When you think of a disciple, you probably think of “the Big Twelve” who followed Jesus around during his ministry on Earth. You think about how they sat and ate with Jesus, listened closely to His instructions, and carried out His greater mission.
Discipleship has changed a lot in the last 2000 years, but what if we got back to the basics? That’s what John Mark Comer is setting out to do. In his latest book Practicing the Way: Be Like Jesus. Become like him. Do as he did., the author and speaker explores how becoming an apprentice of Christ is an active decision that has the power to change every area of our life.
We caught up with Comer to find out more about discipleship and how the Church can better implement this necessary practice.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
In your book, you use “apprentice” and “disciple” synonymously. Is there a difference between those words?
John Mark Comer: No difference, just a different English translation of the Greek word. So the Greek word used by Jesus, the Gospel writers, Paul and the New Testament writers is “mathētḗs.” It literally means “learner.” However, we don’t translate it that way, partially because the Western model of education is very much an Enlightenment, information-based system. So, “learner” or “student” is another way you could translate “mathētḗs.”
We think of a college or university where you attend class three days a week, sit through a 50-minute lecture, take notes, memorize the right answers, and there’s a test at the end. If you pass, you receive a grade and a certificate. That’s not the model of learning. The model was more apprenticeship, like a plumber’s apprentice or an electrician, or even a medical residency where they’re learning a skill, not just a body of knowledge. They’re learning how to perform heart surgery or set a broken leg; it’s an actual embodied skill, not just a set of knowledge that you pass or fail on a test to move on. You actually have to know how to open someone’s heart, repair a broken valve, and put it back together. You have to become a kind of person and develop a skill to do that. That’s a different type of learning.
“Learner” is the most literal translation. Most English translations of the Bible translate it as “disciple,” which is a beautiful word, but it’s not one we use a lot in our culture. So, there are two reasons I prefer the translation “apprentice.” One is that I think apprenticeship is like following Jesus. The model of learning is an apprenticeship model. It moves us away from the Western evangelical, information-based model. Discipleship involves learning Christian doctrines by reading a book and listening to sermons into a holistic, life, body-based being with Jesus, becoming like him.
The other reason is that, since “disciple” isn’t used much outside the church, we import meanings into it that aren’t actually there. For example, most people think discipleship is when older, wiser Christians meet one-on-one or in small groups with younger, newer Christians to “disciple” them. I think that is a gross misreading of what the word means, what it meant in the first-century context, and how Jesus used it. Jesus did not invent discipleship; that confuses his interaction with the 12 and what he did with the apostles with what he did with his disciples, which was a much larger group of people, at least 120 of them, men and women. And so, there are reasons there that I like to use the word “apprentice” because it makes you stop and think, “Wait, what is he saying? What does he mean?” And that’s why I use it.
What you’re describing is very different than what people experience in the modern church. Why do you think that is?
There are many reasons for this. One is simply that people do not want to take up their cross, deny themselves, and follow Jesus. And this is not new. There were always crowds, thousands of people, around Jesus, listening to what he said, and a much smaller group that had left everything to become his disciples and were following him regularly. Discipleship has always been a minority report, always has been and will be until the age to come. Part of it is the high bar of entry, the cross, but part of it, sadly, without getting too angsty, is my contention. I could be wrong, but since at least World War II in North America, and some would argue much longer, the gospel has been presented in such a way that you can become a Christian without becoming an apprentice of Jesus. Apprenticeship, or discipleship, was often seen not only as an information-driven program or mentorship but as an optional secondary track for those interested in “going deeper,” not as the pathway.
Think of the difference between a CrossFit gym and an LA Fitness gym. You pay 20 dollars a month or whatever to get into the gym. You can go there when you want, how you want. Then there are optional personal trainers and classes that often cost more money or at least require more sacrifice. If you want to get hardcore, you can get a personal trainer, do the spin class, the HIIT workout, or whatever. Or you can just pay your money, come when you want, ride the bike for a bit, and get in the sauna.
Compare that to a CrossFit gym. There’s one pathway for everybody. You might be a specimen in insane shape, or you might be horribly out of shape. Either way, you’re welcome to that path. It’s not a judgmental place. “You’re so welcome here. Come on in, get down, and give me 50 push-ups or whatever. We’re all going to do this.”
Unfortunately, the American church is a bit more like LA Fitness, where discipleship is optional if you’re into it. It’s more complex than this, an oversimplification, but it’s created a wide band of people who identify as Christians, roughly believe in Christian theology, and may even regularly go to church, but are not seriously and intentionally living as followers of Jesus. Then, a minority report has chosen to rearrange their lifestyles around that of Jesus. There’s no moral superiority here. The serious disciples of Jesus might be way more messed up, broken, unloving, and neurotic than just good, occasional church-going people who are great parents, good people, kind and doing good things in the world.
There’s no judgment here. I don’t mean any judgment toward anyone, but certainly, I do have a sharp and loving critique of the truncated evangelical gospel that sees discipleship as an optional secondary track. Saying “yes” to Jesus in evangelical speak is not the same as taking up your cross, denying yourself and following Him. We can’t do the bait and switch, where it’s like, “Oh, I signed up for the free gift of salvation. Wait, now you want me to die to myself? What are you talking about?” That’s not it.
What are practical steps we can take to become a true apprentice of Jesus?
First off, we all start from different places, so there is not a generic answer. There are a couple of principles. If you think about it, most people in America are exhausted, stressed out of their minds. Most people are addicted to their phones, and most are overbusy. And most people are radical individualists who are living like normal people in America.
A couple of entry points that are the necessary next steps for the vast majority of people, but not all, would be to combat the exhaustion by beginning with rest, to begin with the practice of Sabbath, which we could talk about for hours. But what a revolutionary way. And I think for many people today who are so exhausted, so worn down.
For most people, any serious effort toward spiritual formation starts not with effort, it starts with rest. It starts not with work, not with adding in, but with subtracting, taking out, which starts with slowing down, not with speeding up. It certainly does not start with adding a bunch of spiritual disciplines on top of your already over-busy, stressed-out, maxed-out life. It starts with Sabbath. For the many of us that are distracted and addicted to our phones,
It begins with a real attempt at digital discipline and really beginning to take seriously a life of prayer and prayer of the more contemplative variety, embracing things like silence and Lectio Divina, just the prayerful, slow, unhurried reading of scripture with Jesus and sitting quietly before God and really having firm boundaries around our relationship to our phones and digital life.
For the radical individualist in all of us, it starts with most of us, unless your church is very small or you’re in a house church, with saying Sunday worship is just a beautiful and essential thing. But to be spiritually formed, we need to begin to foster small-scale relationships that would be more church around a table in the sense of a community of people doing life together around a literal table.
And just those one or two or three or four really close relationships, long-term, deep, vulnerable relationships where you can confess your sin, you can bear your burdens, you can share your soul, you can know and be known, you can love, you can forgive, you can be hurt and grow through it, forgive and return. Those kinds of deep, vulnerable, beautiful, hard, difficult, rewarding relationships are the next step. I recently read a study that 54% of Americans have no intimate friendships, no people that know them deeply. And so for at least 54% of us, that’s the next step.
So those are a couple of big categories that come to mind: Sabbath, prayer, and rhythms of prayer and deep relationships. But again, there’s no formula to follow. There’s no list of to do, there’s no boxes on a to-do list that you need to check off. Those are just some very common next steps. The key for people listening is just what’s the next step for me? You discern that in prayer and in community. What’s the next right thing that God has for each of us?
