We have a problem.

The Discipleship Crisis and Returning to the Kingdom Patterns

I have had the privilege of walking alongside, teaching, and serving a group of nine young adults for the last 10 weeks. My primary responsibility is to teach a Biblical Worldview class — which, for me, is the first thing I would teach someone after becoming a disciple of Jesus — for a couple of hours each Wednesday. But I also come alongside our church’s Residency Director to provide support wherever possible and aim to be as present as I can be.

This is the second year our church has offered this Residency, and my third time teaching through the material on Biblical Worldview. Each time, it has been different — regardless of whether we start with all the same information, PowerPoint slides, handouts, etc.

This will be a reflection on that, along with my thoughts on discipling people in our current cultural moment.

(I want to say from the outset — this group of nine has been thoughtful, curious, open-hearted, and deeply willing to learn. Week after week, they showed up with questions, wrestled honestly, and leaned into conversations that many Christians avoid. This is not a reflection on their failure — far from it. It’s a reflection on how widespread our discipleship crisis has become. Over and over again, I heard the same phrase from them and many others: “I’ve never seen that before.” And they were talking about passages they’d read dozens of times. These were not obscure texts or fringe ideas — but foundational truths, hiding in plain sight. That repetition didn’t reveal their weakness, but our collective one. Somehow, we have built a Christian culture where people can attend church for years, read the Bible faithfully, and still not be handed the Lens that helps it all come into focus in Scripture — and in their normal everyday lives.)

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We have a problem, friends. A big one.

A Discipleship one.

If I have learned anything over the last two years — helping lead a Residency and teaching Biblical Worldview — it’s that people don’t have one. Or at least not what I would call one.

They may have a doctrinal or theological answer to some worldview-style questions, but their lives are not lived out of The Story or The Reality of that worldview.

What do I mean by this?

Well, to start: the Bible is supposed to become The Lens through which we see all of Reality.

It is how we see the patterns of God’s ways — and those of the world. It is how we come to recognize what is good and what is bad. It is how we come to understand the overlap of the spiritual and physical world.

These are not just biblical (meaning in the Bible only) realities — but your right-now reality.

Most people live as though the Scripture is a different world from the one they live in.

Do you actually believe Jesus rose from the dead?

If so… do you live like it? I do not think you can believe — in the depths of who you are — that a Man walked out of a tomb after being dead for three days and live like that is not true in your everyday life and world. Our world. As in Present Tense, not just past tense or some other time.

“Him who is, and who was, and who is to come” — Revelation 1:4.

Notice — IS — Was — IS.
Jesus is before He was. Jesus of the Now.

When we live like this, it changes how we see Scripture, how we see ourselves, how we see God, our neighbor, our boss, our dog, our vacation, the books we read, the coffee we drink, the air we breathe… everything.

I just spent the last ten weeks, during which I spent 75% of the time walking from Genesis 1–4, a short time on 5–11, and a shorter time on the rest of the Old Testament, and then dove into the New Testament — weaving in the things we saw as patterns in the OT.

We spent 45 minutes of the first class on verse 2 of the Genesis account (which I planned to spend 2 minutes on):

“Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.”

Did you know that God created out of Chaos Waters and not out of Nothing? (Ancient Near Eastern cosmology is different from our post-Enlightenment Western one. It matters that we work toward understanding what that means and how we see Scripture in light of it.)

Because we spent 45 minutes discussing this — and how it reshaped the way water is understood throughout the entire Bible — from wells to the Flood to the Red Sea to the Jordan to Jesus calming the waters/storm or walking on it (like the Spirit hovering over it in the beginning), etc.

If you miss this — or things similar to this — you may not understand or see patterns revealed in Scripture and the significance of the flood as the undoing of creation back into chaos waters, through which God recreated things to begin again with Noah and his family… who plants a garden — vineyard — soon fails because Noah eats of the fruit of his own garden — gets drunk — and the pattern begins again, leading to Babel… and then Abram for another new creation start out of the chaos. So it continues to this day.

Example: After losing his job, Marcus felt like his life had collapsed — routines unraveled, purpose vanished, and anxiety crept in like floodwaters. For months, he drifted in uncertainty, unsure what direction to go. Slowly, he began rebuilding: volunteering, reconnecting with his kids, and pursuing a new skill. Life began to bloom again — until success brought pride, and pride brought compromise, and he found himself slipping. But even there, in the fallout, a new call came inviting him once more to begin again.

The Bible sets a pattern — or patterns — for us to see and recognize, so that when Jesus appears, we follow with understanding. (While at the same time, we see these patterns in everyday life.)

Wait.

Isn’t that the guy?

The one we have been waiting for?

He is doing all the things we have seen in reflections. He is finishing the patterns we have seen. He is fulfilling the Scriptures just as it was shown to us.

(This is more than prophecy fulfillment — it is the culmination of all reality wrapped in One Person: all images, patterns, types, revelations, etc.)

It was C. S. Lewis who said:

“Anyone who is honestly trying to be a Christian will soon find his intelligence being sharpened: one of the reasons why it needs no special education to be a Christian is that Christianity is an education itself. That is why an uneducated believer like Bunyan was able to write a book that has astonished the whole world.”

John Bunyan tapped into patterns and wrote a book that revealed them in simple and profound ways. Pilgrim’s Progress still speaks to people today, because it follows the eternal patterns.

You will find that all great, long-lasting books and stories do this.

We need to get a hold of this.

This is one example from the first class. We spend ten weeks walking through 1,000 questions that many of our Residents had never heard, seen, been taught, or knew — questions that I consider to be fundamentals of the Biblical Worldview — the Kingdom of God.

In our last class today, we spent two hours on Mark 4:35 to Mark 5:20. And I did not even get to speak about everything I wanted to because the conversation led to — not joking — over 50 questions. And more could have been asked if I hadn’t tried to continue moving forward.

This one passage led to countless OT patterns, bounced to Ephesians 2, Revelation 12, spiritual gifts, deliverance ministry, powers and principalities, how Jesus did ministry, Jesus’ first missionary journey to Gentile lands, etc., etc.

Everything Jesus participated in — as He did what He saw the Father doing while being led by the Holy Spirit — was directly connected to the Patterns of Reality. Scripture. The Word embodied in the flesh. John 1:1–18 — Genesis and Exodus.

We have largely lost true discipleship, teaching, and training in the Way of His Kingdom.

When was the last time you discipled someone? Do you know what that means? Could you do it right now if I asked you?

Where would you start with someone who just decided to follow Jesus? New Testament or Old Testament? What would you teach? What would you walk through? How would you guide, discern, process with, etc., toward a deeper faith?

Sure, we can quote Scripture.
Sure, we can talk about cultural context.
Sure, we can debate about female teachers.
Sure, we can argue for our denomination over theirs.
Sure, we can bullet-point doctrine.
Sure, we can ‘destroy’ others with our ChatGPT answers.

But…

Do we see God in the trees, the wind, your friend, and your enemy — or just in the Word?
Do we see the Patterns of Reality in our lives — or just Scripture?
Do we love as if we are attached to the vine — or just like to talk about that vine?
Do we get the Word in our bones — or just enough to sound like we do?
Do we care about others — or just those who care for us?
Do we follow Jesus as His disciple — or is He actually secondary to those authors or saints you like?

“Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” Matthew 28:18-20 (this is for everyone)

Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples.” John 8:31

Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. Luke 9:23

What does it mean to teach, to hold to His teachings… to follow?
Do we know how to teach everything Jesus commanded?
Can we even teach how to do the Greatest Commandment?

Can you or I do that if we do not understand Reality — Jesus’ and what should be Ours?
Is the way we live in the world the same as the world of the Scriptures?

These are all the questions we need to wade through, friends.

Jesus was so frustrated with the Pharisees because He was fulfilling the patterns they had been living their whole lives.

Every Feast and Festival.
Every Law.
Every step of the Tabernacle and Temple.

Everything. For thousands of years, they lived according to the pattern — and then, when The Pattern walked into the room, they chose not to acknowledge it and went their own way… which is another pattern we have seen repeat in Scripture over and over… and in our own lives.

I wonder… if Jesus walked in today, would we even recognize Him?
Do we even know The Patterns of Reality.

The Early Church did not have the Confessions and Creeds decided on by the Church — outside of the few built into the letters from Paul (Philippians 2:6–11, 1 Corinthians 15:3–5, Colossians 1:15–20).

They lived out the inheritance of the pattern revealed in Jesus, which had been embodied by a people for countless generations.

A pattern that we have largely lost. One we need to discover again.

Our modern Christian faith is built around creeds and confessions — which I am so grateful for — but the Bible does not give us creeds and confessions in bullet points. It gives us a Story as an invitation to live in Reality — God’s Kingdom.

Jesus taught in parables. He could have given doctrinal statements, creeds, confessions, direct theological proofs, etc.

He taught parables. Stories. Which built a biblical imagination and invited people into a World — not just words.

His life is a lived pattern that we can follow after.

May we begin to do so again — at the personal level — and lead others in it as well.

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Light.

There is no greater joy than teaching about Jesus and His Pattern — and watching someone’s eyes light up when they see something new. Especially in passages they’ve known for years.

To show how deep, how wide, and how high Jesus reaches…
There is always more on the more side of God.

I have fallen even more in love with teaching during this Residency than ever before. It has challenged, encouraged, and strengthened my faith in ways I didn’t expect.

But it has also stirred, as Jon Tyson puts it, a crystallization of discontent.

I am not okay with how things have been. And I will give my life — one day, one person, one teaching at a time — until the Lord calls me home, doing whatever I can to help recover what has been lost.

This has been a reflection — but it’s also an invitation.

Step into the deep. Begin watching for the patterns. Let the Story reshape your sight.

If you don’t know where to begin, I’d recommend starting with four free (seminary level) classes from The Bible Project: How to Read the Hebrew Bible, and the three classes on Genesis 1–11/12.

That’s where I’d begin again, too.

And if you want to talk or ask more — I would love that. Reach out.

Let’s find the Patterns of Jesus and His Kingdom together.

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Ponder Points

1. Do you actually believe Jesus rose from the dead?
   If so… do you live like it?

2. When was the last time you discipled someone?
   Do you know what that means? Could you do it right now if I asked you?

3. Where would you start with someone who just decided to follow Jesus?
   New Testament or Old Testament? What would you teach? What would you walk through?

4. Would we recognize Jesus if He showed up today?

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I may be doing some more posts sharing about common patterns and themes that help us understand who Jesus is and the Kingdom of God in the coming weeks and months.

Thanks for reading.

—Samuel

Photo by Patrick von der Wehd on Unsplash