Go and Make WHAT?
Chris Adsit, Associate National Director of Discipleship, Military Ministry

On rainy winter evenings in Oregon, people play the Dictionary Game. The leader chooses an obscure word from the dictionary, and everyone cooks up a definition and writes it down for the leader to read out loud. Your job is to (a) fool everyone with your definition and (b) pick out the correct one. Some of the ersatz definitions are pretty hilarious. In our last game, someone suggested that rataplan was "the strategy employed by the Pied Piper of Hamlin". Nematode was "having an infection of streptococcus nema on or between the toes". Querulous was "of or pertaining to homosexuals".

As I ask various Christians to define the word disciple, I sometimes wonder if I've stumbled into a rousing game of Dictionary. Many folks who are eager to obey Christ's Great Commission to "make disciples" have only a fuzzy idea of what a "disciple" is. How do they expect to make what they can't even define? Vince Lombardi was once asked to pinpoint the difference between a good coach and a bad one. His immediate answer: "Knowing what the end result looks like." The same principle holds true for disciplemakers. So--let's define disciple.

First, some fake definitions--which might have been fooling you for years. Disciple: a mature Christian; a spiritual Green Beret; a leader; a Christian who is victorious over all difficulties; James Bond with a Bible; someone in full-time Christian ministry; a disciplined, witnessing, praying, Bible-reading, fellowshipping, Day-Timer-ed, smiley, seminary graduate.

I just know many of you are saying, "Wait a minute. Some of those look pretty good! What's wrong with that one?" As we take a hard look at what the Bible says a disciple is, the flaws in those definitions will become apparent.

Whenever you want to discover the exact meaning of a word in the Bible, you must do two things. Step 1: go back to the original language for a literal definition; Step 2: study how the word was used in context. When you do this with the word disciple, Step 1 will make it clear that a disciple owns a certain attitude, and Step 2 will show that this attitude manifests itself in certain actions. In this article we'll look at the attitude, and examine the actions in the next edition.

Disciple is from the Greek word mathetes, which is simply translated as "a learner". But when Jesus said "make learners", what kind of learning was he referring to? Book-learning? The kind of learning I did back in college, where I'd pour the curriculum into my cranium and dam it in there just long enough to spill it out on the final exam and then forget it? Not exactly. After an exhaustive search through a truckload of lexicons, theological wordbooks and Greek dictionaries, it became clear to me that a mathetes is someone who "learns by use and practice, resulting in a changed lifestyle".

Watch athletes learning their sports, and you'll get a feel for the kind of learning Jesus was talking about. How do they learn? The coach demonstrates the basic principles and techniques, and then the athlete imitates the coach. Once? Twice? No, he or she participates in drills over and over until the desired skill comes automatically. Through use and practice, the athlete trains his muscles and nerves to act and react properly every time.

Back when I was young enough to run without creaking and popping, I was one of the top hurdlers in the world. If you'd seen me my first year of hurdling, you would have shook your head and muttered, "Hopeless." But after having jumped over approximately one million, two hundred thousand hurdles in six years, I improved a bit. I learned to hurdle not only by reading books or chatting with coaches; I learned to hurdle by use and practice--by hurdling! And I spent so much time hurdling, it began to define who I was. People would see me on campus and say, "There goes Chris Adsit--the hurdler."

In the same way, God has laid out the principles and techniques of righteousness in His Word, and has provided a 24-hour-a-day coach for each of us: the Holy Spirit. As we apply those principles and techniques consistently and repetitively while walking in the Spirit, they transform our actions and reactions. Eventually they begin to define who we are; people start saying, "There goes Chris Adsit--the Christian."

So the crucial attitude a disciple owns is: "an eagerness to learn by use and practice". But this is only half of the picture. Next issue (Disciple: Schwarzenegger With A Bible), we'll see how the inconsistent behavior of the disciples in the Gospels shed light on the crucial actions of a biblical disciple.