By Justin Roberts

Discipleship has always been an important part of my walk with Christ because I have always known and understood my need for help from others.

I came from the background of a 12-step program where they have something called sponsorship. Sponsorship is a relationship in which someone who is further along in their clean time or sobriety helps someone with less clean time navigate and understand the recovery program.

I had been sponsored, and I had also sponsored other men over the years, so I understood the value of having a close relationship like that.

When I began going to church, I was still very much addicted to heroin, fentanyl, and cocaine. I was saved, but I wasn’t free. God sent me a man to help disciple me who, at the same time I was battling addiction, also had a daughter who was battling an addiction to heroin.

By God’s grace, we are both clean and have been for many years. Praise be to God!

Over the years, I have had a couple of men who have been influential in helping me through discipleship.

As I have grown and matured in my faith journey as a Christ follower, what I have really come to understand about discipleship is the importance of having someone take me through books of the Bible, rather than simply having conversations about it.

I have always been blessed to have at least one man in my life whom I saw as a spiritual father, and over the years I have had different men help me.

I am still very good friends with many of them.

Over the last few years, I had an older man by the name of Dr. Harold Peasley meet with me on a regular basis to study the Bible together. In fact, we had a meeting just last night over Zoom for Bible study—a time of discussing life, its challenges, its praiseworthy moments, as well as a time of praying for one another.

This was the relationship where I really began to see the need for this type of discipleship—one that includes an open Bible, honest and vulnerable conversations, repentance and confession of sin when necessary, and being sharpened by someone, much like the relationship between the apostle Paul and Timothy.

There is a depth of discipleship I see in Scripture that goes far deeper than attending a group meeting once a week or once every couple of weeks.

What we need are spiritual fathers in our lives who can love us and teach us as spiritual sons, as we see with Paul and Timothy, or spiritual mothers and daughters for women (Titus 2:3–5).

I’ve since had the opportunity to disciple others who are now discipling others themselves.

Discipleship isn’t complicated, but it does require someone mature in the faith and wise in the Scriptures—someone who can help you understand and apply God’s Word, both through teaching and by example.

I believe technology has become an avenue through which we can literally fulfill the Great Commission and make disciples of all nations, according to Matthew 28:19–20:

“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

Dennis, Stefan, Greg, and Pete (Navigator Church Ministry Team) have helped me more than I can say through two of the courses I was involved in with The Navigators. Through those courses, I was able to see areas where I needed to grow and change as a discipler. Pete Jansen has been especially gracious in speaking with me personally many times, and that has helped me grow by showing me what availability looks like—even to this very day, for which I am deeply thankful.

I had been discipling from a distance and needed to spend more personal time and have more direct contact with the men I disciple.

Since making that change, I have seen spiritual fruit begin to mature in areas where it had previously been lacking, though I hadn’t been able to see it at the time.

The Navigators are a great group to learn how to grow as a disciple and as a disciple-maker.

I have often heard people talk about the Great Commission, but most of the time the emphasis is placed on evangelism. Evangelism is very important and can bring someone into the kingdom. However, discipleship is what helps them grow, mature, flourish, thrive, and reproduce discipleship in the lives of others—which is truly what the Great Commission is all about.

Get discipled. Make disciples.

Justin Roberts is a bi-vocational pastor of The Church of Second Chances. Justin and his wife Lisa are located in Mississauga Ontario.