Here are four specific ways the term ‘disciplemaking’ can reclaim what’s been lost in the term ‘discipleship’.

1. Discipleship is self-focused. In most churches, discipleship is anything that might help you grow spiritually. Your growth is the goal. Though participation often requires being among others, it doesn’t require heart connection to others.

Disciplemaking is others-focused. The purpose of becoming a mature disciple is to glorify God by making more disciples. A disciple can’t be made without relationally and intentionally connecting to another. The incarnational relationship is the context that yields transformation.

2. Discipleship is knowledge centered. If information brought about transformation then our churches would be filled with Christ-like reproducers!

Disciplemaking is application centered. Since more is caught than taught, disciplemaking focuses on application. The disciple maker knows we reproduce who we are, not what we know.

3. Discipleship is focused on sanctification. In some cases, the discipleship is used as a synonym for sanctification or our growth in holiness and godliness.

Disciplemaking is focused on reproduction. The fruit of sanctification is Christ-likeness which helps us make disciples. The end isn't our own maturity, but our ability (by the Spirit working in us) to bring infant Christ-followers into the world.

4. Discipleship is unmeasurable. Most pastors and church leaders point to the fruit of the Spirit as the fruit of discipleship. Since love, joy, peace, patience, etc., can’t be measured, it’s easy to deceive ourselves into believing we’re maturing. Unfortunately, the state of the American church tells a different story.

Disciplemaking is measureable. In the same way that parents know who their children are, disciple makers know who they've spiritually parented. They know the disciples they’ve made. Here again the spiritual mirrors the physical. Parents and disciple makers know the maturity and health of their offspring.

In short, 'discipleship' is worn out from overuse. 'Disciplemaking' is a major upgrade! Believed to have first been used by Dawson Trotman's right hand man, Lorne Sanny, it draws our attention away from the busyness of fruitless activity and production, and towards reproduction. As Daws used to say, “Activity is no substitute for production. Production is no substitute for reproduction.”

So will you join me in tossing old, rusty ‘discipleship’ in favor of 'disciplemaking'?