What is the discipleship deficit and why it matters to our girls...

The discipleship deficit has daughters—and they are sitting in our pews, leading our ministries, and quietly wondering why their faith still feels fragile. They love Jesus. They attend church. They know the right answers. Yet many still feel like spiritual orphans, longing for someone to walk beside them and show them what it truly means…

Join the discuss and let us know your thoughts!

Welcome to the BRAVE pod

Where we have conversations that matter to grow a task force that fights against the spiritual trafficking of our girls. We are Bold Redeemed Anointed Victorious and Eternal and it’s race against the enemy for her heart. The time is now to go on the Great Rescue, I am your host Amber Johns, let’s talk about it. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:25

Hello, Brave family. This is Amber Johns and I am your host for today. I have been all over the place with Brave, with FCA, with Life. So it feels good to kind of have a couple days. Last week I took some time off and was just able to have some quiet downtime at home, a staycation, if you will. If you have never tried it, I dare say it was very relaxing. I made it relaxing. Rest is definitely something I think we all struggle with. So being maybe not as productive as usual was actually really hard to put aside. But in all things, um, I think I did a pretty good job of just checking out for a little while and focusing on what I needed to focus on. Not only in my quiet time and just prayer, but just life, um, being able to slow down for a minute. So I encourage you. I know the summertime can actually seem more busy than the regular school year or just job year. There just seems to be a different energy about summer, which I love, but it also leaves for maybe a little less structure than some of us are used to, especially if you have kids still at home. Um, all that to say, we have been scheduling and rescheduling and already working on stuff for the fall and spring of 2027. How crazy is that? And in all of that, um, there have been some changes in Brave and just some things that God has laid on my heart. If those of you who have not been following for very long, Brave actually is about five years old, um, began with FCA, with our FCA female athletes. And then only a year ago did we kind of take it out from the FCA umbrella and make it its own entity for reasons that just we we wanted to reach every girl, every female, whether they're an athlete or not. Some of the topics that we cover are outside of the lines of maybe sports. Actually, most of the topics that we cover, even though they still pertain. So a lot of the conversations we're having, though difficult, apply to all girls everywhere. And as looking through a theme of what is it? Like I was still really struggling. We have a lot of great conversations. Our podcast, if you truly listen and you go back through to some of these women and the things that they have shared, what an incredible testimony of God's work in women's lives. And I was like, what's the thread? Because we were having these hard conversations, and I love them. And I was so proud of the girls and women willingly sharing some very dark struggles and still coming back to loving Jesus, to still sit at his feet, to still humbly serve in the spaces. And I wanted to know what was a common thread. And I don't know why, but it was bugging me because I I don't like just here's the story and here's the devotional, but what's what's the action? What are we encouraging you or myself to do in light of these stories, in light of the podcast, in light of the content, in light of the conferences? And so I went back and I started listening to some of the early interviews, some of the things that we were talking about. And I just remember praying and being like, what is it? What's the thing? Like, why brave? What's the purpose? What's the point? Because honestly, if it's just another content piece, it's not worth the time and it's not worth all of the heartache and pressure or stress that some of the ministry stuff that it pulls in comes from. And I knew that wasn't the right heart posture or attitude. But if you're like me sometimes, I just want to know why. Like, why would I do this? Why would those women who have come alongside me do this? Why would we be telling these stories? And it all circled back to each one of these stories, whether they say it on the podcast or not, there's a lot of time before the podcast and after the podcast where we're not recording and we're just having a conversation. Almost always, there has been somebody for women in these girls' lives that has come along and discipled them really well. And there it was. That's the core is discipleship. And so I would say in the past three or four months, everybody who knows me knows I'm a complete nerd and I read a ton and I love it. And it's just, I'm thankful that God made me a reader. Um, I can blow through a book in a day. Some of you are like that. Um, I took my time, but I really went back into what is discipleship? What is the definition? What is the biblical view of discipleship and not what we've made it? And in that journey, I talked about it maybe two or three podcasts ago. I have a blog coming out about it if you're a reader and not a listener, that maybe gives a little more question and answer to this struggle that I really have wrestled with. And I think, I think this is it. Like brave discipleship is where my heart is. I love one-on-one. I love two to three women or girls at a time digging in, helping each other, keeping each other accountable. But it's that even deeper space where we could possibly be missing the mark. And I know this isn't like this will not solve all of the problems. We still live in a broken world with broken people and an enemy who seeks to devour and destroy us. So this will not be perfect, but this is this is hard. And I think this is why most people don't do it. One of the reasons they don't do it is they were never discipled themselves, not well, not biblically speaking. So, how do you do something that you've never been taught? And I think there's a couple generations that we're gonna have to figure it out. This is not about parenting or good parenting. This is not about how mothers shaped their daughters. I'm talking about disciple makers. I'm talking about if we call ourselves Christians, which many of us do, can we also call ourselves disciple makers? Are we someone who is discipling those to make disciples? Because I think many of us, myself included, would consider ourselves Christians that serve well. We show up for other people, we do the things. We're in our Bibles, we're praying. If it comes across our path that we could pour into or come alongside another female, we'll do it willingly. But can we flip that and be like our main priority, our goal is that we are constantly searching, we are constantly on the lookout, we are constantly prayerfully seeking whoever that one or two or three may be that we can be just neck deep in each other's lives, handle the messy, handle the hard, be accountable, share hard truths, and get into that space with somebody else. I don't know. That happens. I've had to, when I have had to do it, it calls on me to sacrifice my most selfish desire, which is time. I will I will say that over and over again. It is hard for me to give of my time. I am not naturally compassionate, I am very naturally selfish. Uh, these are things that I wrestle with. I have to pray for compassion. I have to pray for a heart for this because I think it's rare for people to have a natural bent towards giving up their life for somebody else. That surrender of I'm gonna be the bridge you walk on to come closer to Christ. In theory, it sounds awesome. In small group, it sounds great. From a conference stage, that sounds amazing. It's inspiring and it kind of sets me on fire. But in real life, it is awkward, it is messy, it can be hurtful. So I have just been, you know, looking over our content and the purpose. And, you know, if you've noticed, we've had to move some things, we've had to postpone some things, and I hate doing that, but I'm also very willing that if God isn't moving, if God hasn't totally given me this free pass to be like, yes, this is the thing, I will cancel, I will move, I will close something down out of just I don't want to do it without him. I don't want to, I don't want to ever pick up a microphone or a podcast or write without him, without his full hand on it, because then it becomes something I have done with my gifts and talents, and not because the Holy Spirit hasn't moved something within me that I feel he's like, now it's time. And so we're in that space of discipleship. How can we help each other be better disciple makers? This is not gonna be shiny, this is not gonna be new, this is not gonna be something that I even think most people gravitate to. I don't think it's gonna blow up, I don't think it's going to even maybe make a mark outside of the fact that I just feel this is what God has for the generation of women. So when we are approached, when we are, when we do decide, hey, I'm gonna seek after the one, right? I think many of you have heard me recommend the book Pray for One by Bo Chancy. It's actually really hard to get a hold of now. Um I don't even think it's on Amazon. I did find it on Thriftbooks. But what a great place to start is to pray for one and actually pray for God to give you the desire that He has for us to be disciple makers. Because if we go into like, well, here's another thing I have to do because I'm a Christian and the Bible says I have to be a disciple maker, you'll never it it'll be the most miserable experience of your life. So even backwards, even pulling back more so is learning how we as women, no matter what age you are at, if you know Jesus, you need to be making disciples. We need to do that because one-on-one, 2v2, it's it goes so much deeper than bigger groups. It goes so much deeper than conferences and church, and those things are all important. And I believe if we surround ourselves with those things, those are all add-ins and add-ons to our disciple-making journey. And being disciple, this is a really hard thing. And I think if we can get the word out and we can catch fire for this, you might not ever see a stadium filled with the next generation coming to Jesus. Maybe you will, it is happening, but more than likely, you will just sit across from a girl and you will listen to her heart and you will ask the Holy Spirit for the words, and you will walk alongside her as God sees fit, and you will minister to her, and it will never become a post, it will never become a blog, it will never get a million likes on TikTok, you know, like it won't be those things. And the beauty of that is that it is just between you and God and that girl. Discipleship is one of the most purest forms of obedience because it's really not an outward showing of anything. You you can't show up and serve and everybody gets to see you serving. You can't get on stage where everybody gets to see you with a microphone. It doesn't even really become much of anything other than you're reaching into the heart of somebody else with full sacrifice that they know who Jesus is. That's it. And if we can get to that point where nothing else matters as much as the gospel being presented and then discipleship. But after Easter follows Acts, and that's where that's where this all begins. The church, the prophecy, the the building of the body of Christ because the Holy Spirit. So, to no fault of anybody, is like a 10-week journey to discipleship, a three-month study in discipleship, a five-week project to reach others, a one-time event. Um, those because those things are clean-cut, they make sense. And if we can get to the point where discipleship is none of those things, it is truly one, a surrendered, obedient heart that's just like, okay, God, whomever and whatever is next. And he then creates that opportunity. He then brings that person into your life. And then our job is obedience. It could be for three weeks you're with somebody, and there's there's an impact, and then God's like, that's all I needed from you, on to the next. It could take two to five to ten years with somebody that you're just walking along in the messy and the unfruitful, and then God says, Okay, now release. It's truly about us listening in the quiet of our time with what the Holy Spirit has for us as we're growing, as we're learning, as we're coming through with what God has for us, and then also encouraging someone else in that space, encouraging other people in that space. Not because we have it all together, not because we understand everything, not because we're perfect, but because as we're learning, we want other people to learn. As we go, we want other people to know who Jesus is. We want the girls and the women who have been sitting in our churches for years and don't know the power of Jesus to not go unseen and not go unheard and go through an entire lifetime where Jesus is just something they like, they have knowledge of, they hope for, they want to see more of. Because I think we're missing, we're missing girls and women walking alongside of us, serving alongside of us, that no one's ever asked them the hard questions. No one's peered into their life, no one's cared enough. Some of them are pretty dark, some of them are pretty messy, some of them are pretty irritating, like let's be honest. They're among us, and I just feel this burden of which I've prayed for, by the way. What a dangerous prayer. And I'm still not there, guys. I still just would rather sit home and not deal with people. Can all my introverts say amen? But truly, that is not what God has for us. And I think if we can get back to the core of discipleship, the way the Bible has it laid out, not how we have decided it should look or what we don't want to do. I I pray through every excuse. So I think you know, sometimes when I've heard people say, and a lot of what I'm talking about is feedback. I mean, I'm not just arbitrarily pulling excuses out. I've really sat with people, and it's it's lack of knowledge, lack of time. Even, you know, we leave it to kind of the professionals or those who are in full-time ministry or those who just seem to have more knowledge than I do, is really not, there's really not ownership in this space, and I think I think we can get there because can you imagine if everybody that knows Jesus is discipling one or two more? I mean, that is truly how Christianity spread. It's how it overtook Rome. I mean, if you look at the core of this, we can't slough it off on anybody else. Like we can't say, oh, this is for our pastors or our youth group leaders or our really good friend who just seems to have it all together. Um, this is truly our own ownership. Our own ownership. So I'm gonna leave with this. I spoke um on Ezekiel 33 a couple years ago, maybe a year ago. No, it was definitely more than a year ago, but I wanted to leave you with this because I think this is where it really started to, I don't know, grab my heart a little bit, a lot of it. And I'm not gonna read the whole chapter. I encourage you to go. Um, Ezekiel 33. I'm gonna start go from verse 3 to 9. But God is basically telling Ezekiel he's Israel's watchman, he's putting all the ownership on the fact that if he gives Ezekiel a warning, and Ezekiel doesn't share that warning because of whatever, then the blood is on his hands. And the way I see this text, the way that I really kind of owned this text was if you know the truth, if you know what's coming, and if you know Jesus and you've been saved, you know what's coming, you know why you're saved. And if we don't share and if we don't disciple, I think there's blood on our hands. And this is Ezekiel 33, 3. And suppose he sees the sword coming against the land and blows his ram's horn to warn the people. Then if anyone hears the sound of the ram's horn, but ignores the warning, and the sword comes and takes him away, his death will be his own fault. Since he heard the sound of the ram's horn, but ignored the warning, his death is his own fault. If he had taken warning, he would have saved his life. However, suppose the watchman sees the sword coming, but doesn't blow the ram's horn, so that the people aren't warned, and the sword comes and takes away their lives, then they have been taken away because of their iniquity, but I will hold the watchman accountable for their blood. As for you, Son of Man, I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel. When you hear a word from my mouth, give them a warning from me. If I say to the wicked, wicked one, you will surely die, but you do not speak out to warn him about his way, that wicked person will die for his iniquity. Yet I will hold you responsible. But if you warn a wicked person to turn away from his way, and he doesn't turn from it, he will die for his iniquity, but you will have rescued yourself. And so it goes on further to bring repentance, and um the chapter is a little bit longer than that. But if we own that, if we own our own place in this, how crazy if we know the truth and we don't share it, which I believe that would be called evangelism, and then we don't follow it by discipling those very people we tell Jesus to. I have failed at this, I have led people to Christ and then been like, okay, you're good, right? I have taught in large rooms and small rooms, and I will say this: not every person is for you to disciple. For some of us, you are just a stepping stone in a bigger story. For all of us, we are a stepping stone in a bigger story. We can only disciple so many. Jesus even shows us that, and he's Jesus. But we cannot limit ourselves by our own thoughts, our own decisions. It's truly when we say to Jesus, you show me. It's walking with him to be like, show me who I am to be watching over. We are to be evangelizing all the time. I think we can evangelize to hundreds and hundreds, I mean people to thousands, but discipleship is way deeper, way smaller, way more intimate, and I would say harder than to just show up and tell. So there's both. We need both, but I see a lot of evangelism. I have not seen or experienced real discipleship. Some have. All of that to say, I want to create, I want to inspire, I want God to lead us in a way where it's not about a conference in the fall, it's not about what's being blogged about. I want those things to be tools, I want them to be helpful, but I want them to all open our hearts and doors to the purposeful meaning of our lives, which is Matthew 28, 19. We are to go into all of the world. We are to share the gospel, we are also to teach and baptize all of those things, and that's a big verse. And I think many times, myself included, we stop at living a good life, talking about Jesus, sharing Jesus, Bible studies, church, serving, but we're not discipling. Again, this is my own heart. You're hearing it from what I'm learning in my quiet time, because this is hard for me too. I am not a seeker for this. This is not something I woke up and I'm excited. I really have been praying for a heart for it. And as I've journeyed through the brave conversations, the thread of everything is someone intercepted. God led every woman and girl that we interviewed to someone who spoke truth and helped them through a really dark, tough time, and also enabled them to become powerhouses for God. I mean, who doesn't want that on their resume? I do. I mean, right? So, all of that to say, um, join me on the blog. I am trying to like flesh out my thoughts there if you're curious. And then we do have a quite a big announcement coming up for the Brave Conference in October. I hope you're excited. I will give the final dates, guest speakers, just be praying over that time because if what happens will happen, um, it's all in God's timing. But I pray that during this time, from now until October, just be prayerful that we can fill a room with disciple makers heading into 2027. Crazy, right? All right, that's all for today. See you later.