J.T. English - Deep Discipleship: How the Church Can Make Whole Disciples of Jesus

What J.T. proposes for the local church is not only possible, it is mission critical. And it works. I have witnessed first-hand how making space for deep discipleship moves spiritual infants to maturity. As the church heads into the winds of secularism, she needs disciples who are deeply rooted, and it is her calling to make them so. For those compelled to move their churches beyond bare-minimum discipleship strategies, this book offers a way forward, drawing everyday disciples into the deeper things of God.

Jen Wilkin , author and Bible teacher

The contents of this book are not theory or hopeful musings. They have worked. I had the privilege of serving with J.T. for five years as these convictions and concepts took root at The Village Church in Dallas, Texas. Hundreds and hundreds of laymen and women grew in a robust understanding of the God of the Bible, transforming their lives and the worship and fervency of our church.

Matt Chandler , lead pastor, The Village Church, Flower Mound, Texas; president, Acts 29

J.T. English combines razor-sharp theology with deep pastoral intuition to give us a book we badly need. It is amazing how much we can be doing in our churches without actually engaging in the sort of deep discipleship which will keep us all growing, serving, witnessing, and worshipping for the rest of our lives. J.T. shows us how the local church can become ground zero for theological passion and training. I look forward to applying his wisdom and hope many churches will do the same!

Sam Allberry , speaker, Ravi Zacharias International Ministries; associate pastor, Immanuel Church Nashville

Pastor J.T. English is committed to helping us deepen our discipleship. Theres just not much to the shallow Christianity that typifies too many of our churches, and too many of our lives. If you want to be both challenged and instructed on how you can change that, pick up this book. It might not take long to read, but its results may last a lifetime.

Mark Dever , pastor, Capitol Hill Baptist Church, Washington DC; president, 9Marks

In Deep Discipleship , J.T. English smartly and accurately diagnoses what is perhaps the greatest challenge facing the American church: the tendency to call Christians to less engagement, not more. In a well written and easily readable book, J.T. lays out a biblical blueprint for how pastors, leaders, and laypeople can call the church to be everything it was meant to be.

Matt Carter , senior pastor, Sagemont Church, Houston, Texas

When I reflect on Deep Discipleship, words that come to mind are these: biblical, needful, practical, readable. Grounded in the Word of God and fleshed out in the real life of the local church, my friend J.T. English provides a roadmap for developing and maintaining a faithful and healthy discipleship ministry in a local church of any size and location. My hope and prayer is that God will use this book to multiply disciples and disciple makers around the world.

Daniel L. Akin , president, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary

This book is a rare combination of theology and practice on one of the most important aspects of the faith. Discipleship, according to J.T. English, is rooted in Scripture, situated in the local church, and aimed at mission to the glory of God. I hope Deep Discipleship is read widely, and I am confident that it will lead to the making and maturing of deep and holistic disciples.

Jeremy Treat (PhD, Wheaton College), pastor for Preaching and Vision at Reality LA; author of Seek First and The Crucified King

Copyright 2020 by J.T. English

All rights reserved.

Printed in the United States of America

978-1-5359-9352-4

Published by B&H Publishing Group

Nashville, Tennessee

Dewey Decimal Classification: 248.84

Subject Heading: DISCIPLESHIP / CHRISTIAN LIFE / DISCIPLESHIP TRAINING

Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture is taken from the English Standard Version. ESV Text Edition: 2016. Copyright 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

Cover design by Darren Welch.

Author photo by The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

It is the Publishers goal to minimize disruption caused by technical errors or invalid websites. While all links are active at the time of publication, because of the dynamic nature of the internet, some web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed and may no longer be valid. B&H Publishing Group bears no responsibility for the continuity or content of the external site, nor for that of subsequent links. Contact the external site for answers to questions regarding its content.

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Introduction

Diagnosing the Discipleship Disease

O n Memorial Day weekend 2018 my wife and I were driving to see an orthopedic surgeon in Dallas. For several weeks she had been experiencing increasing amounts of pain in her right thigh. She is an active person, so we chalked it up to overusemaybe she pulled something, or perhaps it was a slight tear. After weeks of stretching, icing, and lots of other remedies, we could not get the pain under control. We had to go see a doctor.

After asking us a list of questions, the doctors decided to perform an MRI to see if they could detect exactly what was going on. After the MRI we both sat nervously in the waiting room. All kinds of crazy things go through your head in a waiting room. Questions like: Is this worse than we think it is? Is this not as bad as we think it is? Is everything going to be okay? Is this going to require surgery and rehabilitation?

After a long wait we were called back to a small room to wait some more. We sat there for another thirty minutes, thoughts racing through our minds. Nothing could have prepared us for what would happen next. The doctor walked in, and some of the first words out of his mouth were, I have got to be honest with you; this does not look good.

It was like someone knocked all of the wind out of me. What does it mean that this does not look good? What is wrong? How bad is it? I did not know what we were about to hear, but I did know that I was not expecting it. He proceeded to tell us that it looked like Macy had a high-grade malignant sarcoma cancer . Sarcomas are a cancerous tumor; high-grade meant it was fast-growing and had a high likelihood of spreading to other parts of her body. In a single visit to the doctor, we went from thinking she had a pulled muscle to thinking about what her life expectancy might be.

Since it was Memorial Day weekend, he told us he wanted to see us first thing on Tuesday morning to do a biopsy to confirm the initial diagnosis. That was the longest weekend of our lives. We had countless people over to our house to pray and ask for healing. We shed countless tears, sang worship songs, read Scripture, and wondered how this would impact our two little babies who were three years and nine months at the time. We begged God to perform a miracle.

We went to the pool on Memorial Day to try to forget all that was happening and because the weightlessness of the water helped relieve some of her pain. I will never forget that we took a picture of all four of us in the pool. We were all smiling; we looked like a young, vibrant family without a care in the world. But on the inside we were terrified.

On Tuesday morning we went to the hospital to have a biopsy performed on the tumor in order to confirm the diagnosis. The biopsy lasted several hours, and I sat in the waiting room with our family and several friends. Over the next few hours doctors kept coming out to deliver news to other families. It seemed like lots of them were getting good news right there in the waiting room. Then a nurse came out to me and asked me to meet the doctor in a private conference room. I began to panic. A private conference room? Why could he not share the information with me in the waiting room? Is it worse than he thought? Is it not as bad he thought? I made my way to the conference room where he met me a few minutes later. He told me that the pathology report appeared to confirm the initial diagnosis, though he was a bit more optimistic that the tumor might not be as high-grade as he originally thought. However, he also said there were some unusual readings in the report and that he would like to send it off for further analysis at Harvard.