If you’ve been in church for longer than 5 minutes, you’ve probably heard someone talk about “discipleship” or “making disciples”. Jesus had 12 disciples. After the resurrection, He commanded them in Matthew 28:19-20, to “go into all the world and make disciples”. In many churches, that verse is painted on the walls. The language of discipleship gets tossed around frequently, as does copious amounts of discipleship programming- discipleship classes, discipleship books, and even discipleship conferences.

It seems like a concept of which almost every Christian possesses at least a loose working definition. Yet, our application of this concept is sorely lacking. Even if most Christians have similar ideas of what a disciple is, very few of us can articulate a coherent process for how to make one. Worse yet are the Christians who have read books, attended classes, audited seminars, and gone through trainings on the art of “disciple-making”- but have yet to lift a finger to do it.

If you’ve ever looked at the commission of Jesus to spend your life make disciples and felt unqualified, unprepared, overwhelmed- you’re in good company.

The 12 Apostles just might have been the most unqualified, unprepared, overwhelmed, and unlikely leaders to lead the Christian movement. Religious leaders in Israel during that time were among some of the most educated, brilliant, and qualified in all the known world. Yet God took these 12 ordinary, uneducated, blue-collar men and used them to turn the entire world upside down (Acts 17:6).