How to disciple students

I played football for a long time when I was young. I got pretty good at it too. I was pursued by some Div. 1 college programs and won a few awards in High School. The thing I loved most about football was all the things you could do with a football. With a simple oblong ball you could pass it, run it, lateral it, flip it, or just hand it off. If you put the right scheme together those simple movements would take a kid's game played with an oblong shaped ball and turn into a complex chess match. But the one thing you can not do with a football is shoot hoops with it. Have you ever tried to shoot a football through a basketball hoop? It doesn’t work, it usually gets stuck in the net, making it super obvious that the football was not made to be used to play basketball.

That reminds me of a moment in the book of John when Jesus is talking with some of the teachers of the law and Pharisees. John 5:39-40 reveals a moment when Jesus is being chastised by the religious leaders of the era and he tells them that they are trying to play basketball with a football. What he really says is, “You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that by studying them and getting everything right you will find eternal life." In other words, you’ve missed the point, the scriptures testify about me and point to me, but when I stand in front of you, you refuse to come to me to have life.

Have you ever been guilty of that? You teach good lessons, set up small groups, even give away Bibles, but your students aren’t walking with Jesus. Maybe your students even know a lot about the Bible, but don’t really seem transformed by Jesus. Ever wondered why? Maybe you’ve been playing basketball with a football. Maybe you are sharing the scriptures with them about Jesus but they don’t know what being transformed by Jesus looks like. That’s what discipleship is, allowing ourselves to be transformed by Jesus to live our life like Jesus would live it.

Though it sounds like an easy thing, discipling students, is not as simple as we think. Especially when discipleship is wrongly defined as the passing on of information in a classroom or “small group” setting. Most of the time when we think about discipleship we think about a set of classes or a track of lessons that we run students through in our church (The Gospels 101 or OT Survey). In Youth Ministry we tend to try to transcend those things and create small group environments. We train adult leaders to take on a few students during our program. For instance we have a worship and teaching time then end with small groups to debrief the message. In a more comprehensive ministry you might provide a night for them to meet during the week or encourage the adult leaders to carve out a time during the week to meet outside of the programed time frame. Once we have this framework set up, we check off "discipleship" on our vast "to do" list and move on to one of the other 100 things on it.

To be honest with you (which is always the goal) none of what I just explained is bad. Those all can be very good moments of teaching and learning, but they are not discipleship. Discipleship is learning to be like Jesus. Which means a component of that process is learning about who Jesus is and how he lived his life, but that is only one aspect of a multifaceted process.

For us to make disciples we must (and I say it again, must) live life with those we are trying to help follow Jesus. For a student to become a disciple of the master they must see our lives, watch how we process things, see us wrestle with who Jesus was and what our life would be like if we lived it like Jesus might.

In his article called “Rethinking Evangelism” Dallas Willard says, “We need to clarify in our minds what discipleship is. My definition: A disciple is a person who has decided that the most important thing in their life is to learn how to do what Jesus said to do. A disciple is not a person who has things under control, or knows a lot of things. Disciples are simply people who are constantly revising their affairs to carry through on their decision to follow Jesus.”

For a teenager to be able to "revise their affairs to carry though on their decision to follow Jesus," they need to see what that looks like. Students don’t come pre-programed with the ability to change their lives, "just add the right info and stir..." It takes time, discipline, and the embodied participation in a relationship based on trying to follow Jesus.

As they learned to do what Jesus did, Jesus’ own disciples, only spent a portion of their time learning information about God and the scriptures. The greatest amount of their process with Jesus involved them mimicking him and practicing ways to live life the way he would. His followers called Jesus, “Rabbi.” Rabbi means teacher and a Rabbi had his Talmidime, which means those who follow the teaching (the teachings of their Rabbi) — translated Talmidime means disciples. The system that was built around these two terms is called the Talmudic system. The system itself was so basic that everyone knew it and knew their role in it.

The first step was Bet Sefer — The House of the Book (6-10 years old/coed). Everyone went to school and were required to memorize the first five books of the OT — the law. Once they were finished they went back home and learned the family trade. Only the top male students advanced to the next level, Bet Talmud — The House of Learning (10-14 years old). Everyone memorized the rest of the OT, yes all of it. Here the students are taught the art of the question and answer -- yes this is why Jesus answered questions with questions.

Only the top of the top students would advance if a Rabbi picked them out. This was called Bet Midrash — The House of Study. A student would ask a Rabbi by if they could “follow him” (big implications here). He would question them and he would determine if they were “worthy,” if not they went home to work in the family trade. Each disciple in Bet Midrash were to learn the Rabbi’s “YOKE” (Matt. 11:29-30), his teachings about the law, so they could learn to teach it and pass it on one day. Those teachings not only came with knowledge, you had to learn why he interpreted them the way he did, and learn to fight for those interpretations with passion. That means you didn’t just learn book knowledge, you learned to mimic your Rabbi, talk like him, dress like him, speak with the same accent, wear your hair the same, etc.

As you can see the system that Jesus called his disciples into is the same system he calls us all into when he says, “Go make disciples…” The question is why have we just made it about knowledge and not living out the good news with people so they can know Jesus and be transformed by him? Living life with people is messy. You have to listen to them whine, you have to get into their drama, you have to be patient with them as they learn lessons, you have to let them mess up (teenagers mess up more than anyone else). You have to show them that Jesus will meet them in the hard times, good times, small times, and big times. That he wants to transform all of them and retell our story so they are all good news to the world around us. To retell our story we need rabbis who have been trained by The Rabbi to live life the way He would live it. As Paul says, “how can they hear with out someone telling them the good news?” That is what youth ministry is.

If you follow the time line, Bet Sefter is elementary school, Bet Talmud is middle school, which means Bet Midrash was High School into college. Yep, Jesus started a movement that changed the world by teaching teenagers how to live life like he would live it. They learned to mimic their rabbi and it caused a chain reaction. What I’m arguing is that we stop building programs and start pulling leaders and kids under our wings so they can learn to live out the good news the way we have learned how. They say you won’t remember sermons well and you may hear hundreds of them, but you always remember the person who showed you who Jesus was and how to live like him. The statistic show this well. Most of the students surveyed who said they stayed with the church after they graduated, did so because someone took them under their wing and showed them how important it was to follow Jesus.

The question is will you do it? Dallas Willard also asks this question, “How are you making disciples and is it working.” As I look at the landscape of Youth Ministry in the 21st century I would say we aren’t making many disciples, we are trying to keep the kids happy, the parents satisfied, and our supervisors off our backs. That means lots of “fun,” lots of events, and lots of kids, but not many disciples. If you want to help kids be transformed by Jesus, help them become disciples, we can help. Please contact us today and let us know how we can help: stew@nuclesuscoaching.net