Somewhere along the way, discipleship became a church word. A program. Something that happens in a small group on Tuesday nights with a workbook and a printed discussion guide. I think that is a significant loss — not because those things are wrong, but because they are a fraction of what discipleship actually is.
Discipleship is the most fundamental act of leadership. It is what every leader is doing, all the time, in every context they lead — whether they are conscious of it or not. The question is not whether you are forming the people around you. You are. The question is whether you are doing it intentionally.
What Jesus Actually Did
Mark 3:14 describes the appointment of the twelve in three phrases that I keep coming back to: "He appointed twelve that they might be with him and that he might send them out to preach."
With him. Then sent out.
The primary method of Jesus was not curriculum. It was not a program. It was proximity. The twelve did not read about leadership or study servant-hood from a distance. They watched it. They failed at it. Jesus debriefed the failures. They tried again. Over three years, they were shaped — not just by what he taught, but by who he was in every moment they were together.
The transfer was not primarily information. It was formation. And that is a different kind of investment entirely.
The Three Stages That Actually Work
Over more than thirty years of leading people — in churches, in businesses, in volunteer teams — I have seen one approach to developing people that consistently works, and it maps almost exactly onto what Jesus modelled.
Stage one: come with me. The person is close to you. They watch how you think, how you make decisions, how you handle pressure. You narrate your reasoning. You debrief what happened. You are not handing them responsibility yet — you are giving them proximity to how you lead and why.
Stage two: do it with me. You do the thing together. They have real involvement, real responsibility in the moment — but you are present. You can correct, redirect, affirm in real time. They build confidence through actual experience, not just observation.
Stage three: go do it, I will watch. You release responsibility. They carry it. You are still available for review and reflection, but you are no longer the one doing it. You are watching, coaching, and celebrating what they build in the space you created for them.
This is how you develop a pastor into a lead pastor. It is how you develop a barista into a team leader. It is how you build a network where people are genuinely equipped to grow something, not just follow someone. The context changes. The model does not.
Why Moses Couldn't Do It
Here is what I find striking about the Jethro and Moses story. Moses was so consumed with the work of judging — sitting from morning to evening, seeing person after person — that he had no capacity left to develop anyone. He was doing the work that should have belonged to others, and in doing so, he was preventing them from growing into it.
When Jethro gave Moses a new structure and freed him from the overwhelming volume of smaller decisions, he was not just giving Moses breathing room. He was creating space for Moses to do the work of discipleship — to invest in the leaders of thousands and hundreds and fifties and tens, to teach them, to form them, to release them into genuine authority.
The leaders Moses selected still needed to be developed. The structure only worked if the people inside it were equipped to carry it. And that required Moses to stop doing everything and start investing in the people who would do the work alongside him.
"So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up."
Ephesians 4:11–12
The Same Work in Every Context
I am a pastor. I run a commercial print business. I run a specialty coffee operation that employs people with disabilities. I work as a LifeWave Brand Partner helping people build their own businesses. Every one of these contexts asks the same thing of me as a leader: am I forming the people in my orbit, or am I just using them?
At Rhythm Church, the measure of success is not the size of the Sunday gathering. It is the number of people who have been developed into leaders who can lead others. At Grounds for Good, success is not just a great cup of coffee — it is the person who came in uncertain of their capacity and leaves with a skill, a sense of competence, a confidence in what they can do.
David Green, the founder of Hobby Lobby, said it plainly: "We're not building a company. We're building people." That is a discipleship statement, not a management one. It describes a leader who understands that the organisation is the context, and the people are the point.
Whatever you are leading right now — a team, a business, a volunteer roster, a family — you are making disciples. The only question is what kind.
Investing in the people around you?
Whether it is a church team, a business staff, or a network you are building — if you want to talk about what intentional development looks like in your context, I would love to have that conversation.
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