Discipleship flourishes in the context of spiritual family—where people are truly known, deeply loved, and graciously challenged. Without this kind of community, many disciples experience a disconnect between what they believe and how they live in their everyday relationships.

At Icon Ministries, we are deeply committed to nurturing and supporting spiritual family. This commitment is rooted in our conviction that our new identity as children of God and members of His household is not just theological—it’s profoundly relational. We are called to live out our kingdom identity in the tangible fabric of daily life, together.

Yet this is not without its challenges. Many churches and believers today struggle to cultivate this sense of spiritual belonging. Countless followers of Jesus feel unqualified to disciple others or unsure how to begin forming the kinds of relationships where spiritual family can truly grow. If these struggles go unaddressed, our discipleship risks being shaped more by cultural individualism than by kingdom values. Left to ourselves, we can end up pursuing faith independently—driven by control, efficiency, or worldly definitions of success—rather than in the life-giving interdependence modeled by Christ.

Jesus’ life with His disciples and the example of the early church make it clear: the kingdom is meant to be lived in relationship. In spiritual family, disciples grow, mature, and experience the transformative love of God (Ephesians 3:14–19). This is not optional—it is essential to healthy discipleship.

The apostle Paul, alongside his team of single co-laborers, established communities of love, healing, belonging, and nurture. These weren’t isolated units, but vibrant expressions of the larger family of God. Though Paul himself was unmarried, he “parented” many in the faith, and his disciples became vital contributors to the expanding movement of the gospel across the known world.

Spiritual families are both the heartbeat and the witness of the Church. Jesus declared, “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:35). Our greatest witness to the kingdom is not found in our programs or platforms, but in our love—expressed and lived out in spiritual family.

This is the invitation before every follower of Jesus: to embrace life in spiritual family, where we make disciples not alone, but together.

We find ourselves in a society marked by relational detachment. As Allan Bloom once observed, Americans today are “spiritually unclad, unconnected, isolated, with no inherited or unconditional connection with anything or anyone.[1]” This condition should not surprise us. We live in a nation shaped by what many have called the great Enlightenment experiment.

The Enlightenment was a powerful intellectual and cultural movement in 18th-century Europe. It emphasized reason, science, and individual rights over tradition and religious authority. Influenced by Enlightenment ideals, American Founders such as Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and Alexander Hamilton laid the groundwork for a culture that would prioritize logic, evidence, and personal liberty. While most Enlightenment thinkers did not outright deny the existence of God, they often downplayed the supernatural, elevating reason, ethics, and natural law as the foundation of truth.

Over time, the American church has absorbed many Enlightenment values—often unconsciously—simply by existing within this cultural framework. One of the most significant values adopted is individualism. This mindset places the individual above the community, celebrating personal freedom, autonomy, and self-reliance. Identity becomes self-defined and shaped more by personal achievement and choice than by communal or spiritual responsibility.

As one critic notes, “This individualism involves a centering on the self and a concomitant shutting out, or even unawareness, of the greater issues or concerns that transcend the self, be they religious, political, or historical. As a consequence, life is narrowed or flattened.[2]”

Even within spiritual life, individualism reigns. Faith becomes a private matter, and spiritual gatherings are often casual, convenience-based, and loosely held. Support within these communities is extended more from empathy or friendship than from a sense of covenant or responsibility. Many no longer know how to deeply connect—to God or to others. Tragically, they are often unaware of just how isolated they’ve become.

In contrast, we believe that belonging and attachment are essential to spiritual maturity. When you are spiritually reborn, you are not only reconciled to God—you are adopted into His family. This identity brings with it a call to mutual responsibility: to God, to others, and to the shared redemptive story. Gratitude and love—not just personal preference—become the foundation for spiritual relationships.

Individualism stifles discipleship. Jesus modeled discipleship through community, shared experience, and deep relational attachment. Practices like the Lord’s supper, Sabbath, baptism, weddings, and funerals are not merely symbolic—they are shared events that bind the spiritual community together.

The effects of individualism are showing. Today, 64% of evangelical young people leave the church as adults, revealing that we are retaining only a fraction of our next generation.[3] Among adults, only 20% report participation in any form of discipleship, such as Sunday school, small groups, or spiritual mentoring. Given that relational attachment is vital for making disciples, these numbers are troubling.[4]

The church has not been unaware of its decline. It has tried countless strategies—curriculum changes, new programs, children’s ministries, youth events, and small group models. Yet these efforts have largely failed to reverse the trend.

[1] Allan Bloom, “The Closing of the American Mind, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987), p.87.

[2] Ibid., p. 86.

[3] https://www.christianpost.com/news/barna-group-releases-myths-and-realities-of-young-people-leaving-the-church.html?utm_source=chatgpt.com

[4] https://www.barna.com/research/new-research-on-the-state-of-discipleship/?utm_source=chatgpt.com

Many of us stepped into parenthood with excitement, despite knowing we were far from fully prepared. Yet when it comes to making disciples of Jesus, that same sense of inadequacy often stops us in our tracks. Why is that?

At the root of this hesitation is a set of assumptions we’ve absorbed—about what it takes to make disciples. Some believe it hinges on having the perfect curriculum. Others focus on training, programs, or mentorship structures. Entire schools and ministries have been built around these models, often sending the message—spoken or unspoken—that we need to be certified, credentialed, or specially equipped to disciple others.

But making disciples isn’t first and foremost about instruction or formal structure. It’s about relationship—specifically, a friendship grounded in sacrificial love.

Discipleship begins when someone lays down their life for another, just as Jesus did for us. Spiritual life takes root when a person experiences the kind of love that sacrifices for their good. That’s how disciples are made.

Jesus taught this principle of death bringing life, and Paul echoed it through his own ministry. On the last night with his disciples, Jesus said:

“My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command.”
(John 15:12–14)

Years later, the Apostle Paul wrote to the believers in Thessalonica:

“…but we were gentle among you, like a mother caring for her little children. We loved you so much that we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well, because you had become so dear to us.”
(1 Thessalonians 2:7–8)

J. Glenn Gray, reflecting on the intense bonds formed in battle, offers insight into this kind of love in The Warrior: Reflections on Men in Battle:

“Organization for a common and concrete goal in peacetime does not evoke anything like the degree of comradeship commonly known in war… At its height, this sense of comradeship is an ecstasy… Men are true comrades only when each is ready to give up his life for the other, without reflection and without thought of personal loss.”

If we’re waiting until we feel fully qualified to make disciples, we’ll never begin. The qualification isn’t found in credentials—it’s found in love. A love willing to lay down its life for another.

Love serves as the guiding principle in making disciples of Jesus. The prophets—Isaiah, Hosea, and Jeremiah—reveal God’s deep longing for a loving connection with His people. He desires not just for them to know about Him but to truly experience His presence.

Throughout Scripture, God uses the imagery of marriage to illustrate the depth of His love and commitment to His people. This metaphor helps us grasp the profound emotions He experiences when we turn away from Him—akin to the pain of marital betrayal. Thomas Aquinas defines love as “desiring the good of the beloved and seeking union with the beloved,”[1] encapsulating God’s unwavering pursuit of His people.

Abraham Joshua Heschel echoes this sentiment, writing, “The relationship between God and Israel, conceived by Hosea in terms of marital love, desertion, and the hope of new betrothal, calls not only for right action but also for mutual feeling. It implies not just legal obligations but also inner attitudes.”[2] In disciple-making, the discipler fosters a godly connection by not only building a personal relationship with the disciple but also integrating them into a spiritual family. This process ensures that the disciple experiences both individual and communal aspects of faith, reinforcing love as the foundation of their journey.

[1] Eleonore Stump, “Wandering in Darkness: Narrative and the Problem of Suffering” (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 91.

[2] Abraham Heschel, “The Prophets” (New York: Harper Collins Publishers,1962), p. 72.

Elizabeth DeLuca asks the question, “How are the worlds in which we live shaped by the ways that households are thought and made? How does the scale of the household shape the spatial and temporal scales at which we claim belonging and responsibility?”[1]

Disciple-making establishes a person’s familial connection to her heavenly Father, Jesus, and to her spiritual siblings. The setting in which we make disciples will shape our disciple. The classroom creates students, a laboratory develops scientists, a bootcamp produces disciplined soldiers, and the familial forms disciples of Jesus.

Since love is the mark of a disciple of Jesus then an ideal place to form disciples is in the context of love in a physical family and/or a spiritual family. The family reflects the essence of God as a loving Father with His Son. God the Father relates to us as his children and Jesus relates to us as his brothers and sisters. “. . .that he (Jesus) might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.” Romans 8:29; “So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters.” Hebrews 2:11

It is through the bond with a mother, father, and siblings that a person learns how to connect with God, but for many their families are dysfunctional or even toxic. For those that come from broken families, the disciple-maker should engraft her disciple into a spiritual family so that she can experience healthy connection with a spiritual father, mother, and brothers and sisters, because it is our love for our brothers and sisters that is evidence that we are maturing as a disciple of Jesus. The apostle Paul and his team made disciples by traveling around initiating these spiritual families, demonstrating familial love, and then later nurturing these communities by letters and visits. Paul explains, “We were like young children among you. Just as a nursing mother cares for her children, so we cared for you. Because we loved you so much, we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well.” 1 Thessalonians 2:7-8

Where to from here:

• Listen to the story of the homelife of your disciple to discover how her relationship with her parents maybe an emotional blocker to her relationship with the heavenly Father.
• Explore your disciple’s relationship with his siblings. Does he project his attitude towards his brothers and sisters to Jesus?
• Encourage your disciple to meet with other disciples of Jesus and seek to build a brotherly or sisterly relationship with them.

[1] https://culanth.org/fieldsights/series/the-household

Two important questions to ask when we make disciples of Jesus for the advancement of kingdom of God:

1. What came into the minds of the twelve disciples when Jesus said to them, “Go into all the world and make disciples?”
2. How did the disciples do ministry because of the training they had received from Jesus?

The disciples had spent three intensive years with Jesus being trained by him to be his disciple. The books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John show the means by which Jesus trained his disciples and what lesson he taught them.

The Means

The means by which Jesus trained them was, a) by being in a friendship with them and , b) by placing them in a community of thirteen people. The twelve disciples lived with the teacher as he coached them on how to belong to that community.

(I am reminded of the debate the disciple had on which one of them was the greatest. Jesus took that opportunity to teach them to consider the others as more important.)

The Lesson

The lesson he taught them was love. “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” John 13:34-3 This lesson was learned by the experience of Jesus laying down his life for them.

The Take Aways

To make disciples of Jesus you will need to give your disciples access to your life. This is part of the laying down of your life for your disciple. It does cost.

Engraft your disciple into a group with other disciples. This can be difficult and will take longer than you expect. Jesus took three years with his disciples.