What is a Disciple? Part 3: The Community - by Dan Roach

Discipleship is fundamentally relational.

You won’t get very far if you try to go it alone in your walk with Jesus. Stephen Smallman puts it even more bluntly, ‘There is no discipleship without community.’ While the singular term disciple is used in the Gospels, the plural, disciples, appears ten times more frequently. As Michael Wilkins says, ‘disciples are always seen in conjunction with the community of disciples, whether as Jesus’ intimate companions or as the church.’ This is significant. It should affect the way in which we think about discipleship.

We see deep relationships developing between Jesus and his disciples throughout the Gospels. They learnt together, grew together and, finally, were commissioned together. Jesus called them, taught them, trained them, answered their questions, cooked for them and shared meals with them, rested with them, challenged them, rebuked them, prayed for them and with them, explained things to them, shared life with them in a hundred different ways and revealed things to them about his death and resurrection that he told no one else. Finally, he died and rose again for them and reappeared to them before returning to heaven. The disciples were with Jesus at every step of the way. They gave up everything to follow him, argued with him, baptised new disciples with him, understood and misunderstood him, betrayed and abandoned him, returned to him, and were finally recommissioned by him to make communities of disciples everywhere.[1]

A community of disciples is called a church. Jonathan Dodson writes,

the disciples of Jesus were always attached to other disciples. They lived in authentic community. They confessed their sins and struggles alongside their successes – questioning their Saviour and casting out demons. They continually came back to Jesus as their Master and eventually as their Redeemer. As the disciples grew in maturity, they did not grow beyond the need for their Redeemer. They returned to him for forgiveness. As they began to multiply, the communities that they formed did not graduate from the gospel that forgave and saved them. Instead, churches formed around their common need for Jesus. The gospel of Jesus became the unifying centre of the church. As a result, the communities that formed preached Jesus, not only to those outside the church but also to one another within the church… the gospel is for disciples…it saves and transforms people in relationship, not merely individuals who go it alone.

The church is essential to discipleship and disciple-making. When we respond to the call of Jesus it is important that we become a part of a church, which is full of other disciples like us who want to follow Jesus for the rest of their lives and help each other become more like him. The church is ‘God’s appointed arena for making disciples’ and its ordinary weekly Sunday meetings are ‘the hub from which discipleship spreads’ (Smallman).

So next time you are at church, take a look around and you will see people everywhere with different stories and backgrounds, all at different stages of their discipleship journey, all of whom are becoming more like Jesus.

[1] Numerous examples of Jesus actions towards the disciples and their responses to him can be seen in John, e.g. 2:2, 12, 3:22, 4:1-2, 27; 6:5-6, 60-69; 8:30; 11:7-16, 54; 12:16; 13:1-20; 18:2; 20:19-29; 21:1-19.