Editor’s note: How did Jesus make disciples out of the initial twelve men who He called and then the many more men and women who followed? Did you know that He left a discernable and followable pattern in the gospels? Enjoy today’s devotion from Discipology: The Art and Science of Making Disciples by Peyton Jones.
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When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. ~ Max Planck
What exactly is Discipology? If you’ve never heard the term before, you’re not alone. The necessity for words to be invented arises when something is missing in the conversations about a topic — when the existing words we’re using to discuss it have been hijacked or lost their meaning. When using the same glossary but different dictionaries, that word is broken. Because we’ve strayed so far from Jesus’s framework of disciple-making, a new word is needed. That word is Discipology.
The suffix -ology, meaning “study” or “science,” comes from the Greek word logos, which has a wide range of meanings such as “word” or “reason.” It can also mean “rationale,” “principle,” or “structure.” We apply it to everything from biology (the study of life) to psychology (the study of the mind). Discipology, then, is the art and science of making disciples. The science of disciple-making is drawn from the specific principles Jesus consistently followed as He made disciples. Inventors take credit for what they’ve created. Scientists make discoveries. The pioneers of the scientific method didn’t see themselves as inventing anything. Johannes Kepler is credited with saying, “Science is the process of thinking God’s thoughts after Him.” Isaac Newton echoed Kepler, saying, “This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.”
Rather than their science positioning them to invent new theories, their belief that everything had an intelligent design positioned them to “rediscover” what God had hidden. Thus, properly understood, a discovery is uncovering something that was already there.1
In disciple-making, our “scientific” discoveries are just the principles of God’s original design.
Thankfully, making disciples isn’t all science — it’s also a lived experience, and that’s where the art of it comes into play. Science gives you the rules, but art gives you the freedom. While the principles of disciple-making are fixed — rooted in Jesus’s method — the expression is fluid, shaped by culture, context, and creativity. Jesus didn’t expect us to reinvent the mission, yet He provided margin for reimagining mobilization on the ground. That’s just time-tested missionary thinking. Faithfulness to the scientific principles of Time, Teaching, and Tactics should not feel like rigid repetition but artistic application. Therefore:
Science = The Principles
Art = The Application
In this way, disciple-making is both the process of scientific rediscovery and artistic innovation. Innovation in any field is a blend of mastery and creativity — first we learn the principles, then we find fresh ways to apply them.
A chef respects what ingredients do (science) but experiments with the combinations (art) to draw out new flavors. As Mike Peters of The Alarm once said, “The exciting thing about writing any song is that there is a finite set of notes, but an infinite set of possibilities in how you arrange them.”2 God may have prepared good works for us to walk in before the foundation of the world (Eph. 2:10), but as we step into them, the unique expression of our calling becomes poetry in motion.
The Genius of Discipology
Jesus was a genius in disciple-making, and the brilliance of His Discipology was that He didn’t lay down the three rhythms just for the Twelve — He modeled them for us through the Gospels.
We can observe His patterns of time. We can assimilate His principles of teaching. We can apply His tactics of a lived-out blueprint. If Discipology is the art and science of disciple-making, then
Jesus was both scientist and artist. He modeled the Discipology framework as a rhythm — flexible and relational — something that can be adapted by real people in real time today.
Without that to guide us, the alternative is what C. S. Lewis has observed — our tendency to make things up: “We have all departed from that total plan [of Christianity] in different ways, and each of us wants to make out that his own modification of the original plan is the plan itself.”3 This results when theorists attempt to write books about practitioner subjects like disciple-making, making you book smart but sidewalk stupid. Learn from a theorist and you’ll think great thoughts. Learn from a practitioner and you’ll do great things.
- Rediscovering Jesus’s framework will replace our own ideas of what we think He did.
Rediscovering the Principles of Discipology
If Discipology is the science of uncovering what was already there, it’s no surprise others have rediscovered it too. If I’d made up the rhythms of time, teaching, and tactics, nobody else would’ve seen them — but others have.
I’ve long held the conviction that if God is speaking to one knucklehead, He’s probably speaking to several.
For example, John Mark Comer’s work Practicing the Way reduces the disciple-making process to three outcomes: (1) become like Him, (2) think like Him, and (3) act like Him. Todd Wilson, in his book More: Find Your Personal Calling and Live Life to the Fullest Measure, identifies three elements as well: be, do, and go.4
There are obvious parallels of their frameworks with Discipology:
John Blanchard’s Lead Like Jesus uses the tags heart, head, and hands to describe holistic discipleship. Hugh Halter echoes the same model: “There are three areas we can focus on: The Head (mind) of Jesus: having the same focus as Christ and viewing the world as He does. The Heart of Jesus: allowing our hearts to break over the things that break Jesus’s heart. The Hands (mission) of Jesus: embodying the good news of Jesus and doing the work of God on earth.”5 Practitioners across the globe recognize the three essential elements for making disciples and mobilizing the body of Christ. Though the art of disciple-making may vary in expression, the science remains constant. After all, scientific laws are grounded in repeatable observations — reality that plays out in front of our eyes. We can depend upon the law of gravity. We count on the laws of thermodynamics because they’ve been observed so consistently that we can base our actions upon their reliability.
Disciple-making has the same relationship with reality. Just as the Creator established the laws that govern the universe, Jesus embedded a design into disciple-making — one He’s been waiting for us to rediscover. Jesus didn’t just experiment with different models and methods — He established the laws of disciple-making in His day, repeatedly validated over two thousand years, across cultures, generations, and every revival.
An Overview of Jesus’s Three Years
The how of disciple-making is revealed in the timeline of Jesus’s ministry through the three rhythms. The challenge of seeing this clearly is that the New Testament doesn’t present His three-year journey in clear chronological order. This is because each gospel writer had a unique purpose in writing, shaping their narratives around theological aims that determined their framework rather than a strict timeline. For example, A. B. Bruce observes that Matthew, as an accountant, groups things together topically.6 Matthew wanted to present Jesus as the Messiah to a Jewish readership by demonstrating how He fulfilled the Law and the Prophets. Mark shifted from presenting Jesus as the Jewish Messiah to a global Savior, writing to a gentile audience. John wrote evangelistically about the Word, revealing Him through conversations. Luke wanted to fill in some of the gaps left by the other gospel writers and produce “an orderly account,” yet his gospel falls short of an extensive chronology (Luke 1:3). Because the gospels were written at different times for different audiences, and not as a comprehensive chronological sequence of events, doesn’t mean that the chronology doesn’t matter.
If we want to see what things Jesus did in sequential order to train the Twelve, we have to do some digging. Having a working order of Jesus’s ministry provides a mental map of His strategy. Rather than hiding His method, He embedded it in the Gospels — waiting to be rediscovered by those who see His timeline not as a collection of stories but as a framework.
Each gospel writer offers a unique vantage point, but when we harmonize the accounts, a distinct three-year pattern emerges. From beginning to end, Jesus led His disciples through a relational progression of formation in year 1, training in year 2, and deployment in year 3. Each year of Jesus’s ministry emphasized one of the core rhythms — time, teaching, and tactics — forming a deliberate progression in how He made disciples.
- Year 1: He spent time with a small group of disciples, getting to know them, helping them to become disciples.
- Year 2: He taught them on mission, modeling how to reach others and training them for their ministry to be “fishers of people.”
- Year 3: He used tactics to send them on mission, going out ahead of Him.
The precise order pieced together from the Gospels is intentional. Jesus crafted an immersive experience for His disciples, with each year building on the last. In the first year, He invited them to simply be with Him. In the second, He trained them for mission on the move. Finally, in the third, He sent them out, without Him, to tactically practice what He’d modeled in the second year. That’s the heart of Discipology and the key to solving the church’s mobilization problem.
Jesus designed disciple-making to be a journey — each step moving deeper into the three rhythms.
1. Peyton Jones, Church Plantology: The Art and Science of Planting Churches (Zondervan, 2021), chap. 1, Kindle.
2. “Mike Peters of the Alarm Talks Cancer Battle and New Album ‘Forwards,’” posted June 14, 2023, by Yahoo Entertainment, YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QYFT9IX3Pc.
3. C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (HarperOne, 2001), 218.
4. Todd Wilson, More: Find Your Personal Calling and Live Life to the Fullest Measure (Zondervan, 2019), 15.
5. Hugh Halter, Righteous Brood: Making the Mission of God a Family Story (100 Movements Publishing, 2023), chap. 5, Kindle.
6. A. B. Bruce, The Training of the Twelve: How Jesus Christ Found and Taught the 12 Apostles; a Book of New Testament Biography (1871; Pantianos Classics, 2018), chap. 3, Kindle; Gleason L. Archer, Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties (Zondervan, 1982), 335.
Excerpted with permission from Discipology: The Art and Science of Making Disciples by Peyton Jones, copyright Peyton Jones.
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Your Turn
Jesus’ pattern of discipling His closest team isn’t a secret or a mystery! It’s a learnable pattern for us to follow and imitate! ~ Devotionals Daily