Abstract: Elliot Clark makes the case that the Great Commission task of making disciples is necessarily church-centered. Based on the teaching and examples given to us in Scripture, making disciples is of the church, by the church, and for the church. Rather than seeing a local church as merely the potential product of disciple-making efforts, the letters of Paul (and others in the New Testament) highlight the church’s central and indispensable role in the task of making and maturing disciples.
In recent decades, many evangelical missionaries and their organizations have returned to an emphasis on disciple making and church planting. Overall, this is a welcome development. It shows a healthy focus on our Great Commission task rather than a more ambiguous and holistic approach that calls everything we do “mission.”
However, among those who share these priorities, there remains a significant difference between some who promote “movements,” whether disciple- making movements (DMM) or church- planting movements (CPM), and others who advocate for church-centered missions (CCM). That may be surprising to some. After all, if a missionary is seeking to catalyze a movement of reproducing churches, wouldn’t that make them church-centered?
Not necessarily. While virtually everyone in the conversation would view reproducing disciples and churches as a proper goal of missions, not all see churches as the primary means to that end. Of course, many would likely see local churches as central to the sending and supporting of missionaries, and they would envision churches as the product of discipleship. But not all envision discipleship as the product of churches.
In what follows I want to argue for that very point: disciples don’t just make churches; churches make disciples. More specifically, I want to suggest that the Great Commission task of making disciples is of the church, by the church, and for the church.
Discipleship of the Church
Jesus issued his initial command to make disciples to his twelve apostles, minus Judas. Yet when we look at the New Testament, we find ordinary Christians doing the work of disciple making, not just the apostles. In fact, an argument could be made that Luke, in writing his early history of the church, went out of his way to highlight this reality.
For example, in the narrative of Acts, the apostles weren’t the first to preach beyond Jerusalem. It was everyday believers, scattered through suffering, who first took the gospel to Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth (Acts 8; cf. 1:8). Men and women like Aquila and Priscilla, Barnabas and Lydia, Silas and Titus were instrumental in the gospel’s advance throughout the eastern Mediterranean. This history fits with the teaching of Peter that every believer is a priest and thus called to proclaim the gospel (1 Pet. 2:9–10).
This reality is reflected in the writings of Paul as well. He expects the church in Corinth (and we could assume all the churches) to follow his example in contextual and intentional evangelism (1 Cor. 10:31–11:1; cf. 9:19–23). In Ephesus, Paul calls Timothy to follow his life and teaching, to pass it on to other faithful men who will in turn teach others also (2 Tim. 2:2). In fact, it’s the job description of such church leaders “to equip the saints for the work of ministry” (Eph. 4:11–13). Every member of the church has a responsibility in gospel work.
More specifically, Paul calls older men and women in the church to teach, mentor, and model godly living for younger believers (Titus 2:1–6). But younger believers are not without similar responsibility. In numerous “one-another” commands throughout the New Testament, the entire congregation is called to mutual discipleship: to pray with and for one another, to speak the gospel and sing to one another, to encourage and exhort one another (Rom. 12:3–21; Eph. 5:15–21). In fact, when the church gathers, each person should recognize he or she has something to contribute through diverse gifts that the Spirit supplies (1 Cor. 12:4–11; 1 Pet. 4:10–11).
This means the work of making disciples is of the church. It’s not merely the work of apostles, or of elders and deacons who have a recognized office in the church. It belongs to the whole body, which is made up of individual members who are uniquely gifted to contribute to its growth and maturity.
Discipleship by the Church
To say that discipleship is of the church is to answer the “who” question. Every believer is meant to contribute to the disciple-making task. Now we turn our attention to the “how” question. And what we find in the New Testament is that God has established the local church as the primary means for making disciples. So how exactly does the gathered body accomplish this goal?
First, through the ministry of the Word. Like initial conversion, ongoing sanctification is by grace through faith (Gal. 3:1–3). And we know faith comes through hearing the Word (Rom. 10:17). Thus, the gathered worship of the church, where we read, sing, pray, and preach the Word, is crucial to disciple making. In fact, this is why the public reading and preaching of Scripture is vital for weekly gathered worship (1 Tim. 4:13; 2 Tim. 4:2). It’s the non-negotiable means God has established for building up the body.
No doubt, this ongoing work of teaching will look different in different cultures. But we should note that the kind of preaching Paul prescribes clearly involves reproving and rebuking, exhorting and teaching (2 Tim. 4:2). This is not mere information transfer, nor can it be accomplished simply through inductive study. The kind of instruction Paul has in mind is both authoritative and affective. Furthermore, the work of preaching in gathered worship is reserved for qualified men who live among and know the flock, who are mature believers themselves and exemplary in character, and who are able to instruct in sound doctrine as well as refute false teaching (1 Tim. 3:1–7; Titus 1:9; 1 Pet. 5:1–5).
The Protestant Reformers defined the church as a committed gathering of believers where the Word is preached and the sacraments are properly administered. They understood, then, that preaching is not the only means God supplies to the gathered body for making disciples. We also have the ordinances of baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Historically, Protestants—including most Baptists—have considered the observance of these ordinances not merely as acts of obedience (making them integral to Christian discipleship) but also as a means of grace (thus essential to the Christian life) by which our souls are nourished through faith. In other words, they believed the sacraments, as observed in gathered worship, are necessary for the ongoing health and maturity of every disciple.
Furthermore, when rightly administered, the sacraments maintain the unity and purity of the church. These are not simply individual acts of obedience or personal piety. They are corporate rites. In baptism, new believers are not merely joined to Christ but to his church (Acts 2:41; 1 Cor. 12:13). Similarly, through ongoing participation in the Lord’s Supper, the church affirms the faith of individual disciples. If a professing Christian falls into ongoing and unrepentant sin, the church as a whole (not just the elders) is called to remove them from the body—and thus from fellowship at the Table (1 Cor. 5:1–13). This is what it means for the church to exercise the keys of the kingdom (Matt. 18:15–20; cf. 16:19), and it’s one way the church maintains its witness in the world.
What this brief sketch shows is that discipleship by the church entails far more than obeying a short list of commands among a small group of friends. It’s a comprehensive discipleship that calls new believers to commit to Christ and his church through baptism; to fellowship with the body as they hear the Word taught and see it lived out together; and to submit to pastoral authority and church discipline so that they are held accountable to a life of ongoing repentance and faith as they are taught to obey all Christ’s commands (Matt. 28:18–20). The work of discipleship can (and likely will) include activities outside the church’s gathered worship, but it must not include less.
Discipleship for the Church
Now we come to the “why” question. What is the purpose of discipleship? To answer that, consider the purpose of Paul’s mission. In the opening of Romans, he says he received grace and apostleship “to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations, including you who are called to belong to Jesus Christ” (Rom. 1:5–6). Paul understood his mission as one of making disciples—what he calls bringing about the “obedience of faith”—for the glory of God.
For Paul, this disciple-making and God-glorifying mission had two fronts: he wanted to preach the gospel to those who had never heard, such as those in Spain (Rom. 15:20), and he wanted to preach the gospel to those who had already heard, such as those in Rome (Rom. 1:15). Where there were no churches, he sought to start them. Where there were churches, he sought to strengthen them.
In the case of the church in Rome, Paul rehearsed his gospel in great detail to bring them to mature discipleship—to the obedience of faith. We know from the wider context of the letter that Paul intended for this growth in grace to result not simply in individual believers who die to sin and live to righteousness; it was to result in congregations of mutual love and encouragement. Paul wanted to see believers united in the gospel and overcoming ethnic divisions. He expected the gospel to enable them to bear with one another in love and build up one another in faith. That is to say, Paul preached the gospel and made disciples with this aim: the establishment of healthy local churches.
Ultimately, Paul wanted to be able to present them—as he did with all the churches he served—before the Lord on the final day with joy (Rom. 15:14–21; cf. Phil. 2:16–17; Col. 1:28). He wanted the Roman church to be mature in Christ, sanctified by the Spirit, all to the glory of God.
Paul’s vision of disciple making was far richer than simply reproducing believers or even multiplying churches. If that was his goal, he probably shouldn’t have written such a robust theological treatise like his letter to the Romans. He would have been better served to compose a short and simple how-to manual or to develop a more reproducible resource for rapid multiplication.
But of course, Paul knew exactly what he was doing. His goal was first to explain and expound the gospel as a means of growing the faith of these believers. Through faith, then, he wanted to bring them to greater obedience to Christ. And that work of making disciples was ultimately meant to find expression in local bodies of believers who love one another, serve one another, and grow together in humility and holiness, all to the glory of God.
Toward Church-Centered Discipleship
If missionaries are going to agree on the fundamental task of the Great Commission, we must know what it means to be a disciple of Christ, and we must be able to answer the same basic questions about discipleship identified above.
The “Who”
Who can make disciples? The church. That is, every believer individually is called to make disciples, yet we do it collectively in the context of the local church. It should go without saying, but making disciples is not the task of unbelievers—even if we think they’re “persons of peace” (Luke 10:5).11 . For more on “persons of peace” see Alex Kocman, “Should Missionaries Be Looking for ‘Persons of Peace’?” Nor is it the work of people who’ve simply committed to obeying the commands of Jesus as they understand them. It’s the work of those who have repented of their sins and trusted in Christ, those who have been baptized and brought into the fellowship of a local church. They are the ones who make disciples. Asking or encouraging others to make disciples puts the cart well before the horse.
The “How”
How do we go about making disciples? Again, the answer is the church. We shouldn’t try to make disciples merely by meeting one-on-one or by having group Bible studies. Nor is discipleship simply about fostering community or having good “follow-up.” As helpful as those things are, they cannot replace the local church. Biblical discipleship happens in the context of churches where believers (including missionaries) are committed to one another and become each other’s spiritual family. It happens as we learn from and teach one another, lean on and serve one another, and even submit ourselves to the instruction and oversight of qualified pastors, as well as to the discipline of the body. Discipleship accountability happens through church accountability.
The “Why”
And what is our purpose in making disciples? Of course, our ultimate goal is the glory of God. But one significant way we glorify God is by committing to and caring for one another in local churches (Eph. 3:10, 21). In missions, we’re not aiming simply to multiply disciples or even churches. Paul, whose ambition was to go where the gospel hadn’t, refused to overextend himself by pursuing work in new lands if he thought the health of the churches he had already started was in jeopardy (2 Cor. 10:14–16; cf. Rom. 15:22). The goal in missions is never breadth at the expense of depth. The aim of multiplication doesn’t supersede the aim of sanctification. And since we seek to bring disciples to greater obedience, we should first seek to bring them to greater faith. To that end, we must continually preach and apply the gospel so that the churches we serve are marked by the kind of gospel unity and gospel purity that brings glory to God.
In short, we make disciples of, by, and for the church.