Making Disciples in the Midst of Uncertainty

Today many in my home country, the United States, are voting, and a great many more are anxious. Whatever the outcome, roughly half the country will wake up tomorrow discouraged, the other half-relieved. The air is thick with the sense that everything hinges on the outcome of this election.

I want to offer a quieter, calmer perspective. Disciple-making does not change based on who is elected.

That is not a dismissal of very real concerns. But, the work God has called us to — making disciples who make disciples — looks exactly the same on the Wednesday after an election as it did on the Monday before. And there is a deep freedom in remembering that.

What Does Not Change

Over the years, I have made disciples under various governments and in many different countries. Some of those governments were friendly to the faith. Some were indifferent. Some were actively hostile. But the command to make disciples and most of the way we made disciples did not change dramatically with the winds of politics.

The practitioners I know in parts of the world where leadership changes can be genuinely dangerous have a steadiness about them that I continually learn from. They are not ignorant to the dangers, and are always prayerful during elections. But they have learned not to tie the health of their disciple-making to the stability of their circumstances, because if they did, they would remain at home in hiding. They make disciples through elections, through coups, through uncertainty of every kind. The King they serve is not being voted for.

For those of us in more stable contexts, the same truth holds — we simply struggle to remember it. Our calling to obey Jesus does not rise and fall with election cycles. It never has.

Discipleship That Crosses the Aisle

There is something else worth naming in this divided season. The people God calls us to disciple include the ones whose politics we find hardest to understand.

Consider Jesus and who he discipled. Matthew was a tax collector — a man who collaborated with the occupying Roman government. Simon was a Zealot — part of a movement committed to overthrowing that same government, by force if necessary. In any other setting, these two men would have been enemies. Jesus put them in the same group of twelve and taught them to love one another. He is our model.

If the gospel could hold those two men together, it can hold together the people on either side of whatever divides us now. In fact, a disciple-making community that only includes people who vote the way we do is likely not really declaring the gospel very fully at all. It’sdemonstratinga political preference. And the watching world already has plenty of examples of people like that. What it needs to see is people who are different from the world. Those who love across the line.

Steady Hearts in an Anxious Season

So here is my encouragement, whatever today brings. Do not let the uncertainty pull you off the one thing Jesus was clear about that we should do. Keep making disciples. Keep investing in the person in front of you. Keep crossing the lines that the rest of the culture is busy making more and more distinct.

The most countercultural thing we can do in an anxious, divided season is to go on quietly loving and discipling people — including people who are not like us — as though the Kingdom of God were advancing regardless of the headlines. Because it truly is.

Elections matter. Whether in Nigeria, India, or America. In some situations and seasons, they genuinely matter a lot. But they are not the thing our lives are built on. Let’s remember that and keep our hearts steady. Our work continues, and it is good work.

If steadiness in an unsteady season is something you want to keep building — alongside others learning the same — join us in the Dare to Multiply community. Find out more at multipliersmindset.com/dtmmembership.

Something to Think About and Discuss:

• Where do you notice your own sense of hope or discouragement rising and falling with external circumstances you have no control over?

• What resonated with you most in this article?

• Who is one person — perhaps someone quite different from you — that you could intentionally invest in getting to know this month?

Share about it in the comments below or on our Dare to Multiply community.