Making Disciples: Build Toward Leadership
Part Ten: Once the person you're intentionally accompanying has encountered Jesus and experienced conversion, even incomplete conversion, it's time to help them to become a leader in faith.
Editor's Note: This column is part of a yearlong series on evangelization, breaking down what often feels like a tall order into real, practical, actionable steps towards intentional accompaniment.
On Easter Sunday, Mary Magdalene was the first person our risen Lord appeared to (presumably after Mother Mary).
She was the first person (aside from Mother Mary) to stand face to face with the fulfillment of her hope. She was the first person to have her perspective radically reoriented through a personal encounter with the resurrected Lord.
And when she experienced this deeper conversion, she received the first commission from our risen Lord: to go and tell his apostles to meet him in Galilee (see Matthew 28:10).
Conversion always leads to a commission.
By following through with Christ’s mandate, Mary Magdalene became “the apostle to the apostles” as the Church has nicknamed her throughout the centuries. The unlikeliest person of all time became a messenger to the most important group of men in human history.
Mary Magdalene proved to us that life with Christ impels and empowers us to go forth — even if we don’t seem like the most fitting candidate to do so.
When the apostles went up to meet Jesus in Galilee, Matthew tells us that some of them still doubted even after seeing Jesus alive again (see Matthew 28:17). Despite their hesitations and uncertainty, those apostles still received Jesus’ Great Commission on behalf of the Church: to go and make disciples of all nations (see Matthew 28:19).
Conversion, even incomplete conversion, always leads to a commission.
Those timid apostles proved to us that life with Christ impels and empowers us to go forth — even if we don’t feel like the most fitting candidates to do so.
As we intentionally accompany another person, our goal is to lead them into a life with Christ, a life of ever-deepening conversion. And here’s the reality: we can’t experience ever-deepening conversion without going forth and leading others to Christ.
Our faith is designed in such a way that it deepens when it’s shared. It swells when it’s poured out.
Like a fire that seeks other things to set aflame, so does our faith. Our hearts long to set other souls ablaze.
And just as a fire begins to die and sizzle out when it can’t find other things to consume, so is our faith. Our faith fizzles out when it remains suppressed within ourselves.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that at the moment of Pentecost — when the Holy Spirit was poured out on the apostles to empower them to fulfill Christ’s Great Commission — the Holy Spirit appeared as flames of fire. It’s as if God wanted us to realize this truth. Faith seeks to conflagrate.
To help the friend you’ve been intentionally accompanying become a true disciple of Jesus, you must build them up in the conviction of making other disciples.
You must offer the same encouragement that St. Paul offered to the young man he intentionally accompanied, Timothy: “What you have heard from me before many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also” (2 Timothy 2:2).
This can be intimidating to do.
It might be scary to ask someone to assume an additional responsibility. “People are so busy, and now you’re asking me to add something to their to-do list?”
Yes.
As you’ve (hopefully) experienced by now, picking up the call to make disciples fortifies your faith. Therefore, avoiding asking the person you’ve been accompanying to accompany someone else would hinder their discipleship with Jesus.
Put in the positive, encouraging the person you’ve been intentionally accompanying to go and intentionally accompany someone else is not only good for the Kingdom, but it’s good for them.
Intentionally accompanying someone without getting them to go and do likewise is like signing up to run a marathon, running 25 miles of it and then calling it quits. We didn’t do the thing (!) unless we’ve built those we're accompanying into capable and willing leaders.
On the flip side, this can be intimidating for the person you’re accompanying.
They might not feel capable of intentionally accompanying someone else. Whether it’s because they don’t think they’re smart enough or sociable enough or holy enough, people naturally struggle with the idea of being able to help another person grow closer to Jesus — especially if they’ve never been asked to do anything of the sort.
But as St. Mary Magdalene and the apostles proved for us, there’s no certification process for making disciples. The only qualification needed is a willing heart that’s set on becoming like Jesus.
When you’ve seen the person you’ve been intentionally accompanying commit in a deeper way to their relationship with Jesus, remind them of the vision for discipleship and begin conversations about who they can potentially accompany.
Exactly how you can help them take the next step will be the topic of my next column!
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Making Disciples is an ambitious, yearlong series of columns meant to equip readers with the formation, both theological and practical, to go and make disciples as Jesus himself commanded in Matthew 28. Through these columns, we hope Denver Catholic readers will join us in preaching the Gospel, so that in Jesus Christ all might be rescued and have abundant life, for the glory of the Father.
