One of the greatest weaknesses in many churches today is not a lack of information. It is a lack of discipleship.
We live in an age where Christians have access to hundreds of thousands of sermons, podcasts, social media accounts, influencers, books, videos, blogs, and Bible study resources. A believer can listen to some of the best preachers in the world before breakfast.
Yet despite all of this information, many Christians sadly remain spiritually immature, isolated, and unsure how to grow in their faith.
The problem is that Christian growth was never meant to happen through information alone. God designed believers to grow through many different means, and one of the biggest ways is through the relationships we have with one another. The Lord designed Christianity to be lived out in community, where older, more mature believers help younger believers follow Christ, and younger believers humbly learn from those who are farther down the road.
This is why every younger Christian needs a mentor. It is also why every mature Christian should be looking for someone to disciple. Discipleship is not an optional extra for especially committed believers. It is part of the very heart of Christianity.
Jesus Made Disciples
When Jesus began His earthly ministry, He did not simply gather crowds and preach sermons. He called men to follow Him. For three years, Jesus walked with His disciples, taught them, corrected them, encouraged them, answered their questions, rebuked their sins, and modeled godliness before them. He invested deeply in a small group of men who would eventually carry the gospel to the world.
Jesus certainly preached to large crowds, but He spent much of His time pouring into a handful of disciples. That should teach us something important. If the Son of God chose discipleship as His primary method of ministry, we should not think we can improve on His strategy.
Christianity has always been about more than transferring knowledge. It involves helping others learn to obey Christ in every area of life. Jesus said, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations…” (Matthew 28:19). Notice that He did not merely command us to make converts. He commanded us to make disciples.
A convert may make a profession of faith, but a disciple follows Christ. A convert may know the gospel, but a disciple learns to live in light of the gospel. A convert may begin the race, but a disciple continues running faithfully. The mission of the church is not complete when someone raises a hand, walks an aisle, or prays a prayer. The mission continues as believers are taught, trained, encouraged, corrected, and equipped to follow Christ for the rest of their lives.
Younger Christians Need Mentors
One of the quickest ways to grow spiritually is to spend time with someone who is farther along in the Christian life than you are. Every believer has blind spots. Every believer has questions. Every believer faces temptations, struggles, doubts, and difficult decisions. God often uses mature Christians to help younger believers navigate these things with wisdom, patience, and biblical clarity.
When a younger Christian finds a godly mentor, they gain something far more valuable than information. They gain wisdom. Wisdom is knowledge applied through years of walking with God. A younger believer may know what the Bible says about suffering, but a mature believer has often lived through suffering and learned to trust God in the middle of it. A younger believer may know what the Bible says about prayer, but a mature believer has spent years learning dependence upon God. A younger believer may know what Scripture teaches about marriage, parenting, evangelism, or church life, but a mature believer has often learned those lessons through decades of faithfulness, failure, repentance, and growth.
This kind of wisdom cannot be downloaded from a podcast. It is learned through relationships. Many younger Christians make the mistake of believing they can grow entirely on their own. They listen to sermons online, read books, and study Scripture independently. Those things are valuable, and we should thank God for faithful resources. But they were never meant to replace discipleship relationships within the local church.
The Christian life is not meant to be lived in isolation. Proverbs repeatedly emphasizes the importance of receiving instruction from those who possess wisdom. Scripture assumes that younger believers will learn from older believers. That is one reason God gives the church pastors, elders, teachers, and mature saints. We all need people who can encourage us when we are discouraged, correct us when we are drifting, and challenge us when we have become too comfortable.
Without those relationships, spiritual growth often becomes slow, inconsistent, and vulnerable to error. Younger Christians need faithful examples they can watch up close. They need to see what godliness looks like in marriage, parenting, work, suffering, conflict, church life, repentance, prayer, and perseverance. They need more than answers to theological questions. They need living examples of what it means to follow Christ in the real world.
Older Christians Need to Become Mentors
Many mature believers assume discipleship is somebody else’s responsibility. They may think they are not qualified enough, feel they do not know enough theology, or believe that discipling others is primarily the job of pastors and church leaders. Yet that is not the pattern we see in Scripture. Paul discipled Timothy and Titus. Barnabas invested in Paul. Older women are instructed to teach younger women in Titus 2. Throughout the New Testament, mature believers are continually helping younger believers grow in their faith.
The truth is that you do not need a seminary degree to disciple someone. You simply need to be faithfully following Christ and be willing to help others do the same. If you have walked with Christ for ten years, there are believers who have walked with Him for ten months. If you have been married for twenty years, there are younger couples who could benefit from your wisdom. If you have raised children, endured suffering, battled temptation, or learned difficult lessons through years of Christian growth, God can use those experiences to encourage and strengthen others.
One of the great tragedies in many churches is that decades of spiritual wisdom often remain untapped. Faithful older believers attend church week after week while younger Christians struggle with questions, temptations, fears, and uncertainty. Meanwhile, the very people who could help them are sitting only a few rows away. The knowledge, experience, and wisdom God has given mature believers were never intended to stop with them. They were meant to be passed on to the next generation.
Paul captures this beautifully in 2 Timothy 2:2 when he tells Timothy, “And what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also.” Notice the multiplication taking place. Paul teaches Timothy. Timothy teaches faithful men. Those faithful men teach others. The gospel advances not merely through preaching but through faithful believers intentionally investing in the lives of other believers. This is discipleship in action, and it remains one of God’s primary means of strengthening His church.
Discipleship Produces Spiritual Maturity
One reason discipleship is so important is that spiritual maturity does not happen automatically. Time alone does not make someone mature in Christ. A person can attend church for twenty or thirty years and still remain spiritually immature if he is not intentionally submitting to Christ, obeying Scripture, repenting of sin, and growing in grace. Growth happens when believers intentionally pursue Christ and help one another do the same.
Discipleship provides accountability, encouragement, correction, and practical wisdom. It helps believers move beyond merely knowing biblical truth and begin applying it to everyday life:
- Many Christians know they should pray more, but struggle to develop a consistent, disciplined prayer life.
- Many Christians know they should share their faith, but feel intimidated.
- Many Christians know they should study Scripture, but do not know where to begin.
A mentor can come alongside them, not as a spiritual celebrity, but as a faithful brother or sister who says, “Let me help you walk this out.”
This is where discipleship becomes so powerful. It bridges the gap between knowing and doing. It takes biblical truth from the theoretical “classroom,” and brings it into the kitchen, the workplace, the marriage, the family, the church meeting, the hospital room, and the quiet places where a struggling Christian is trying to obey God. Discipleship shows younger believers that the Christian life is not merely something we talk about. It is something we live out.
The Local Church Is the Best Place for Discipleship
While books, podcasts, conferences, and online resources can be helpful, they should never replace one-on-one relationships within a local church. Some Christians know famous pastors online better than they know the believers sitting beside them every Sunday. That is a problem. God did not design Christians to be discipled primarily by distant voices on the internet. He placed believers in local churches where they can be known, loved, taught, corrected, encouraged, and cared for.
The local church is where discipleship naturally happens. It is where older believers and younger believers worship together, serve together, pray together, and build meaningful relationships. It is where spiritual growth becomes visible and personal. You cannot truly be discipled by someone who never sees your life. You need people who know your strengths, weaknesses, struggles, patterns, fears, temptations, and responsibilities.
If you are a younger believer, look around your church for faithful Christians whose lives reflect godliness. Do not only look for the most gifted person or the most impressive personality. Look for someone who loves Christ, knows the Word, serves faithfully, speaks wisely, and has a life worth imitating. Ask questions. Spend time with them. Learn from them. Be humble enough to receive correction and wise enough to seek counsel before you desperately need it.
If you are an older believer, look around for younger Christians who could benefit from your encouragement and wisdom. Invite them into your life. Take them out for coffee. Ask how they are doing spiritually. Read Scripture with them. Pray with them. Let them see how you follow Christ in ordinary life. Discipleship does not always require a formal program. Sometimes it begins with a simple invitation and a willingness to be available.
We Need More Pauls and More Timothys
The church desperately needs more mature believers who are willing to invest in others and more younger believers who are humble enough to learn. We need fewer spectators and more disciple-makers. We need fewer isolated Christians and more intentional relationships. We need fewer consumers of Christian content and more followers of Christ who are helping others follow Him.
Every generation stands on the shoulders of those who came before them. The faith is passed from one believer to another, one family to another, one church to another, and one generation to another. That is how God has always worked. The church is strengthened when mature believers refuse to keep their wisdom to themselves and younger believers refuse to walk alone.
If you are a younger Christian, find a mentor. Do not wait until you are in crisis. Seek out someone now who can help you grow in Christ, understand Scripture, fight sin, build godly habits, and live faithfully in the church. Humility is not weakness. It is wisdom. A teachable Christian is a growing Christian.
If you are a mature Christian, become a mentor. Do not underestimate what God can do through your faithfulness. You may not feel impressive, but you may be exactly the kind of steady, godly influence a younger believer needs. Your years of walking with Christ matter. Your lessons learned through suffering matter. Your faithfulness in ordinary life matters. Your example may help shape another Christian for decades.
The future health of the church depends upon faithful disciples making faithful disciples, who then go and make disciples of their own. That was Christ’s plan from the beginning, and it remains the church’s mission today.
Looking for a Practical Way to Disciple Men?
Warrior Disciple: Discipleship Manual For Men was created to help churches, mentors, fathers, and mature Christian men intentionally invest in the next generation of believers. While many Christians understand the importance of discipleship, they often struggle to find a simple, biblical framework for actually doing it. Warrior Disciple was designed to fill that gap.
Built around 18 practical lessons and 4 bonus lessons, this resource helps men grow in essential areas of Christian maturity, including spiritual disciplines, biblical manhood, leadership, holiness, prayer, Scripture, evangelism, marriage, and overcoming sin through the power of the Gospel. Each lesson is designed to spark meaningful discussion, accountability, and spiritual growth between believers.
Whether you are discipling a new believer, mentoring a younger man, leading a men’s group, or building a church-wide discipleship ministry, Warrior Disciple provides a clear and proven pathway for helping men follow Christ more faithfully. It requires no complicated curriculum, no expensive training, and no seminary education. Just open the book, open your Bible, and begin investing in another man.
The church does not need more spectators. It needs more disciple-makers. If you are ready to help younger believers grow in Christ and build lasting discipleship relationships, Warrior Disciple can help you take the next step.
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