Our current discipleship model is failing the next generation

It is unfortunate that for too long, we have treated discipleship as a set of activities that, if followed, will produce spiritual people. Young believers don’t need a curriculum to complete, as much as they need an invitation to meet with God and to observe people doing the same.

My father, K.P. Yohannan, lived, breathed, studied, wrote, and poured himself into what truly knowing and following Christ entails. Over a lifetime of conversations about it, he never settled for compromise. I think his passion came from observing the long-term impact of churches operating under this assumption: do these things, and your life will be spiritual. But that is not discipleship.

At its core, discipleship is simply loving God and acting from a deep desire to know Him. It’s a readiness to connect with God and be changed by Him. Scripture, history, and the lives of faithful saints all point to this reality.

It was never about checking spiritual boxes — reading, praying, and avoiding certain behaviors — in order to become spiritual. And yet we have trained generation after generation of young people in this misunderstanding, repeating the same pattern while expecting a different result. As a result, we now face a generation that has more access to spiritual information than ever before, yet still longs for a real encounter with God.

If our purpose is to put ourselves in a place where God can interact with us, then these disciplines can be helpful tools. But if we are chasing anything other than intimacy with the Lord, we will come up empty.

It is not more information about God that allows us to experience Him, but a deep desire to engage with the living God Himself — the God Moses begged to see, the God Elijah found not in the fire or the earthquake, but in the still small voice.

When Jesus called His disciples, He did not say, “Come and follow Me, and I’ll give you a set of teachings.” He simply said, “Be with Me.” That is the pattern. That is the foundation. If we want to disciple young adults today, we must stop offering them another seminar or another book and start offering them our lives. What young people need today more than anything else is not a system of discipleship but a model they can follow.

Tragically, those models are rare. Too few young believers can point to someone in their life and say, “I want to follow that person, because they know God so deeply. They don’t live for this world.” This is our failure, not theirs. Before we ever ask how to reach them, we must first ask whether we are praying for them and whether our own lives bear the hallmarks of surrender.

Do young people see us weeping for those who have never heard of Christ? Do they see us fasting for nations in crisis, asking forgiveness, laying aside materialism, and sacrificing our time and preferences for others?

Living a moral life is not discipleship. Plenty of unbelievers live morally upright lives. What God is calling us to is holiness, and holiness only happens in the fire that is refining us — in daily prayer, surrender, and repentance.

This is why the stakes are so high. Young adults today are not looking for comfort or a better version of their current life. What young people want is a genuine challenge to leave the mundane behind and embrace something meaningful. Well, following Christ wholeheartedly has always been challenging. It has always come with persecution and sacrifice. Jesus said it plainly: “If anyone desires to come after Me, he must deny himself, pick up his cross, and follow Me” (Matthew 16:24). We have replaced that call with promises of health and wealth, while around the world our brothers and sisters are being martyred, beaten, and imprisoned for His name.

This is why we must disciple this generation. Not because the future of the Church depends on our efforts — God is absolutely faithful to do His work, even apart from us — but because these young people will be the leaders, the missionaries, and the mothers and fathers of tomorrow. They need models who can say, like Paul, “Follow me as I follow Christ.”

Our lives are very short. The only things that really matter are these two things: To know Christ and to make Him known. That’s it. There’s nothing else.