I have one heirloom from my grandfather. It’s a wooden walking stick with a few dozen medallions from different European cities nailed to it.

There are a few from German cities like Berlin and Munich, others from places like Prague and Budapest, and others from smaller cities across the continent. It’s still the same walking stick he started with, but it’s been permanently stamped with a record of everywhere it went.

Discipleship is one of the sticks I’ve carried with me as I’ve traveled through multiple Christian traditions over the course of my life. And, as it’s traveled through each of these traditions, I’ve nailed medallions to it, sometimes without even realizing I was doing so.

There’s the medallion I picked up in the non-denominational churches, both mega and small, I grew up attending. There’s another I picked up when I started going to summer camp with my Pentecostal friends. Then, there are the medallions I nailed to it as I absorbed books and sermons by reformed Baptists and Presbyterians as a college student. And, finally, there’s the medallion I picked up as I graduated from an Anglican seminary just a few weeks ago.

Each of these has left its mark on how I understand discipleship. As I reflect on each of these marks, I hope you’ll be inspired to learn from the various traditions of the Christian faith, or what Richard Foster calls “streams of living water.”

DISCIPLESHIP IN NON-DENOMINATIONAL CHURCHES

One of my earliest memories of the non-denominational church I attended growing up is how often we opened our Bibles. We sang a song that listed the books of the Old Testament that I still rehearse in my head when I’m looking for one of the minor prophets. The pastor opened his Bible when he spoke on Sunday mornings. We memorized Psalm 23, John 3:16, the Ten Commandments, and the “Romans Road”—verses I can still recite to this day, nearly twenty years later (thanks, AWANA!). And it was in another non-denominational church that I developed a love for reading and understanding the Bible on my own as a high school student.