Making Disciples Vs Winning Converts

I grew up in the heyday of the Baptist/Fundamentalist movement.  The mantra of the day was: Winning lost souls for Christ.  Countless times I’ve heard pastors, evangelists and missionaries use Matthew 28:19-20 as their text to exhort me to win the lost. The process was simple: help people understand their sin, tell them about Jesus and get them to pray the sinner’s prayer.  The only thing better was having them attend church, walk the aisle, make a public profession of faith and be baptized.  Praying the sinner’s prayer, baptism and church membership seemed to be the ultimate goal.  I say this because the only training I received was on how to make a convert.  Not once do I remember being taught the importance of discipling the one I’d won to maturity in the faith.  In fact, I was converted under this process and no one ever actually discipled me.

It’s sad, but it has taken me six years of education through a major Christian university and sixteen years as a pastor to finally realize that making converts is not what Jesus asked us to do.  Jesus was very clear. He said: “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations….”  It’s not just semantics; there is a significant difference between a convert to Christ and a disciple for Christ.  A convert is one who has come to faith in Jesus as Savior.  They’ve opened their heart to receive the grace He purchased on the cross at Calvary.  But for many, that’s where it begins and ends.  Secure in the love of Christ, a convert may or may not mature. They may or may not be a public witness for Jesus and they may or may not reproduce another spiritual life.  A convert is happy to have eternal life and the forgiveness of sin, but may never actually follow in the Savior’s footsteps. 

A disciple on the other hand is one who follows after Christ.  That’s what the word disciple actually means and that’s the product that Jesus commanded us to produce.  Of course, a disciple is a convert.  One cannot follow after Jesus until they have opened their life to Him.  But a disciple moves beyond the benefits of salvation to learn how they can live like the One they are following.  A disciple concerns themselves with the things that concern their Master and their greatest desire is to please Him.  One thing that pleases Jesus is His followers reproducing themselves by making more disciples.  This is the fulfillment of Jesus’ command that we teach new believers all the things He has commanded us.  This would include making disciples.

I’m all for making converts.  This is the first step in disciple making.  But we can’t settle for conversion alone.  Jesus commanded that we make disciples and that means investing what God has invested in us in others.