It’s been a wild week for the eleven remaining men. Earlier in the week, they had seen their teacher be arrested, tried, and crucified, and yet here he was standing before them alive, maybe even more so than they were. He had taught them everything they needed, and ready or not, it was time for Jesus to hand the reins of his movement over to his disciples. As if seeing someone come back from the dead wasn’t enough, the disciples stared on in awe as their rabbi began to ascend into heaven. Before he left, he gave them one final commission. “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” With these final words, Jesus left his disciples.

These final words of Christ are commonly understood as the great commission. This is the mission that he gave his followers to continue his work of building the Kingdom of God on earth. Fortunately, it appears his followers took this command seriously and, as a result, the church exists as it does today. The question now is, do we still take this mission seriously? Jesus didn’t just expect this mission to end with the eleven disciples. When he gave the great commission, he gave it to all his disciples both present and future. That means that if you’re a follower of Christ then the mission for your life is to also make disciples.

How well are you accomplishing that mission? Who’s the last disciple you made? Do you consider yourself a disciple? What even is a disciple? If this mission from Jesus is supposed to be so important to us, then why does it seem like the Church has really been fumbling the ball on this one? The early church grew exponentially daily and God “added to their numbers daily” in the midst of deep persecution and constant scandal. They figured it out, so why has the modern church struggled so much with developing disciples? It really boils down to an inability to answer this question: “How do we make disciples?”

A few years ago, a pastor friend of mine was invited to a meeting of local pastors. There were ministers representing churches from the small and quaint to those some might consider mega-churches, different traditions, and different cultural backgrounds. The speaker of this meeting opened the session asking that very question: “How do we make disciples?” This pastor, the lead pastor at the largest church in a sixty mile radius, revealed that he called this meeting because he was concerned that his church could not answer this question. He had a suspicion that some of the other churches in the area also had difficulty coming to an answer. After deliberating and going back and forth for hours, the meeting eventually ended, and all it revealed was that the Church has a serious problem. They couldn’t even answer this seemingly simple question. The Church is really struggling to figure out how to do the very thing that Jesus had commissioned the Church to do.

If the leaders of the Church two thousand years ago were able to not only answer how to make disciples but actually make disciples so well that their churches exploded, then we can certainly answer this question for today’s believers and churches. Over the next nine blog posts, we will look at this question from multiple perspectives. What is a disciple? How do we make disciples? How did the Church historically create disciples? These posts will cover topics like Christian higher education, church systems for discipleship, and even how you can personally answer the call to make disciples in your own life. You are made to be a disciple and so is everyone else. It is the most important thing we can do with our lives and the way you answer the question “how do we make disciples” will change your life forever.