Leeman: ...discipleship is merely friendship with a Christward direction...

Our friends are the ones we imitate and follow. We adopt their language and life patterns. We tend to spend money where they spend money. We value what they value. We raise our children like they raise their children. We pray like they pray. We trust their counsel and heed their rebukes more easily than that of those who are not friends. There’s a reason that Paul says, “Bad company ruins good morals” (1 Cor. 15:33; cf. Deut. 13:6). It’s because our friends play a large role in forming who we become as we imitate one another (see James 4:4).

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The local church community should be a place where Christians participate in forming and shaping one another for good through all the interpersonal dynamics of friendship. Christian friends are surely valuable inside or outside the local church, but friends within a local church will be formed by the same ministry of the Word, giving them the opportunity to extend that ministry more carefully into one another’s lives throughout the week. Friendships are a God-given vehicle through which the church’s ministry of the Word travels. Church friendships, in other words, will share all the strengths of friendship generally, but they should also be characterized by an element of discipleship.

In many respects, discipleship is merely friendship with a Christward direction or purpose—that of seeing another conformed increasingly to the image of Christ as one or both give, in order for the other to receive. Indeed, Christian friendships take humility, because it requires humility to both give and receive. 


Leeman, J. (2010). The Church and the Surprising Offense of God’s Love: Reintroducing the Doctrines of Church Membership and Discipline (pp. 342–343). Wheaton, IL: Crossway.