Discipleship by modeling

When I was in high school, our health teacher gave a lecture about the dangers of smoking and told us that we should never take up the habit. One student stated, “But Mr. Franks, you smoke.”

Words and actions must match to make the greatest impact. Discipleship is largely about influencing the behavior of others to be like that of Jesus Christ—behavior that is both godly and God-honoring. While discipleship does require correct teaching to set the foundation—the reasons for doing what we do as followers of Christ—discipleship is most effective when we model the behaviors we desire to see in others.

Effective daily practice

I grew up in a Christian home. I knew the importance of Bible reading from an early age. Occasionally I even tried to do it, especially after a particularly powerful message about it. It did not stick, even in Bible college. Then I moved into the upstairs apartment at Ken Clark’s house in New Jersey. (Ken Clark founded hi-b.a. in Japan in 1951.) Hi-b.a. emphasizes “quiet time” in their discipleship ministry among high school students. When I would head out most mornings to jog, I would pass by Ken’s study. He was in there reading his Bible. Daily. Without fail.

Now my wife and I lead an internship ministry in Obanazawa, Yamagata. We want our interns to be grounded in God’s Word, not just to be able to prepare sermons and Bible studies but to allow God to speak to them for their own benefit. Most mornings, I get up, sit at the kitchen table, open my Bible, and spend time with the Lord, learning from him through his Word. The interns who are up early see this.

My wife and I concluded that the most effective way to disciple young people toward effective ministry in Japan was to invite them to live with us. We do have formal teaching three times per week, but what interns tell us in their evaluations is that it was not the content of our formal teaching but their observations of us living life in Japan as missionaries that impacted them the most.

Embracing everyday encounters

Connecting with people outside the church is an essential part of evangelism. We teach evangelism from God’s Word and urge people to go out and do it themselves. Seeing it done is most powerful. My wife takes the interns to the grocery store to learn to shop in Japan. She talks with other shoppers or with the cashiers. I jog by the local schools every morning and greet people I see—the principal, the students, and others. When the interns run with me, they see this. When they oversleep, I often tell them about my encounters that morning.

It is impossible to always be with the people we are discipling, all the more so when you are trying to disciple an entire congregation. Storytelling is a great way to model the behavior Christ desires from us. When our interns go out on their own, I love to ask them about their encounters. Who did they meet? What did they do or say? What did they learn? Their encounters become mutual discipleship to other interns and even to my wife and me. My coworker, Andrew, has been in Japan for just over a year. He’s still studying Japanese and trying to learn Japanese culture. Often when he commutes an hour by train to Yamagata City for language school, he comes back with stories. He told us about asking his classmate from Taiwan out for lunch, learning about his family and being able to talk about his faith when asked about his purpose for being in Japan. That’s just one of many stories he’s told us.

I heard a story in my first term as a missionary. A veteran missionary was talking about how one short-term Christian worker was able to have many conversations with Japanese people. The veteran missionary asked, “How do you initiate conversations?” “Eye contact” was his simple answer. When I lived in Nara, I often rode the trains. Remembering this story, I would look for eyes. When I caught someone’s eye, I would greet them. If there was an openness to further conversation, I would ask some sort of question. This short-termer I’ve never met discipled me, drastically changing my behavior, especially outside the walls of the church.

Practicing the sabbath for yourself and others

I have long known that practicing the sabbath is one of the ten commandments, but I’ve rarely seen it modeled. My wife and I went to a retreat to be refreshed and renewed during our last home service. One of the lectures was about the sabbath. The speaker spent a lot of time talking about how he and his family practice the sabbath. He told us that some people even wanted to take part in their sabbath practices, especially the Friday night meal that is the beginning of the 24-hour sabbath. For the first time in our lives, my wife and I are working at making the sabbath an essential part of our week. Our summer interns expressed gratitude at experiencing the sabbath as a normal part of the missionary lifestyle.

Who is watching how you live? Do they see or hear about you behaving in ways that reflect how Jesus behaved? Each day is an opportunity to model a godly life to those around us, and in so doing, we practice discipleship.