Rediscovering the Lost Art of Discipleship

A Word to the Church in Flint, Michigan

I want to speak directly to you — to the Church in Flint.

Not to the Church in general, not to evangelicalism at large, but to you: the pastors who have preached faithfully on Sunday mornings while their congregations carried the weight of poisoned water and broken promises. The deacons who loaded semi-trucks of bottled water before the state ever admitted there was a problem. The mothers in the pews who prayed over their children at night, wondering what the lead had already done. The small churches on the north side and the east side that never made the national news but never stopped showing up either.

I want to talk with you about something I believe is the next great call on the Church in this city — something deeper than relief, though relief has been holy work. I want to talk about discipleship.

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What Held When Everything Else Failed

You already know something that many comfortable churches across America are only beginning to learn: institutions fail people. The government that was supposed to provide clean water poisoned your children instead. The companies that built this city packed up and left. The systems that were meant to protect the most vulnerable in Flint looked the other way for eighteen months while families bathed in lead. You know, in your bones, what it means to live in a world that cannot be trusted at the institutional level.

And in the middle of all of that, do you know what held? The Church held. The pastors held. The faith communities held. When the National Guard finally showed up with water, the churches had already been there for months. Riverside Tabernacle was distributing water to over a thousand families a week. Faith Tabernacle was running a semi-truck of bottled water through its doors every ten days. West Court Street Church of God started Neighbors First Water and served 700 families in two weeks. Across denominational lines, across neighborhoods, the Church in Flint did what the Church has always done in crisis: it showed up, it stayed, and it loved people at great cost to itself.

The people of this city do not trust institutions easily. They have earned that distrust through suffering. But many of them still trust the Church — and they trust it because the Church earned that trust by being present when everyone else was absent. That is an extraordinary gift. And it carries an extraordinary responsibility.

Because the question before the Church in Flint right now is not whether people will come to you. Many already will, already do. The question is: what are we doing with them when they come? Are we making disciples? Are we forming people in the full depth of life with Jesus Christ? Or are we meeting practical needs — which is vital and right — but stopping short of the thing that will actually anchor a soul for a lifetime?

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One Body: The True Church

But before we can speak about making disciples, we must speak plainly about who is doing the making.

The Church in Flint cannot lead this city into wholeness while remaining divided within itself. Flint has already been carved up by race, by zip code, by politics, by who had clean water and who did not. The last thing this city needs is a Church that mirrors those same divisions back to it.

Let us be direct: there is no Black church or white church in the Kingdom of God. There is no Republican congregation or Democratic congregation in the body of Christ. There is no rich side of town and poor side of town when the family of God gathers at the table of the Lord. The Apostle Paul did not stutter when he wrote it:

“There is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female — for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”  — Galatians 3:28

And again:

“Here there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.”  — Colossians 3:11

The cross did not just save individuals. It created a new humanity. It tore down the dividing wall — every dividing wall — and made one new people out of what the world had kept separated.

“For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility.”  — Ephesians 2:14

This means the true Church is the one institution on earth that cannot be captured by a political party, sorted by a zip code, or segregated by a skin color. The moment the Church allows those walls back in — the moment we become the Republican church or the Democrat church, the comfortable church or the struggling church, the church that looks like one neighborhood instead of the whole family of God — we have surrendered the most powerful thing we carry.

Flint has watched both political parties fail it. It has watched systems built on division poison its children and then argue about who was to blame. What it has not yet seen — what it desperately needs to see — is the body of Christ standing together as living proof that another way is possible. Not unity around a platform or a party, but unity around a Person.

The true Church is not an institution. It is a family. And in God’s family, there is no Jew or Greek, no slave or free, no Republican or Democrat, no Black or white — there is only Christ, who is all, and in all.

That is the Church Flint needs. That is the Church the world is watching for. And it is the only Church equipped to make disciples who will genuinely transform this city — because it will be making them together, across every line that once divided them.

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What Discipleship Actually Is

I am not speaking against the distribution ministry, the food pantry, the after-school program, or the water filter outreach. Those are the hands of Christ extended into a suffering community, and they are good and necessary. But hands need a body. And a body needs a spine. Discipleship is the spine of the Church’s work — the thing that gives structure and direction to everything else.

At its heart, discipleship is the transmission of a life.

“We were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us.”  — 1 Thessalonians 2:8

Not just the gospel — our own selves. That is the standard. Not a program delivered to a recipient, but a life opened to another life, in love, over time.

Jesus did not gather a crowd and hand out a pamphlet. He called twelve men to be with Him — to walk at His side, to watch how He handled betrayal and exhaustion and grief, to hear how He prayed when the night was dark.

“He appointed them so that they might be with him and he might send them out.”  — Mark 3:14

Being before sending. Formation before the mission. You cannot give what you have not received from someone further along the way.

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The Story of Dick and Rick Hoyt

There is a story that has stayed with me for years, and I believe it belongs here.

Dick Hoyt was not a runner. He was a middle-aged father in Massachusetts who had spent the better part of two decades being told by doctors and institutions that his son Rick — born with cerebral palsy, unable to walk or speak — should be put away, written off, institutionalized. The Hoyts refused. They brought Rick home, raised him like any other child, and found ways to bring him into life rather than watching from its edges.

In 1977, Rick asked his father if they could run in a charity race together — five miles — to support a young man who had been paralyzed. Dick was not in shape for it. He was not built for it. But he said yes. They finished next to last. And that night, Rick typed on his computer the words that changed everything:

“Dad, when I’m running, it feels like my disability disappears.”

Dick went home and began training. Not for himself — for his son. He ran every day, alone, pushing a bag of cement in a wheelchair because Rick was at school. And here is what must not be missed: Dick did not get fit and then go push Rick. He got fit by pushing Rick. The commitment came first. The transformation followed inside the commitment. He did not wait until he was ready. He showed up, and readiness met him on the road.

Over the next four decades, the two of them — together — completed over 1,100 races, 72 marathons, and 6 Ironman Triathlons. Dick pushed Rick in a wheelchair for the running legs, towed him in a boat through the swims, and pedaled him on a bicycle through the rides. They ran the Boston Marathon 32 times. In the water, Dick pulled. On the road, Dick pushed. And Rick, whom the world had written off, crossed every finish line.

When asked what drove him, Dick never said he was doing Rick a favor. He said Rick had made him more than he ever would have been alone.

That is discipleship.

Not a program handed to a recipient. Not a stronger person fixing a weaker one. But a life so committed to another that it transforms the one doing the carrying just as surely as the one being carried. The carrying and the transformation are not two separate seasons — they are the same season. You do not heal and then serve. You heal in the serving, if you stay honest and stay in your own process while you go.

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The Disciple-Maker Is Being Discipled Too

The call is not “wait until you are whole, and then go disciple.” The call is “enter the process, and wholeness will meet you there.”

This is one of the most important things the Church must understand about discipleship, and one of the most misunderstood.

The warning Scripture gives is not that broken people cannot disciple. The warning is that broken people who are unaware of their brokenness will harm without knowing it. There is a profound difference between the two. The question is never, are you healed enough to begin? The question is are you honest enough to stay in the process while you go?

“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?”  — Matthew 7:3

Jesus was not telling His disciples to remove every plank before engaging with anyone. He was calling them to self-awareness — to remain students of their own hearts even while they walked with others. The plank does not disqualify you from the relationship. Pretending the plank is not there does.

Paul understood this. He called himself the chief of sinners — not as a confession that disqualified him, but as the testimony that kept him honest. He wrote to the Philippians from a prison cell:

“Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.”  — Philippians 3:12

He was pressing on and pouring into Timothy at the same time. His formation was not finished. He was not waiting for completion before he invested in others. He was being transformed in the investment.

This is the rhythm of sanctification: we grow in Christ together. The discipler is not a finished product handing something down to an unfinished one. Both are being formed. Both are being healed. The older saint who sits with a younger believer through grief is being sanctified in the sitting. The mentor who speaks truth into a struggling marriage is being refined in the speaking. The elder who shows up week after week for someone who keeps falling is being conformed to the image of Christ in the showing up.

“As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.”  — Proverbs 27:17

Iron sharpens iron — not iron sharpens rust, not polished steel sharpens rough iron. Both pieces move. Both are changed by the friction. That is the biblical picture of discipleship: two people in motion together, each being shaped by the encounter.

So what is the warning, then? The warning is not wait. The warning is watch. Watch your own heart while you pour into another. Stay in your own process. Keep your own wounds before God. Do not use someone else’s crisis to avoid confronting your own. Do not confuse being needed with being healed. Do not stay so busy carrying others that you never let anyone carry you.

“Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.”  — Galatians 6:2

Carry each other’s burdens — not carry everyone’s burdens alone. The disciple-maker is also a disciple. The one who pours out must also be poured into. This is not weakness. This is the design. This is what the body of Christ is for.

You do not have to arrive healed. You have to arrive honest. Enter the process. Stay in the process. And trust that God is doing in you exactly what He is doing through you.

Proverbs 4:23 says, “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.” Guarding your heart does not mean protecting it from the cost of discipleship. It means keeping it open to God’s work in you while you give yourself to His work in others. The two are not in competition. They are the same movement.

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The Real Work Is Internal Transformation

Now, I want to speak plainly about two ways the Church has drifted from this. I mention them because I believe both are present here, and I think you are too honest a people for me to be anything but direct.

The first is what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called cheap grace — the idea that conversion is the destination rather than the doorway. When celebration is never followed by formation, we produce what I can only call spiritual orphans: people who have said yes to Jesus but were never taught to walk with Him through a hard marriage, through addiction, through the grief of a child hurt by lead poisoning, through the slow burn of unemployment in a city the economy left behind.

“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.”  — Luke 9:23

For many in Flint, it does not need to be explained that following Jesus is hard — life here has already taught them that nothing good comes without cost. What they need is someone to show them the hard road of discipleship is worth walking, and to walk it with them.

The second error runs the opposite direction — a discipleship of rules and appearances, where a good church member is measured by what they avoid and what they attend. I have met people who had the language of faith without the life of it — who could tell you every theological position but had never been asked the tender, searching question: how is your soul? Jesus was unmerciful with this kind of religion. He called the Pharisees whitewashed tombs — “outwardly beautiful but full of dead men’s bones” (Matthew 23:27). You cannot comply your way into Christlikeness. The Spirit moves through the honest, vulnerable, costly reality of being truly known by someone who loves you enough to tell you the truth.

Both errors share the same evasion: they allow the Church to avoid the slow, inconvenient, beautiful work of one life genuinely poured into another. David didn’t pray “Lord, fix everyone around me.” He prayed:

“Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.”  — Psalm 51:10

The direction of that prayer matters. Transformation begins inside. But notice — David prayed that prayer in the middle of his life, not before it began. He was already king. He had already sinned. He had already caused harm. And God did not tell him to step away from everything until he was whole. God met him in the prayer and continued the work. That is grace. That is how sanctification actually moves.

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The Family of God Has Done This Before

The good news is that the family of God has done exactly this before, under conditions far more dire than our own.

Think about the early Church in Acts. Born in the shadow of Rome, in a world where the powerful destroyed the vulnerable without a second thought. Three thousand people came to faith on Pentecost — and they didn’t scatter.

“They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.”  — Acts 2:42

Teaching, community, worship, prayer — not programs on a calendar but the daily rhythms of people who had decided to become family. That early Church was Jew and Gentile, slave and free, man and woman — every category the ancient world used to separate people — and they chose each other anyway. They were not finished people. They were honest people, in process together. And that community turned the ancient world upside down.

Think about Paul and Timothy. Paul brought him along — into danger, into hard places, into the full complexity of ministry in hostile cities. He wrote with a father’s transparency:

“You, however, have followed my teaching, my conduct, my aim in life, my faith, my patience, my love, my steadfastness.”  — 2 Timothy 3:10

Timothy did not just hear Paul’s theology. He watched Paul live it when things fell apart. He watched Paul be transformed by the very trials Paul was leading him through. The formation moved in both directions. That is the kind of discipleship that cannot be manufactured. It can only be inherited from someone whose life — wounds, healing, and all — is open to you.

And think about the family of God in Flint through every crisis this city has known. The body of Christ here survived because it was not merely a meeting. It was a forming community. Those elders who poured into the next generation were not finished people. They were faithful people — still being worked on, still pressing on, still showing up. They turned to the generation behind them and said: here is what I have learned, and here is how I learned it, and I am still learning it. That honesty is what made the inheritance worth receiving.

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Where We Go From Here

The Church in Flint is uniquely positioned to lead a discipleship renaissance — not in spite of what this city has suffered, but because of it.

The call is not to find perfect disciplers. The call is to find faithful ones — men and women who are honest about where they are, committed to staying in their own process with God, and willing to walk with someone else through theirs. You do not have to have arrived. You have to be on the road.

“Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”  — John 8:32

Truth — about yourself, about God, about what love actually looks like — is what breaks cycles and opens doors. And God is not asking us merely to manage our wounds while we wait. He is promising to replace them, often in the very act of giving ourselves away.

“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.”  — Ezekiel 36:26

This is not a promise for someday. It is a promise for the road. He does the transplant while you walk. He heals what needs healing while you push the chair.

What does it look like in practice? It looks like older men committing to walk with younger men — week by week, in honest conversation that goes beyond “how was your week” and into “how is your soul.” It looks like women taking seriously Paul’s charge in Titus 2, teaching younger women what it looks like to build a life on the Word of God. It looks like parents reclaiming Deuteronomy 6 — talking about God’s commands when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise. It looks like multiplication, not mere addition.

“What you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also.”  — 2 Timothy 2:2

And it looks like a pastor, an elder, a would-be discipler, sitting down in the presence of God and praying not make me whole before I begin, but:

Lord, make me honest enough to begin. Keep me in my own process while I walk with others. Heal what needs healing on the road. And let what You are doing in me become something You can do through me.

There is a generation of young people in this city watching to see whether faith is real. They grew up in a place where they were lied to by people in authority — by politicians of both parties, by officials of every stripe. They will not trust another institution easily. But they will watch a life. They will notice when someone who is still in process — still being worked on, still pressing on — shows up faithfully anyway. That witness is more powerful than any polished performance could ever be.

Dick Hoyt crossed over a thousand finish lines. He never ran one of them alone. And he was never the same man at the end of a race that he was at the beginning. That is the vision. Not a church full of finished people handing things down to unfinished ones, but a family of God — all of us in process, all of us being formed, all of us committed to staying in the race with someone who cannot finish it without us.

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He Is With You in This

After Jesus gave His disciples the Great Commission — after He placed on their shoulders the weight of making disciples of all nations — He said something they needed very badly to hear:

“And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”  — Matthew 28:20

He is with you in this. Not waiting for you to be ready. Not watching from a distance until you have it together. Present. Active. Doing in you what He promised, on the same road where He is working through you.

The art of discipleship has not been lost beyond recovery. It has only been neglected. And the Church in Flint — which has already demonstrated through years of faithful, costly presence that it knows how to show up when things are hard — is exactly the Church that can lead the way back.

Not the church of one party or another. Not the church of one neighborhood or one color. The true Church. The body of Christ. The one new humanity the cross has made possible. All of us are in process. All of us are being healed. All of us are still on the road.

So let us begin. Not when we are ready. Now. Find one person — someone who doesn’t look like you, doesn’t vote like you, didn’t grow up like you — and sit with them. Open your life. Stay honest. Let God do in you what He is doing through you. Get behind the chair. And push.

“For I will restore health to you, and your wounds I will heal, declares the Lord.”

— Jeremiah 30:17

You do not have to arrive healed. You have to arrive honest!

Enter the process. Stay in the process. The harvest will meet you on the road.

“Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.”  — Matthew 4:19