By Ike Idegbema

“Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28: 19)

Long before now, Apostle Paul warned the Church in 2 Corinthians 6:16 against being unequally yoked together with unbelievers because the believers and unbelievers have nothing in common in terms of eternity. He knew the dangers of intermingling and eventually mixing together to the detriment of our faith. And Jude 3-13 warns us to beware of certain men who have crept in the Church with their strange gospel.

Today, these preachers of strange gospel have successfully crept into the Church and it appears the true Church is failing to stand firm and to protect herself against their incursion. One of the dangers today is the raising of non-disciple Christians because of preaching of “Christ-less” Gospel.

What is Non-discipleship Christianity?

Non-discipleship Christianity is a situation where Church members can claim to be Christians without any effort to submit to and be true followers of Christ. This type of Christianity that focuses primarily on salvation, forgiveness, blessing, prosperity- benefits of the Cross, but rejects or neglects the importance of discipleship, spiritual and obedience to Christ’s teachings or biblical injunction.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) said, “Christianity without the living Christ is inevitably Christianity without discipleship, and Christianity without discipleship is always Christianity without Christ.” May God help us!

Non-discipleship Christianity is the end result of twisted gospel messages that does not create spiritually reborn followers of Christ who would be committed to the Great Commission, but consumers of religious goods and services.

While the Church seems to be very busy with raising large congregations – glorying only in numbers, we have shifted our focus from raising true followers of Christ and fulfillment of the Great Commission of “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations…” (Matthew 28:19). According to Mike Stachura, “The mark of a great church is not its seating capacity, but its sending capacity”

The gospel so many of us are preaching today has become grossly immersed in the worldly culture. Through compromise, we have succeeded in bringing the world into Church and have failed to take the Church to the World. This marriage between world culture and the Church -the deception of the devil to making many Pastors and Church leaders to place material accumulations above personal relationship with God and commitments to the Bible standards, does not surprised us at all, because as Leslie Newbigin, a former missionary to India has observed, “No gospel is pure; it is always embodied in a culture.” But there are dangers in this unhealthy enculturalization of the gospel because of the shifting of emphasis.

 Bill Hull whose writings have been focused on discipleship and making of disciples in his book The Complete Book of Discipleship: On Being and Making Followers of Christ gavethree negative and harmful characteristics of altered gospel message as follows:

1. Altered or strange gospel limits the grace of God to forgiveness of sin: Because of emphasis on numbers, preachers limit grace to conversion experience instead of the whole of Christian journey. We measure the success of our ministry to numbers of people that repent at our meetings and the impact this would have on our church sitting capacities. While grace is graciously released at the point of conversion, we watch it trickle for the remainder of the Christian journey. No wonder we often quote Ephesians 2:8-9 with respect to grace without verse 10. “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.” But ignore verse 10 that says, “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.” By limiting this passage to conversion experience only, we limit the full measure of the grace of God.

To raise discipleship Christianity, we must strive to restore the grace of God that is active and alive and is able to transform lives through our preaching.

• It Places wall of demarcation between justification and sanctification: Although justification and sanctification has different meanings – the reality of the new birth and the process of becoming like Jesus, respectively. But we have incorrectly demarcated both, so that what was designed to differentiate them has become the wall that divides them. We have unknowingly or deliberately created the impression that being a Christian means getting a protected status before God. In our effort to separate these two theological terms, we have succeeded in making people to believe that simply believing in the finished work of Christ is all that matters, instead of teaching that believing in Christ compels us to also follow Him closely and living out the life of Christ in our daily conducts. Because believing in Christ (at the point of salvation-justification) is not where it all ends, but a starting point for a lifelong journey of faith (sanctification).

True discipleship will flourish, when the gospel is presented as an ongoing journey of transformation to the image of Christ -We are all in process of becoming.

3. It places belief in set of religious facts as equals to faith in God: Believing is meaningless without discipleship. Believing without discipleship is not believing, but simply obeying a set of religious rules – the birthplace of religion. Many churches seemed to have accepted and are teaching faith that does and cannot transform lives, but to make members comfortable enough to remain in the Church; we seemed to have come to terms with non-transformative and “tolerance” gospel. We fear that sound discipleship trainings will drive members away from our Churches; so many of our regular congregants do not know that discipleship is not optional for believers, because we have failed to teach about discipleship and discipleship Christianity. When Jesus gave the command to, “Make disciples,” He was not referring to converts, He wanted those who will follow Him to submit to His teachings and His ways of life.

 We have made the proof of salvation to be adherence to doctrine rather than behavioral – praying to receive Christ, filling decision cards. It is becoming too easy to get into “the life” that is in Christ, that it is becoming almost impossible to receive and live the life.

We are called to live a life of following Christ- a life of humility, sacrifice, submission, reverence, and total and unreserved obedience to Him and Him alone. We are not called to raise personal followers, but Christ followers.

Ike Idegbema

Crusade for Africa Discipleship, Ministries