Where’s the Discipleship? A Critique of Protestant Spiritual Formation

Why Young People Craving Real Discipleship Are Leaving Protestantism for Orthodoxy

When it comes to your typical, regular, weekly-attending Protestant Christian, one thing they tend to excel at compared to other branches of Christianity is studying and memorizing the Bible. I can remember Baptist friends who could quote chapter and verse as if their lives depended on it.

I recently had coffee with a Protestant convert to Orthodox Christianity—the kind of person I often find myself sitting with these days. Over the course of our four-hour conversation, I must have paraphrased nearly seventy-five different scriptures that came to mind. Without hesitation, this young man, half my age, provided the verbatim King James Version quote along with the precise chapter and verse every single time. Yet what struck me most was that despite his encyclopedic knowledge of Scripture, he sat in amazement when I quoted a Church Father to explain the meaning of a particular passage. He had been so locked into his own singular way of interpreting the Bible that when he heard the expository insights of St. Justin Martyr or St. John Chrysostom, it was as if I had revealed to him the secret to turning water into wine or dirt into gold.

Nowhere have my Protestant friends missed the mark in biblical interpretation more than in a concept that leaps off the very pages of their Bibles: discipleship.

For a branch of Christianity so committed to what they often call a "literal" interpretation of Scripture, it has always struck me as, at best, strange and, at worst, a kind of negligence that Protestantism in the 20th and 21st centuries has all but ignored the concept of discipleship—something so obviously present in the New Testament.

The model is clear. We see Jesus forming an intimate relationship with the Twelve, providing them with private spiritual guidance on prayer, fasting, and asceticism—lessons from which the large crowds were excluded. Even within that group, Peter, James, and John held a special place, witnessing the Transfiguration, the raising of Jairus’s daughter, and Christ’s agony in Gethsemane.

Yet, visit any Baptist, Presbyterian, Non-Denominational, or Lutheran church in America, and you will struggle to find anything resembling the kind of discipleship Jesus practiced. You will find plenty of teaching—Sunday sermons, midweek Bible studies, men’s and women’s groups, and various church meetings. But where is the organic, one-on-one relationship between disciple and master? Where is the personal confession of struggles? Where is the daily, lived guidance from a spiritual father who shows by example how to love, persevere, and grow in holiness?

Staring Protestants in the face is the scripture, "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations." This verse is among the most quoted in Protestant circles—right up there with John 3:16. Yet, for many, it has been reduced to door-knocking evangelism or street preaching with fire-and-brimstone warnings.

Before we delve deeper into discipleship, we must acknowledge the elephant in the room. Thanks to figures like Charles Spurgeon (19th century), Billy Sunday (20th century), and Joel Osteen (21st century), Protestant discipleship has been reduced to attending Sunday sermons. This isn’t even a hidden truth—hang around Protestants long enough, and they will openly tell you that discipleship is about "sitting under good preaching."

But if we pause for even a moment outside the Protestant echo chamber, it becomes clear that this contradicts the very New Testament they so skillfully memorize. It was not the tens of thousands who heard Jesus’ sermons who were called His disciples—it was those who followed Him intimately. If merely listening to sermons made one a disciple, then the Pharisees and Sadducees, who frequently listened to Jesus preach, would qualify as well.

When the rich young ruler walked away from Christ in sorrow, it was not because he failed to follow the commandments or attend enough sermons. He walked away because he refused to give up everything and follow Jesus as a disciple.

Discipleship is a lifelong process—much like becoming Orthodox. If God grants me many years on this earth, I expect to repeat the same words an 85-year-old priest once told me: "I am still becoming Orthodox."

When we turn to the Epistles, written by men who had been personally discipled by Christ, we see them continuing the same model of discipleship. They preached to large crowds while simultaneously forming deep, personal relationships with those under their care. St. Paul refers to his followers as his "spiritual children" and displays an intimate mentorship with St. Timothy. The New Testament overflows with a relationship-based faith that has no parallel in modern Protestantism.

While Christ was alive, each of the Twelve had disciples of their own, bringing the total to 144. This structure of real, one-on-one discipleship extended into the second century and beyond.

This is not to say that Protestants have never attempted discipleship. However, history shows that when they do, it often collapses into spiritual abuse.

In the early 1980s, my parents were involved in the "Discipleship Movement" (also called the "Shepherding Movement"). It was a cross-denominational effort to restore the intimate discipleship model of the New Testament. Yet, it quickly spiraled into manipulation and authoritarian control, with reports of spiritual abuse surfacing across the country. The movement’s leaders, known as "The Fort Lauderdale Five," had noble intentions but ultimately repeated the same mistake made by their 16th-century Protestant forebears: they failed to look to the East, where true discipleship had been preserved unbroken for two thousand years.

The Orthodox Church has practiced spiritual discipleship since the time of the Apostles. The men whom Jesus discipled trained the next generation, who trained the next, in an unbroken line.

One of the reasons Orthodox Christianity has been rapidly growing in 21st-century America is that we are witnessing a generation raised in a relational void. Many young men and women come from broken homes due to divorce, or from suburban families whose lives revolved around sports and entertainment rather than faith. Deprived of authentic Christian guidance, they are now discovering that the Orthodox Church still practices first-century discipleship. Word spreads like a whisper in a game of telephone: "The Orthodox Church doesn’t just worship the way the Apostles did—it still has spiritual fathers, just as St. Paul had Timothy."

The overwhelming majority of young people I meet in Orthodox churches are searching for fathers to guide them. If you read online debates, you might think people are converting primarily because of incense or iconography. But the deeper, unspoken reality is that they long to be discipled.

Protestant churches have excelled at teaching people to read and memorize Scripture, which is why so much of Protestant life revolves around peer-based study groups, Bible discussions, and theological debates. But notice the emphasis—peer groups. In Protestantism, discipleship has been reduced to peer discussions rather than mentorship under wise, experienced spiritual fathers like St. Paisios or St. Nektarios. Small groups are age-segregated, fostering an environment where discipleship is merely talking among equals, not learning from those who have walked the path before them.

Even in rare moments when Protestantism has embraced something resembling biblical discipleship, it never lasts—largely because Protestantism erased the sacrament of confession.

Any parent raising a child knows that an essential part of maturity is teaching them to recognize and confess their mistakes. A child who cannot admit his sins to his parents cannot grow into a healthy adult. Likewise, a Christian who cannot confess his sins to a spiritual father cannot grow into a true disciple.

And that, perhaps, is the missing key to Protestant discipleship—one that cannot be replaced by sermons, study groups, or theological debates

Of course, I have only scratched the surface of this topic. Many of the themes I’ve touched on here deserve deeper exploration, and I suspect I’ll find myself returning to them again soon and getting a little bit deeper in conveying the depth of discipleship from a historically Orthodox perspective.

It’s also worth noting that not every Orthodox priest is a priest-confessor; walking into a local Orthodox Church and expecting the parish priest to become a modern-day Saint Paul is to misunderstand how we practice discipleship. The way Orthodox Christianity teaches and lives out discipleship is both beautifully simple and profoundly complex—rooted in 2,000 years of unbroken tradition handed down from the very first twelve disciples.

If you ever find yourself in Carolina and want to share a cup of coffee, feel free to reach out. I’m usually around during the week for anyone who wants to chat—after all, some of the best conversations often start over a simple invitation

~Kenneth