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Podcast: Overcoming Me-Centered Discipleship (Jonathan Dodson)

February 21, 2022 by: Crossway

This article is part of the The Crossway Podcast series.

Reclaiming Gospel-Centered Discipleship

In today's episode, Jonathan Dodson talks about what a gospel-centered approach to discipleship entails. He highlights the importance of transparency for everyone involved, why the long view of sanctification is so important to hold on to, and how to move forward when we feel hurt or betrayed by a mentor.

Gospel-Centered Discipleship

Gospel-Centered Discipleship

Jonathan K. Dodson

In Gospel-Centered Discipleship, Jonathan Dodson unveils an effective, Spirit-led model for following Jesus in everyday life. Drawing from his own failures and successes in discipling others, he provides practical ideas for mentor and peer-based discipleship as Jesus intended.

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Topics Addressed in This Interview:

00:55 - The Complexity of Discipleship

Matt Tully
Jonathan, thank you so much for joining me today on The Crossway Podcast.

Jonathan Dodson
Hi, Matt. It's good to be with you. Thanks for having me on.

Matt Tully
Discipleship is one of those words that we've all probably used and that we certainly hear a lot in the context of the church. And yet, I think sometimes people mean different things by the word. Let's start off by you explaining what you mean when you say the word discipleship.

Jonathan Dodson
It's certainly become one of those catch-all terms. Different people bring different meanings to the word. Jesus conveys a clear meaning in Scripture. I think on the one hand people think evangelism: How do I make a disciple for the first time? Other people tend to think of more sanctification: How do I mature an existing Christian disciple? Other people are more on the multiplication bandwagon: Let's make disciples who make disciples. Really, I think discipleship encompasses all of those things, not just one of those things. Discipleship happens all the time. We're discipled by the social media influences that we intake, we're discipled by our mentors, we're discipled by our community and our leaders. There is always a shaping, discipling influence. The concept of discipleship didn't originate with Jesus. You had the Greek philosophers Socrates and Plato discipling their followers, and they were called disciples. I think it's important to recognize that constant influence and recognize that when it comes to Scripture and to Jesus, there is a very unique discipleship that he is attempting. You could break it out into three things: rational, relational, missional. Socrates didn't like the pupil's rational idea because he felt like he was doing more than reason work with his followers. But that is a component. Jesus does teach. Jesus does tell stories. Jesus does communicate the gospel of the kingdom that transforms the way we think and believe. But it's also a transformative thing relationally. It's a transformative thing missionally. And, of course, our entire sense of being is transformed when we say I'm going to follow Jesus. I'm going to put my faith in him and I'm going to follow him and trust him with my soul, with my life, with my aspirations. So, there are different aspects to discipleship and there are different things that people bring to it. But at the end of the day, Christian discipleship is about making, maturing, and multiplying disciples in Jesus, with Jesus, and for Jesus.

Matt Tully
As you think about your own church and your own background as a pastor, is there a dominant emphasis (when it comes to discipleship) that you've encountered that you think is most common?

Jonathan Dodson
I would say there have probably been phases of influences on me. When I was young in my twenties, I got kicked out of Bible school when I was in England and came back to the States with a bit of shame and wanting to do things right, wanting to correct my wrongs. That's when I was introduced to the idea of discipleship. At that time it was more of this one-on-one mentoring. A Campus Crusade staff member took me under his wing with another friend who would become one of my closest friends. We met regularly for Bible study, we did road trips and listened to concerts. We did more than the rational download, although that's important—the theological Bible study. There was a life-on-life dimension to it. This was my early experience of discipleship. It was being mentored by an older Christian in the faith. We kind of looked at John (the man who was discipling us) as the guru. He was the one who had achieved what we needed to achieve. In many respects that was true.

Matt Tully
That's probably one of the dominant ideas of discipleship that we have in the church, that discipleship is where you have a mentor figure with a mentee, often in a smaller group or even one-on-one context. It seems like you're suggesting that that's not maybe all there is to it or that there are some nuances that are missing in that idea.

Jonathan Dodson
If we're not careful, that can become kind of a professionalized discipleship where the guru hands down his spiritual best practice to the novice. In my own experiences, I tried to reproduce what I learned from John and other people's lives. What I did is I taught them great theology, we would get into Romans at 6:00am, I would show them all the good things: all the knowledge, theology, character that I was confident in. But the bad things—it's the whole putting your best foot forward and hiding the ugly one. I began to reproduce disciples without transparency, without a humble repentance that said These are my failures, not only my successes. The danger of the one-one-one mentor discipleship is that we begin to make people in the image of our best character without showing them the flaws and the struggles, where we actually are all really human and discover grace together.

Matt Tully
You write in the book that you were making disciples that could share their faith but not their failures. Do you feel like that's something that you saw modeled in this guy who was discipling you? Or was it that he was doing a good job with that and there was just a breakdown when you went and tried to do the same?

Jonathan Dodson
It's probably a mix of both. It was so many years ago, so I don't remember. John is a great guy and a great leader. There was probably a bit of not being as forthcoming, but I also think in my youth I grasped onto what I saw was good and tried to reproduce that in others. In that youthful zeal to do what's right, but also self-righteousness in accomplishing kingdom things, I was loath to show my own personal struggles with lust, pride, or whatever it was. So, I think the lion's share of that was probably my own sinful heart and my desire to compensate for the past, to get it right, to make Jesus proud. What I didn't really understand is that I couldn't make Jesus more proud. He is head over heels proud of me because of what he has done to welcome me into his family, and now who he sees me to be—his very own son. That gospel center was missing, and so discipleship was a bit of a performance. It was a well-intentioned performance at times, but other times a not so well-intentioned performance.

09:06 - Is Transparency Essential for Healthy Discipleship?

Matt Tully
I want to get into that gospel-centered idea in just a minute, but first, do you think this is a common problem in the church—that discipleship is happening in a performative type of way that isn't as transparent as it should be? How central is transparency to the call to make disciples? Is that something that we've lost sight of?

Jonathan Dodson
People come from different places, so I think in some quarters of the church transparency is held up so high that it eclipses obedience and repentance: Let's all just be as authentic as we can by opening up and showing one another our flaws. Certain personality tests have encouraged this kind of self-awareness of your own limitations and brokenness. If we're not careful, that becomes brandished: This is my weakness; this is my struggle. There is less aspiration to grow and to mature. In other quarters of the church there is the more performative element: I'm trying to demonstrate what I know or to model biblical manhood or womanhood. I'm trying to be the kind of missionary person who is so effective at sharing the gospel or reaching my neighbors. There's a performance that is attached to mission or to how we do church or my morality or theology. I think it depends on how you've been shaped. Those two cultures—those two cul de sacs—of bad discipleship are out there.

Matt Tully
What have been some of the most helpful practical things that you've done—habits that you've incorporated into your discipling relationships—to try to cultivate that honesty and transparency in both directions as a disciplerer and with a disciplee? I'm thinking of pastors and church leaders where my sense is that they can struggle sometimes to know how to bring in that appropriate transparency and share what they're struggling with without undercutting the confidence that people have in them as their spiritual leader. What does that look like practically in your life?

Jonathan Dodson
One of the little mantras that we use in discipleship is Repent of sin, rejoice in Christ, reproduce disciples. My first inclination in a relationship with someone is to keep that first R very much in play. We are repenting of sin together, and repentance isn't bad news. It's great news! For every look at sin, you look ten times at Christ. It's an opportunity to gaze at the beauty, the forgiveness, the depth, the wonder, and the majesty of Christ. My goodness, why would I want to hold back on that? Why would I not want to invite someone else into that? This morning I met with two guys for coffee. I want to pursue Christ together with my life as an open book. Here are my struggles. Our first question was Is there anything that is really heavy on anybody's heart this morning? Before we get into the reading, is there anything that we need to talk about? I began to talk about this tendency in my life to feel like, in the context of ministry, when I see a need (and as a pastor or a leader, you're always seeing need) I feel this compulsion to meet the need. In my small group last week, there was a couple who was quiet. They need to be drawn out. I saw the need, but at the same time the Holy Spirit said Don't meet the need. I refrained from engaging them. We made our way into our discussion, and it was a discussion about lament that got deep real quick. Again, there were several opportunities to meet needs as people were articulating their struggle to lament. I was feeling the temptation to give a word of counsel. The Holy Spirit told me to restrain myself. What happened was that the people in my small group actually said the things that needed to be said. They ministered to one another. If I had stepped in, everyone would have paid attention to me. If I had filled the vacuum, I would have forsaken the opportunity for someone in our small group to do the ministry. Also, the burden for me is that I am always seeing need. I need to let that go more. I was confessing this to these guys and saying I pick up these burdens that don't belong to me and I'm learning to let go of them. As I do, I am seeing God's people minister to one another more, not less. I am feeling great about that!

Matt Tully
You've obviously thought a lot about the value of that repentance and confession and transparency with other fellow Christians. Even with that and experiencing the freedom that comes from that, is it ever a struggle to be transparent in that context, especially as a pastor? Does your calling as a spiritual leader ever tempt you away from that kind of transparency?

Jonathan Dodson
I'm sure that it does. I think that it has become a habit of the way that I lead. If you talk to people in my church, one of the things they will tell you they love about the preaching is that they always get to see how I've blown it. At first, you're like Wait a second. Am I doing this right? I'm not brandishing my failures; I'm just being honest about my own need for the gospel. I am preaching the gospel to myself out loud when I illustrate a struggle with pride or anxiety. People love that because it makes the professionalized idea that's kind of in their brain, it kind of dissolves it. Suddenly, discipleship or faith or belief becomes doable. Oh, I can do it, and I can do it and struggle because my pastor does it and he struggles. I'm sure there are sins that I am less forthcoming with.

16:44 - Why “Gospel-Centered” Discipleship?

Matt Tully
It's interesting that you said you sort of “practiced.” For so long it's been such a way of thinking that it's maybe become more second nature than it would be otherwise. I want to jump into the gospel and how that fits into this. Your book is called Gospel-Centered Discipleship. I would imagine that there are at least a few people listening right now who maybe are rolling their eyes because that term—gospel-centered—gets thrown around so much these days. We can read people online arguing that its meaning, its over used, and maybe it's sometimes an unhelpful or counter-productive term because of what it might imply about something. Why do you think that's an important thing to emphasize and put in front of the word discipleship on this topic?

Jonathan Dodson
I think it's important to put in front of discipleship because of the baggage that we talked about, or the different things that people bring to discipleship. Many people will judge their discipleship based on their effectiveness in evangelism or mercy or social justice. That's the mission person. The person who comes with the focus of sanctification will judge their discipleship based on how holy they've been (or unholy they've been). The person who is all about disciples should make disciples and multiplying will judge themselves by how many disciples they've made and how many disciples they've made have made disciples. In all of these aspects which are part of following Jesus, they become an inner checklist. They become a template through which we judge or praise ourselves. In so doing, discipleship moves away from Jesus and towards ourselves. If we're doing really well, we're feeling great . . . and we're full of pride and hubris. If we fail, we feel discouraged and condemned. So discipleship becomes this roller coaster of feeling great or feeling awful about whatever your thing is—holiness, mission, etc. When you put the gospel in front of it, you're reminded that your discipleship doesn't hang on your performance—positive or negative. It hangs on Jesus' flawless performance in his life, death, and resurrection. That gives you the confidence to move forward in your faith. It is clunky—gospel-centered. But if discipleship is not gospel-centered, it will inevitably become me-centered.

Matt Tully
You published this book about a decade ago now, and that was, arguably, at the start of some of the gospel-centered talk and language that, again, now is pretty common and well-known. I'm curious to hear your thoughts on the use of that term. Have your views on the helpfulness of the language changed over the last decade in light of what you've seen? Or has it really been just a very positive development in the way we think about a whole host of issues?

Jonathan Dodson
I think it's been a little bit of a watershed for American evangelicalism and probably even beyond because it's been this retrieval of a Jesus-rich, good news, motivating Christianity. I think it's done a lot of good. There are always caricatures with any movement and there are always aberrations. It's not been perfect. Gospel-centered to some people can sound like Are you totally Reformed? And if you're not, you're on the B team in Christianity. That's not how I view it. That's not how Jesus views it. But that aberration is out there for a reason, and the caricature is out there for a reason. It goes back to immaturity. When young Christians get their hands on new concepts, they often use them to leverage their own worth instead of resting on the worth that they have in Christ, like I did in my twenties with discipleship. There are pros and cons to every movement and every term; I just think this term is so thoroughly biblical and so hope-giving and so grace-saturated that I don't want to surrender it. I'm a writer, and it's a clunky word! I don't really like writing it. Do you put the hyphen, do you not? It's too many syllables, it doesn't roll off the tongue, and yet here we are ten years later using the same title in my book.

Matt Tully
It is so interesting that this term is fundamentally a Jesus-focused (not human-focused) kind of idea. It's pushing us away from looking at ourselves. And yet, as you rightly said, I think in some quarters it has become this identity badge or this language that kind of marks out people in a certain way that is either really desirable or undesirable. It's just fascinating to me that this term has evolved in that way. But as you say, you don't want to abandon it just because of that.

Jonathan Dodson
Yes, and at the next breath I also want to apologize where it has been used to hurt people or been used in kind of arrogant ways.

22:27 - Reflecting on Ten Years of Discipleship

Matt Tully
You write in your book that in your youth you had a short view of people. What did that look like? What do you mean by that, and what did that look like in contrast to perhaps a longer view of people?

Jonathan Dodson
This is from the introduction to the new book where I am reflecting on a decade of discipling. That comment is essentially saying that in my youth the short view of people was that I wanted to get the gospel out. I wanted to see people, as a young church planter, come to Jesus. The short view was Do you believe, or do you not believe?

Matt Tully
Give me your answer.

Jonathan Dodson
Yes. And perhaps some spiritual disciplines. The short view of people was Do you believe the gospel? Do you get the gospel? Are you following Jesus? Are you having a devotional life? Are you trying to follow him? Now, a decade later, I would say God has taught me to take a longer view of people. It's not just getting the gospel out, it's getting it down—down into the recesses of our heart where we really struggle, where we really wrestle, where we're very insecure and anxious. How does the gospel displace the besetting sins and the broken ideas that really make life hard and obscure the glory and beauty and sufficiency of Jesus? This is probably some of the best pastoral advice I've received or I would give: take the long view of people. They're going to struggle, just like you struggled. They're going to have a wandering path when it comes to holiness, just like you've had a wandering path. So don't pounce on every failure. This is important for parents. Don't pounce on every struggle or bad belief. Take the long view. My goodness, God has been so patient! I've had bad views of creation, bad views of eschatology, bad views of soteriology, of Jesus, of the Holy Spirit—wrong views—and not once have I been struck by lightning! Yet, his Scripture is there, clear, and teachers have come along and corrected me, but God has taken such a long view. Here I am almost fifty and I'm still working out my salvation with fear and trembling, and God is patient and gracious. So, taking the long view of people. My short view says I want you to be holy here. I want you to get this idea, and I want you to do it in a reasonable amount of time. But then I look at Jesus. His long view of us is way better than that! It's glorified, it's content, it's joyful, it's sinless, it's happy. He treats us based on that long view of us with tremendous grace and patience.

Matt Tully
For as sanctified as we think we are at our best, Jesus clearly sees so many ways in which we are falling short. And yet, as you say, he still embraces us and stays with us. What would you say to the person who, maybe when it comes to a doctrinal issue, the motivation to “pounce” on someone is because they feel like it's from a desire to help this person. They're worried about where that doctrine and where that line of thinking could take them if they keep going, and they want to stop it if they can. How do you balance that desire to help someone not fall into grievous error with this long view?

Jonathan Dodson
I think taking the long view of people doesn't imply that you surrender the truth. I think it's a different way of handling the truth. Instead of firing bullets, you're massaging it in over time. You don't need them to get it every single time. You're okay with some error, you're okay with some struggle, because God is okay with error and struggle. I think it is a very Spirit-led thing. In the moment, through the feeling and prompting of the Holy Spirit, knowing what you know about the Bible, when is the right time to respond to someone's doctrinal error? It may be that on the spot is the time to do it. Maybe it's so out of bounds that the whole small group is really going to be affected and you need to speak up. Sometimes it might be, instead of correcting an error, asking a question instead. Jesus is asking questions all the time to surface flawed thinking in his disciples. I think there are times, led by the Holy Spirit, where we do correct clearly. We are to gently correct (2 Timothy), but there are also times to correct through questions, through inquiry, through coming alongside someone.

Matt Tully
I would imagine that there might be some people listening right now who start to get a little nervous and anxious whenever this topic of discipleship comes up. Maybe it's because they've been in some kind of discipling context or relationship and it's been really difficult and really harmful to them. It felt discouraging or hurtful in some way. Or maybe, on the other side, they feel like they should be discipling someone, like they should be investing in other Christians intentionally in some way, and yet they just feel inadequate or intimidated by that idea. Speak to both of those people. What encouragement would you offer to someone in either of those two spots?

Jonathan Dodson
To the person who is struggling or been hurt, I would say I'm sorry. Jesus understands if you've been mistreated or misunderstood. Jesus is described as a man of sorrows acquainted with grief. He knows what it's like to be misunderstood and to be scorned and rejected. If you need to weep, you can weep next to a weeping Jesus. As you do, lift your eyes from that discipler to your true mentor, to your true teacher, to your Savior and your King. Entrust your struggles and apprehension and pain to him, and then as you encounter a man of sorrows, follow that person. Take his instruction to heart and try to forgive those who have influenced you in poor or negative ways. All disciplers will inevitably disappoint. But there is one discipler who will never disappoint. Lay your heart on him. Put your faith in his promises. He is the only leader who will always live up to his beliefs. Every other leader will fail and not live up to their beliefs. That's why it's gospel-centered and Jesus-centered discipleship, not anybody else.

Matt Tully
Jonathan, thank you so much for taking the time to help us all think a little bit more Jesus-centeredly about discipleship and what we're called to do as followers of Jesus.

Jonathan Dodson
My pleasure. Thanks for having me. It's good to dip into these important topics.

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