Replication: Making Disciples Who Make Disciples

By Zack Armfield

Every pastor hopes for healthy replication—disciples making disciples. It is, after all, what Jesus commanded in Matthew 28. But the burning question is: how do we do this? Why isn’t it happening everywhere if it’s so central? Nathan Metz points to two major obstacles in the U.S.: individualism and cultural shifts in technology.

“Go and Make Disciples”

Metz is deeply committed to discipleship and mentorship. Professionally, he serves as Director of Leadership Development at his company. Personally, he pursues discipleship through ministry and relationships. Those worlds intersect in a way he considers a blessing, as he seeks to glorify God’s kingdom by teaching others how to mentor and lead through the lens of God’s image in every person.

1. Individualism

One of the greatest hurdles in American culture is our bent toward self-sufficiency and independence. Those traits have strengths, but they also create deep challenges for discipleship. People swim in cultural currents they don’t even notice.

Metz suggests starting small: cultivating a handful of people into passionate disciples of Jesus, training them to make disciples themselves. Sound familiar? Jesus began with just twelve.

“If you want everyone in your church to run an Iron Man, who’s going to lead that? You’d spend most of your time just convincing people to like the idea of it—that’s what we spend most of our time doing, getting people to like the idea of discipleship,” Metz says.

Instead, start small. Invite people into what feels awkward in our culture—confession, accountability, honesty, reminders of God’s image in them. Draw them into the deep end of relationship and release them to do the same for others.

2. Technology and Culture

The second barrier is the way technology shapes our lives. Social media often isolates instead of uniting, and “AI will only compound this,” Metz warns.

“Gone are the days of just creating discipleship groups and sending them off,” he adds. Pastors now work with spiritually malnourished people who need to be fed at their level, gradually building them up with patience and grace. This is not coddling, but cultivating. Just as a starving person must be nourished carefully back to health, disciples need rhythms of relearning how to follow Jesus both personally and communally.

In a world eager for technology to do everything for them, believers need to practice doing things with Jesus and withothers—in their own voice, in their own lives.

“Communal life is once again being recognized by Christians today as the grace that it is … the ‘roses and lilies’ of the Christian life.”

—Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together

In an age of isolation and self-made digital identities, the church desperately needs vulnerable, honest, and communal life in Jesus. What the Body of Christ needs most may not be mass influence but a few faithful people walking the long road of discipleship—for the sake of the many, for the glory of God’s kingdom, and for communal holiness over selfish echo chambers.