Has Evangelical Discipleship Actually Been Wildly Successful?

I'm beginning to wonder if evangelical Christianity's discipleship efforts have been wildly successful—just not in the way we thought we were aiming.

As a congregation member, then student, then pastor within white evangelical Christianity, we pastors often bemoaned how unsuccessful our discipleship efforts were. I spent eight+ years in a missional community discipleship movement focused on multiplication and small group training. We taught people tools and frameworks supposedly built off the life of Jesus. We complained that pastors only had a couple hours a week to spiritually form our congregations while cable news and conservative radio had their attention for the rest of the week.

But looking back, I have to examine what we actually taught—and what we deliberately avoided teaching. We weren't trained on how to talk about white supremacy—so we didn't talk about it. We didn't teach others to talk about it. We didn't talk about how capitalism kills. We avoided addressing the lies of libertarianism, the myth of a merit-based society, or how much of American history is legend designed to keep us patriotic and proud despite our history of atrocities.

Most critically, we didn't teach people how these political, racial, and economic issues connected to the teachings and way of Jesus. Jesus taught about an upside-down kingdom. He did not teach merit-based economics, but rather radical equality and reversal—think of Mary's Magnificat where the rich go away hungry and rulers are thrown down from their thrones.

I was even in what I'd consider a fairly nuanced church. We didn't support Christian Zionism's fantasies about Jesus' return being tied to rebuilding the temple. We believed in women in ministry and had relatively sophisticated views on Scripture. And yet, I knew my job security depended on staying moderate, staying centrist—talking vaguely about "cable news" but never naming Fox News specifically.

Then I think about the thousands of other churches that are far more explicit in their fearmongering and end-times theology, like the kind I grew up in. Churches that made it clear that a "Christian vote" or "Biblical vote" meant conservatism, that supporting Jesus meant supporting America and Israel.

The Success We Didn't Want to Admit

So perhaps evangelical discipleship wasn't a failure at all. Perhaps we're seeing the proof of its success. Racism, misogyny, and economic self-interest were never confronted with the values and ethics of Jesus. We never made it clear that not being dedicated to liberation, equity, and handing over privilege to the marginalized is incompatible with following Jesus.

Instead, we tried to make people comfortable. We feared losing congregation members, knowing they could go right down the street to hear what they wanted. We feared losing our jobs and income if we got too clear about Beatitude faith—that the meek should inherit the earth, that the rich will struggle to enter heaven, that the fires of hell are reserved for those who make children's lives more miserable through homophobia and transphobia.

We made salvation simplistic—just confess and Jesus forgives you—skipping all the necessary steps for transformation, repair, and repentance that the prophets spoke of. As Dallas Willard said, we created "vampire Christianity" where people just needed a little bit of Jesus' blood but weren't interested in His high calling.

This weak Christianity has been utterly successful in its own way—81% of evangelicals voted for an authoritarian-style leader who used xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia, sexism, and racism as his primary platform. They heard what Trump had to say and decided it aligned with their values. This isn't a failure of discipleship—it seems to be working just fine. As Willard also noted, "Your system is perfectly tuned to get the results it's getting."

Where Do We Go From Here?

Church-going white evangelicals have something powerful going for them—weekly (or more) gatherings where they can be discipled into harmful ideologies and inoculated against any need to confront racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, and more. They're well funded and well organized. They have regular studies reinforcing undying support of Israel and stoking fear of "the other."

Progressive Christians (namely White mainliners and those deconstructing evangelicalism; the Black church is a strong counter-example) lack this organization. And it makes sense—many are burned out after leaving evangelicalism and don't want to repeat those same mistakes. While we can't simply rebuild the same tools (you can't tear down the master's house using the master's tools), I wonder if we've given too much credit to "the master" in that quote.

Large weekly organizing, learning, fundraising, communicating, and collectively ensuring we're shaped by Jesus' ways has historically kept the most liberative, life-giving movements of the church going. We can't just surrender these tools to conservative Christianity. We can't abandon the best our faith has to offer just because these methods were once used for harm.

Yes, these tools were used for harm. We name that, repent from it, confess it, and lament it. But we also need to find the right ways to build sustainable movements for collective liberation and mutual flourishing—for making God's kingdom known. The future of our faith depends on it.