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 to follow Christ.

I couldn’t shake the question: Why are so many women and girls struggling to hold onto their faith, even with more Christian resources than ever before?

As we had a hard conversation in the BRAVE space, I had trouble understanding what was really missing. The conversations were solid, but we were missing something. We were discussing the challenges, finding the Biblical answers, but I kept asking myself why so many things were cracking the faith of our girls. 

I am going to explore that question with you, should you care to journey along with me. Here is my bold statement: Many if not most women and girls have not been truly discipled the way it’s laid out in scripture, resulting in generations of a discipleship deficit.   

Daughters of the discipleship deficit roam as spiritual orphans among us.  

Have we raised generations of church-going women & girls who know about Jesus but have never been truly discipled by someone who walked closely with them?

There is no age to this. I have met 60-year-old women who still crawl in the infancy of their 30-year faith.  I have met 40-year-old women who wonder what is ahead and have hung their head in tears wishing for a spiritual mother to speak life into them.  There are college students and teenagers (yes teenagers) who sit in a spiritual drought because it is easy to hide when no one is really paying attention. 

Time to make a comeback, it’s time to fight back. 

I am going to continue to study, read and explore the caverns of biblical discipleship and I hope what I share encourages you, lights a fire in you, and breaks us free of the lie that we are irrelevant, constrained and inept to meet the calling of Matthew 28:19 and Titus 2. 

If you are saved with a true knowledge of the grace of Jesus Christ and what He did on the cross, then you my friend need to be on mission. 

A pastor once asked this question to his congregation:
Are you a Christian? (resounding amens and yes)

Are you a disciple maker? 

Can we truly be followers of Jesus, if we are not discipling?  

That’s a hard question.  Discipling has to come from a spirit-led want to, not a “have to” because it will only feel like inconvenience. Yet, our call to Jesus is a life of inconvenience for His name to be made known.  I fear that…

There are women sitting in our churches and small groups who love Jesus, yet still feel spiritually orphaned, unseen, and unsure of how to grow.

How can we answer the hard questions without authentic, raw real discipleship?  I am going to explore how we can decrease the deficit in however many blogs and posts it takes. I have no idea.  

I must agree with the author Greg Ogden,

“Most people do not disciple because they were not discipled”

I believe most Christians agree discipleship is good, but can we get to the place where we recognize it’s a command that can only be followed by pure surrender to Jesus?  

We must also recognize it’s the most inconvenient, vulnerable, time-consuming, messy process that leaves most of us walking away from the attempt when it gets hard and we miss the holy.  Next time I am exploring exactly what discipleship is so we all have the same understanding and together, we can be BRAVE.

So I ask: What if the greatest crisis facing Christian women and girls today isn’t a lack of Bible studies, conferences, or resources—but a lack of true discipleship? What if we grew together and one by one, rescued the lost, the broken and the unseen by giving over our life for their lives to encounter Christ?  I’m in it for just one more to know Him, Join me. 

Sincerely,

Amber J

PS: Listen to our messy BRAVE discipleship interview here: