesus worked on 12, you know, struggled with at least one for it, for whatever reasons we want to put in there. And they live together for three years. Okay, so I'm not living with you. Love you guys. No, my husband's super introverted.

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It's not going to happen. Even though we did do that for a season of our marriage, well, there goes that boot camp. So for ten years, we had people live with us. But like, okay, so three. So if I think of the 1 to 5 one, two, three ratio as what is sustainably reasonable for a mentorship, you know, in-depth discipleship relationship.

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Well, how many people are that means that is the small group of 30. You need ten people doing that. Okay. So that's a terrifying number. If you're a pastor or small group leader, you're like, Where am I going to find ten people to do this? Yeah, right. But I think if we can right size the expectation that we are just sharing what having a shared showed us, we are just sharing what God has taught us.

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We are helping other people see God the way that we see him and sharing that and then helping them see God and experience God the way that God has designed them to be experiencing God. Like we can just it's not about all this, you know, theology. I have this conviction that there are no tests in heaven, right? There's no theology tests.

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There's no like, did you believe the right things? The Peter's not going to ask you that question at the gate, but you're going like pass veil, you know, and it's some sort of, you know, super theology, you know, did you read the Bible deep enough kind of question? So instead, we can say, okay, I just need to live the best life.

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A follower of Jesus that I am and I'm going to encourage you and help you do that as well. Then three people seems more reasonable and like I can do it and then we realize, wow, if it's only that, then actually everybody can, right? I think that a teenager can make a disciple. I think that a person who has any kind of job or any kind of neurodivergent person can actually make a disciple, because all you're doing is sharing what Jesus means to you and what welcome to ordinary discipleship with Jessie Cruickshank.

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My name is Chris. With me is Jacob. And today we are getting together to talk about discipleship. But if you're a pastor out there, you need to listen up. If you're a layperson up there, you need to listen up. Why you ask? Because today we're going to answer the question that so many pastors have and they feel, Jesse, you've felt this before.

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You've been part of a church where it feels like the pressure of discipleship all comes down to you, right? Because everybody everybody's saying, now you need to do this. You need to do this. And to be honest, most people, you don't even know what you're talking about. Right? Right. I think if most people who are following Jesus will say, Yeah, I believe we're supposed to make disciples, man, who's supposed to make this?

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Who's doing it? What does that look like? What do you even mean? Are we having a potluck? Right. So I have a faith. We had a community gathering and my neighborhood. Yeah, of people of faith who were all different theology streams and denominations. They just. Their churches were too far away to do, like, small group. So they still want to end that kind of an atmosphere.

00;14;54;27 - 00;15;19;16
And so we started hosting this community just right there in the neighborhood, in my in my home. We would eat dinner. Wow. And I was working on the ordinary discipleship book and I was kind of running into some interesting things, like, I think I'm assuming something that I shouldn't be assuming and I asked everybody in the room to go around and define what they thought discipleship was, and they were all these very different answers.

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So the guy who was Catholic, it was catechism, right? It was discipleship was the classes that I go through until I'm, you know, AJ And then I get up and I'm done. I graduate, you know, like I would love to graduate from something at the age of eight. That's not a sub tweet. Yeah, No, no, no, no. I got you.

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Another person in the room. Thought it was evangelism. Right? So then where does discipleship was becoming a convert in to Christianity? And then you're in, then you're there and they had a reformed background. So there was some. Yeah, just some of that understanding. And then another person thought discipleship was, Well, aren't I just like telling and praying with the person in the grocery store?

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Like, isn't that discipleship? And, and so they all had these very different ideas of what it meant to what discipleship was, what that looked like, which was fascinating because I was assuming that everybody knew that it was just helping somebody be changed by Jesus, like wherever, whatever, whomever, whenever, however long. Like if I'm going to come alongside you and help you be changed by Jesus, that's discipleship.

00;16;30;09 - 00;17;04;04
Of course, everybody had that same definition in their mind, right? Well, you bring up an interesting point that a lot of denominations treat it like. It's almost like a program that you complete. Right. That whether it's confirmation or replaces or corrects or we talked about a wanna class, you know like can you you're making steps whereas I think we could agree that discipleship is a lifelong process that you don't graduate from right which creates then that question wait I'm still supposed to be doing this right?

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Who am I doing this? Wait, what? I can't. I can't disciple. Who am I supposed to decide? It's funny. I thought about this story when you were talking about graduating, Right. And I was working on this family to come to church for like, six months on Christmas Eve. They came. I was so pumped, like they had no church home.

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They came and the guy has got a Southern accent and he goes, Yeah, that was good. That was good. I'm like, coming back next, next week because now we get we got our church in this week, you know, We'll see. Maybe next Christmas. It's like, come on, man. You know, like they made the steps, they did the thing, they checked the check and.

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Right. Sometimes Christmas is important, right? But sometimes people feel like that discipleship is the check box or whatever, right? Like, it's not just being changed by Jesus, but it's a process that we said, yeah, we're done, right? I'm good. I'm converted, I'm done. Yeah, whatever. I went to Christmas once. It's good. So you talked a little bit about how it feels, and that's a really interesting perspective to get a bunch of different people from different faith walks in a room and ask that question, something you've been studying for a long time.

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And so what you said that there was some other stories of of people there. Can you think of any of those stories like where people were talking about what it means to be a disciple? Yeah, There for them it was around, Well, what am I learning? What is my church history? What are my doctrinal points you in? And it was this very school based thing.

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And so for me, as part of the leadership of the House, church is a faith gathering. It's not a House church. I don't even know what we would call it. Right. Neighborhood faith gathering. You know, I'm thinking, well, wait a minute. If they each have this different idea of discipleship, how am I supposed to disciple them? Correct? Right.

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Because, I mean, I love the person who is Catholic. And in the we did communion as part of our thing. But but he didn't participate, which is totally fine, because I wasn't an ordained priest in Catholicism, therefore able to administer communion. Sure, everybody was cool with it. He just didn't participate. No, No feelings were hurt. Right. But I'm thinking, wait a minute, they are have different practices than I do.

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They have different belief systems and ideas like we all love God, but maybe we even think God differently about God. How am I supposed to disciple them if I feel like that's the point of this neighborhood gathering? And that led me to this place where I was like, okay, there are some people in this group who we have similar enough idea about what God is doing, and that's not even the right the way to say it, we have a similar enough idea about what we want, what we want next from God or what the question is that we're asking from God.

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You know, where we where we were in the journey. And I could disciple that person. But for the other people in the room who were whose journey was just different, and the only place we intersected was we gathered in my house once a month. Right? Like I couldn't necessarily disciple them. Right? I wasn't the right guide for their journey.

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They were. And, you know, I was guiding rock climbing and they were like surfing, you know, like it wasn't the right person for them. There was no harm or feelings hurt in that. It was actually a really amazing revelation to say, you know what, I actually can't disciple these people. I think that's okay. Yeah. And it's interesting, Jacob, you're you've been a pastor of a church that's growing from the point where how many how long have you been?

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gosh, eight or nine years. Eight or nine years? Yeah. And so I'm sure you've struggled with this as well. And the idea that discipleship kind of falls on, I think most pastors would agree. They feel that it falls on their shoulders to do discipleship, but we were talking earlier that really every person can be disciple makers. Well, I think yeah, I think what I like, I think a lot of times is like if you're in a more institutional setting rather than like a like a neighborhood faith gathering, it's not so much that people might have different understandings of discipleship, but I think the bigger issue is just a capacity issue.

00;21;30;11 - 00;21;54;05
What I mean by that? So what I mean is that like if people when people are a part of a faith organization, like a church with a building and a service and a service time, they're assuming that the pastor will do the discipleship, will do the disciple making, I should say the discipleship of people. And and very often the people like the people assume that and the pastor assumes that.

00;21;54;07 - 00;22;19;23
And I think like that's very much like people go into occupational ministry saying, I like discipling people, I like teaching the Bible. And so there becomes this assumption that, you know, 80% of churches in America are under 200. I think I'm even being conservative on that. That's about a hundred by now. Yeah. So that means most of these churches have a sole pastor, one staff person.

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Yeah. And those 50 to 150 people all think that that one person should be their disciple. And that person thinks that they should be disciplined, that 50 to 150 people. And when you're sitting in that position, you can start to say like, well, gosh, I can't. I don't have the time. So capacity issue of the time to disciple these people.

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I don't have the energy to disciple all these people. Cause you're probably also bi vocational, right? You probably also have a job because the church isn't big enough to give you enough income for that time. Right. Right. So yeah, you have a 40 hour, 20 to 40 hour a week. Well, and I'm sure a lot of people listening to this are bi vocational as well.

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Yeah, absolutely. But and that's where you're going next. Like the like that's why around who ology we talk about every person disciple making and and Jesse, you were saying usually when we say I can't the answer is, well God didn't intend you to. Usually. Usually yes. So if I was saying I can't disciple everyone, you would say, well, God didn't intend you to write.

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But in a previous episode you said in the Hero's journey that every hero says no in the beginning anyway. I know, right? That's a great dilemma. Is it like, is my resistance my in this that it's supposed to be overcome or is my resistance God actually resisting me? And it's always my biggest question. Yeah. And the answer to both is give up and just ask God to do something.

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I had an interesting thing happen. We there was a guy that was working at the church. He was a young guy and I had recently just started getting deeper in my faith, as was 20 years ago. And he came up to me and he said, Man, I really respect you. I appreciate you. Will you mentor me? And I didn't even know what that meant at that point.

00;24;04;03 - 00;24;28;11
Like, I went home and like, I'm Googling. What does a mentor do, You know, like and I know that we're going to talk in the next episode about not feeling equipped, but I like what you say so much about, like how you have been pushed to your like you have to have God in your life in order to achieve what you're about to attempt, right?

00;24;28;17 - 00;24;40;06
Like you've never felt like you've been fully equipped for any position ever in your life. So when somebody comes and they say to you, everybody can be.