Four Failures That Undermine Discipleship: Introduction
Dr. Nathan Hitchcock is a consultant for the Alliance of Reformed Churches. He led the launch of Pathways, a competency-based process to help pastors get ordained the Alliance. Now he's working on a major discipleship initiative.
It’s been a strange start to 2026. I set out to study successful discipleship initiatives, but ended up running across a lot of failed ones. A lot.
Do you remember that iconic scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the one where the knights approach a cave to battle a ferocious beast, only to discover a seemingly innocent bunny? Spoiler alert: the rabbit is in fact a “killer rabbit” which readily slaughters anyone who comes near. This scene keeps replaying in my head every time I hear someone saying they are going to launch a new discipleship program. It’s just a harmless little bunny, they say.
NAMING THE STRUGGLE
Discipleship initiatives are a cave strewn with bones. You can hear it in the laments. “Our midweek program tanked.” “The same four people signed up.” “No one wanted to do the curriculum.” “People were way too busy with work and school and sports.” “We were overwhelmed.” “The consistory pulled the plug.” Every church leader seems to have a sad, blood-spattered story.
To be fair, there are a number of successful discipleship projects out there in Alliance churches. Praise the Lord. The Alliance will be celebrating those in the months to come. But having interviewed a bunch of pastors, I’ve found that discipleship disasters abound.
The research also suggests a gruesome story. While pastors overwhelmingly say they value discipleship, only 11% of them say that discipleship is one of the things that “their church does best.” Whether delivered through small groups, Sunday school, mentoring, or special training, discipleship efforts are struggling. As one cheeky minister told me, “We have to consider the possibility that we stink at this discipleship thing.”
ADDRESSING THE CULTURE PROBLEM
I don’t claim to have the answers for a quick fix, but here’s something I’ve discovered: discipleship initiatives fail because there’s a breakdown of a disciple making culture.
With a culture there are a number of elements working together. It’s a whole system. All the elements need to be accounted for. You can do one or two things right, but if you don’t address all the elements and treat them integratively, you’re setting yourself up for trouble.
It’s not that discipleship has to be complicated. It’s that churches need to address things holistically if they want to see lots of people actively following Jesus. Again, making disciples is a culture.
The Alliance is determined to live out its strategic priority to “make disciples who follow Jesus and make other disciples.” To do so, it needs to reckon with the broken components that go into a weak disciple making culture. It needs to envision what a better culture looks like. Only by addressing the whole ecosystem will thriving discipleship emerge.
In this series I mean to point out four failures to watch out for: a failure of theology, a failure of intentionality, a failure of accountability, and a failure of alignment. Each failure is worth unpacking. You’ll hear what I’ve learned from pastors as well as specialists and research groups.
LEARNING AND HOPING TOGETHER
This season I’ve been humbled hearing about others’ discipleship fails – and remembering my own. Honestly, it’s been a downer. But I’m taking a deep breath and daring to hope. You should too. In the Christian life we don’t need to hide our failures. We just need to learn from them.
This article is part of a series called Four Failures That Undermine Discipleship. Each segment will be released over the end of Lent 2026. For the whole series, see here.
