What even is discipleship?
This was the question one of my closest friends asked me about seven months into us having a discipleship group with a couple of other girls in our campus ministry. It was a moment that had me scratching my head - wasn’t it obvious?
A moment of pause made me realize that it wasn’t. I wasn’t entirely sure yet how to describe the word I’d heard so much about.
Churches love to talk about discipleship. Isn’t that what we’re supposed to be all about?
Sure. But we should probably define what we’re talking about before we say that it’s the biggest thing that we’re all about.
I spent the next several weeks mulling over what discipleship was all about. What did it mean to follow someone who was following Jesus? What was that supposed to look like, both in theory and in practicality?
I’d only just started discipling people, but I realized that something else had been happening in my life that was a much better representation of what life in the family of faith is supposed to look like.
It was something that I learned from my own family.
I’ve always been told that I sing and talk like my mom. This is no surprise, given that she’s the one who taught me how to speak and sing. Any time I needed to learn a new song at church, I’d make sure to lean over and listen to how she did it.
That’s how I figured out how to sing alto.
Now, my family can’t stop singing. Just last year at the lake, my cousins and I ended up in the water, singing away at songs we know by heart and undoubtedly sing from them. We’re spontaneous worship, defined. If someone starts up a tune in the kitchen, it only takes a couple of seconds for the whole house to follow suit.
Learning how to sing from my mom and family encapsulated an idea I’d learned during my high school years. After some quick digging, I’ve discovered that it comes from researchers Doug Fisher and Nancy Frey, two educators. They call their idea the “I do, we do, you do” principle, also known as the gradual release of responsibility practice.
I listened to my mom, I copied my mom, and now I can hear her in my head anytime I’m singing an old song or learning a new one.
The same is true of life.
Sometimes I cry at a movie because I know that my mom would be crying if she were sitting next to me. Sometimes I start singing a particular way because I can hear my mom in my head. At other times, I know what to do in a moment and can feel my mom take over my actions and words as I live into the example she has given me my whole life.
I’ve been discipled by her in every area of my life. I watched her, I copied her, and now I’m able to do what she would do, with my own iterations, in every area of my life.
I can think of similar things happening in my life after I was discipled by friends in my campus ministry. These are girls whom I don’t get to see as often, with whom I no longer have those same deep conversations and Bible studies, but they’re still transforming my life for the better.
I know what they would do, what they would say, and the attitude that they would approach a problem with. It’s their lasting influence that shapes my life today.
Monkey see, monkey do, monkey start living like Jesus.
But let's return to the idea of singing.
The most beautiful realization came to me one night when I was listening to an old recording of my family singing from a couple of years ago. I had crudely stuck my phone on the coffee table in the middle of the family gathering and caught about an hour of hymns.
It was while listening to this recording that I was blown away. I could hear my grandmother. She passed away when I was ten years old, but I could hear her coming through in this recording. After listening closely, I realized what I was actually hearing. I could hear the collective voices of my mom, aunts, and cousins.
All of us together sounded a little bit like her. No wonder, considering that half of us learned, at least in part, how to sing from her.
This beautiful realization pointed to an even deeper one: she has been influencing our lives all along. I’ve always known this, but it was life-changing to have it so audibly shown in the sound of her family singing.
Discipleship is that - that even when you’re gone, or away, or not as close to someone, they’re permanently shaped by the conversations you’ve had and the time you’ve spent together. What you’ve demonstrated, what you’ve lived out, has left an impression on the people who heard and studied you.
One of my favorite aspects of discipleship now is when “the student becomes the teacher”. Several college girls in my life started as what the world would call a mentee. Now they’re the ones pointing me to Jesus, helping me gain perspective, and loving me through the struggles I face.
Monkey see, monkey do, monkey does better than the person they’ve seen.
Corey Matthews in Girl Meets World has a line that I love. He says it’s “the secret of life.”
People change people.
Discipleship is deliberate spiritual influence (to quote Micah Cobb). It’s what changes us for the better, points us toward a richer and more meaningful spiritual life, and is the evidence of a life instructed by the practices of someone who loves the Lord.
All it takes is sitting beside someone, seeing how they do it, copying it, and then letting it infuse your life, your song, and your voice on this earth.
People do change people, one song, one note, one moment at a time.