How I’m Teaching Students About Discipleship
Note: “What I’m Teaching at Youth Group” is an ongoing series that presents a snapshot of a recent series the author has taught in their own ministry. Our goal is to present a helpful model for what it looks like to practice biblical and theological depth in youth discipleship.
Everything we teach students has one purpose: to show them Christ and call them to follow Him. No matter what passage or topic we are covering, our goal is for our students to grow into mature disciples, learning what it means to take their next step of faith. However, if you are like me, you probably have realized that at oftentimes, “discipleship” is one of those terms in Christianity that often becomes a buzzword: something that sounds spiritual, but is never clearly defined. To avoid putting vague challenges before students to “become disciples” that they may not be able to put into practice, I decided to kick off our fall semester digging into what it means to be a true disciple, to follow Christ in every area of their life. Here is the approach I took for this series:
Week 1: Jesus’s Most Important Commandment
To really understand what it means to follow Christ, it’s wise to look to the words of Jesus Himself. In Matthew 22:34-36, Jesus says the greatest commandment is “to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and the second is like it: you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” On these, He says, the rest of Scripture depends. This means that fundamentally, what it means to become a true disciple is for all your life to be conformed to these two commandments. But specifically, Jesus’s claim contains three categories: heart/soul, mind, and actions. I then utilized these categories to flush out what holistic discipleship truly looks like.
Week 2: Disciples from the Heart
In Matt. 15:1-20, Jesus encounters religious leaders who are (as typical in the gospels), expressing their distaste at Jesus and his disciples for not conforming externally to their traditions. Jesus’s response? To expose their calloused hearts for caring more about their traditions than the God they claim to serve. Righteousness apart from a change heart produces only pride. This is one of the most difficult parts of helping students grow spiritually. The tendency is for our well-intended calls to obedience to be misunderstood or misapplied, leading to either legalism (at best) or pharisaism (at worst).
If all we give students is the expectations of how they are supposed to live, we can unintentionally bypass the most important part: that true disciples are disciples FROM the heart. Genuine Christians are not those who merely act like Christians; they are those who have experienced spiritual transformation from the inside out! The Bible uses many terms: born again, made alive, freed from slavery, etc., all communicating the same idea, that following Christ is something that begins not with our efforts, but with the grace of God. Our students need God to give them new hearts before they pursue these new behaviors.
Week 3: Disciples with our Minds
In 2 Peter 1:1-11, Peter writes about the incredible promises that are true for Christians: God has granted to them all things pertaining to life and godliness, they have become partakers of the divine nature, they have a faith of equal standing with the apostles’, etc. And despite all of this being true NOW, he gives them three commands: “supplement their faith” and “be diligent to confirm their calling and election” These are active commands, expectations of how the Christian life are part of a continual, intentional pursuit of Christlikeness. There is no such thing as “passive sanctification”; God changes our hearts so that we can move forward in obedience, His Spirit shaping us as we do. Our minds must then be trained, shaped and molded to pursue new habits, desires, and purposes. We must purposefully set our minds on becoming like Christ, striving to imitate Him more each day.
Though we want to affirm to our students that grace is sufficient to cover their sins, and that no amount of effort can make God love them anymore than He already does, we also need to be careful to emphasize the responsibility of Christians to pursue growth. Becoming Christ-like is not something that just happens to us; the New Testament is replete with commands to put off our old ways so that we can put on new ones, to grow in the grace and knowledge of God, and to mature in our faith. This means that although our justification did not require contributing effort on our part, our sanctification does. Growth in grace and godliness requires more than a good attitude or intent; it requires diligence, resilience, and faithfulness. It’s not just a matter of desiring the right things; we must actively set our focus on pursuing them.
Week 4: Disciples through Our Hands
In Romans 12:3-21, Paul elaborates on what it means to “offer our bodies as living sacrifices”, and it directly connects to others. Just as a body is one, but has many members, so also the church is to be one people, while also being diverse in giftings. What is interesting here is that Paul doesn’t just say diversity is good; he connects it to the notion of “interdependence”, each member of the body NEEDS the others. This means that true disciples are following Christ in community, recognizing their need not only for others, but their responsibility to help serve others among them. Beyond that, they are to live in relationship with unbelievers, to “live peaceably with all”, and “overcome evil with good.”
The YPT Curriculum is built around discipling students’ head, heart, and hands. Learn more on the YPT Curriculum page.
What all this means is that discipleship is more than just your personal relationship with Christ; it is what that relationship is used by God for. Jesus doesn’t save anyone to live a solo Christian life; we are only able to spiritually thrive when we live rightly in community with both other believers and unbelievers. The church, according to Paul, is essential to faithful Christian living. God saves souls for a purpose that begins now: to strengthen, encourage, support, and correct other believers, functioning together to make each other more like Christ. It is also the vehicle God uses to bring more people into the kingdom!
Conclusion: Don’t Subdivide Discipleship
The goal of this particular series was simple: lay out plainly for students that following Christ is a total transformation of their life, not a “spiritual section” of it. It has become too easy for us to teach about following Christ in a disconnected way. Sometimes, it means we teach using abstract terms in such a way that students don’t know what next step to take. Other times, we push too hard for Christian behavior, while neglecting the role of the Spirit in that undertaking. Even still, maybe we balance those well, but we forget to emphasize the importance of their responsibility to serve others with the new life they have found. As you seek to help students understand what it means to follow their Savior, I pray this approach will help you achieve this with balance, clarity, and warmth. May they hear the call and respond.