D17 P13 - We got the heart before the course

I was always taught this order: evangelism, conversion, discipleship, service. That's the order of how things happen, and pretty clean lines in between them. Maybe a person is involved in service while he is being discipled, but the norm is that Christian service comes largely after the bulk of discipleship. Never mind that little nagging voice that says, "But, when is anything in the Christian life this tidy?"

There are some other questions that challenge this tidy order:

• Scripture calls some people disciples of Jesus before they convert (e.g. John 6).
• Scripture calls other people disciples of people like John - no conversion involved. 
• The word disciple just means "student" or "follower."
• Jesus taught people to serve as part of discipling them, not after (and ... gasp ... perhaps even before they converted).
• Paul talks about evangelizing the Roman believers (Rom 1:15) - people who already converted and are being discipled. Evangelizing the converted???
• Jesus tells His disciples in the "Great Commission" (Matt 28:18-20) to disciple people from all nations, not specifically to evangelize them.
• Every believer is told to disciple, but not every believer is equipped to do what we've typically labeled "discipleship." Something has to give, and perhaps it's our narrowed view of what it means to disciple someone.

Not only does the Christian life not fit into a nice, tidy progression, the New Testament doesn't fit into it, either.

Instead of any semblance of an inviolable order, what we see in Scripture and in our lives tends to be more like:

• Discipling someone is the process of orienting them more and more toward Jesus, no matter where they are spiritually. To recall our very first definition of discipleship: "Discipleship" is the process of moving from unbelief to belief in every area of life in light of the Gospel." That's something that everyone can do at any point of spiritual development.
• All of these activities are acts of discipling someone. Evangelizing someone is discipling her. Someone's conversion is a milestone is the larger process of discipling. Service is something learned as part of the discipling process, and in fact, every act of service is part of one's discipleship. Everything is part of the larger concept of discipling.
• Evangelizing is something that can be done after conversion, too. Therefore, evangelizing someone is more than just the words that guide him to conversion.

This is a completely different model than I was taught (and perhaps a number of you, too). But it certainly squares better with our observations of Scripture and life.

This is our 13th entry in the "D17" (the 17 truths of discipleship):

Discipleship begins before conversion.

The incremental process of growing ever more complete as a follower of Jesus is discipleship, which starts before conversion and continues after conversion. Once someone converts, that doesn't mean she stops moving from unbelief to belief in every area of her life in light of the Gospel.

This also means that conversion is really the job of God the Holy Spirit, not us. Our commission is to disciple, not convert, because we can't convert anyone. Disciple them, and God will do the converting. Teach them about conversion, pray for it, encourage it, but since you can't make it happen, don't try. Cultivate a rich environment for conversion to occur by discipling, but expect the power for conversion to come from God, not from your words or magnetic presence.

With this understanding of discipling, it is now something we can do with anyone. Any influence to move from unbelief to belief is an act of discipling, and that's the very thing Jesus commanded us to do.