Jesus said, "Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me" (Luke 9:23). He also sent his followers to "go and make disciples of all nations" (Matthew 28:19). Following Jesus and sharing him belong together.
These ten stories about discipleship and evangelism, retold in our own words, range from a medieval missed opportunity to a Nazi prison, from a Pacific island to a high-school locker room, and from a snack bar to the streets of Lima. Each ends with a takeaway for sermons or reflection.
Stories in this collection:
- Bonhoeffer's Choice: The Cost of Discipleship
- Water Pistols at a Fire
- The Unbaptised Sword Arm
- Arthur Burns' Prayer
- Roger: The Friend Tony Campolo Didn't Stand Up For
- Marco Polo's Father and the Missed Opportunity
- The Bounty Mutineers and the Bible
- Transposing the Gospel: A Lesson From Mr Holland's Opus
- Anyone for a Bible Bar? What Does It Mean to Be Biblical?
- Under the Gaze of Christ: Pictures on the Walls of Lima
Bonhoeffer's Choice: The Cost of Discipleship
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a brilliant young German theologian, lecturing at the University of Berlin, when Hitler came to power in 1933.
At that time German Protestants were deeply divided over the Nazi regime. One group, the so-called German Christians, embraced Hitler's vision of a racially pure nation. They backed rules that barred Christians of Jewish descent from holding office in the church. Bonhoeffer could not go along with this. With others, he became a leading voice in the Confessing Church, which refused to let the Nazis control the church or rewrite its faith.
It was dangerous work. After serving German congregations in London for a time, Bonhoeffer returned in 1935 to lead an illegal seminary for training Confessing Church pastors. In 1936 the authorities withdrew his right to teach at the University of Berlin, and in 1937 the Gestapo closed the seminary.
In June 1939, as war loomed, friends in America arranged for him to go to New York, where he could teach in safety. It was an open door to a secure and distinguished career. But after only a few weeks he decided he had made a mistake. He wrote that he would have no right to help rebuild Christian life in Germany after the war if he did not share the trials of this time with his people. He sailed home.
Back in Germany, Bonhoeffer became so convinced of the evil of Hitler's regime that he set aside his earlier commitment to non-violence and became involved with the resistance, which was plotting against Hitler. He was arrested in April 1943. In prison he ministered to fellow prisoners and guards, and wrote letters that would later inspire millions.
After a failed attempt on Hitler's life in July 1944, his links to the conspirators were uncovered. He was hanged at Flossenbürg concentration camp on 9 April 1945, just weeks before the war in Europe ended.
What distressed Bonhoeffer most was how many Christians had sold out to Hitler's evil vision. How could people who bore the name of Christ betray him so completely? How could they worship in a church that excluded Jewish believers from office?
It convinced him that religion on its own was worthless. It did not matter how fervently people said they believed, how often they prayed or how sincerely they sang on Sundays. He warned against what he called cheap grace: a faith that costs nothing and changes nothing. True discipleship, he believed, is measured not only by how we behave in church, but by how we follow Christ in the whole of life, as people who live for others.
Takeaway: Discipleship is measured less by what we say in church than by how we follow Jesus when it costs us something.
Source: Biographical accounts of Dietrich Bonhoeffer; Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (1937).
Water Pistols at a Fire
A parable often attributed to the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, though we have not been able to find it in his writings. We retell it in our own words.
Once upon a time, a fire broke out in a small town. The fire brigade rushed to the scene, but the firefighters could not get through to the burning building.
The problem was the crowd. People had gathered, not to watch, but to help. They all knew the fire chief well. Their children had clambered over his fire engines on school visits to the fire station, and his friendliness was legendary. So when the fire broke out, the townspeople rushed to help their beloved chief.
Unfortunately, they were trying to put out a raging blaze with water pistols. They stood around chatting with one another, and every now and then they squirted a little water at the flames.
The fire chief could not contain himself. What do you think you are doing? he shouted. What on earth do you think you're going to achieve with water pistols?
The people realised how urgent things were, and they wanted so much to help. So they squirted faster. Come on, they encouraged each other. We can all do better than this! Squirt, squirt, squirt.
Exasperated, the chief shouted again. Get out of here! You're achieving nothing except getting in the way of those who need to do the job. What we need are firefighters who will give everything they have to put out this fire, people willing even to put their lives on the line. This is no place for token contributions.
The parable is a warning against a comfortable, half-hearted faith. Following Christ means more than offering the church and God's mission a little of our spare time and money. It calls for wholehearted commitment of our whole lives.
Takeaway: Jesus does not ask for occasional squirts of devotion. He calls for wholehearted followers who will give their lives to his mission.
Source: Traditional parable attributed to Søren Kierkegaard; exact source uncertain.
The Unbaptised Sword Arm
A legend told in many versions. The popular version is not historically accurate, as we explain below.
As the story is usually told, Ivan the Great was the ruler of Russia in the fifteenth century. A brilliant military leader, he united the Russian lands and drove out the Tatars. But he was so consumed by his campaigns that he had never taken time to marry and produce an heir.
His worried advisers persuaded him to let them look for a suitable wife. After a careful search, they agreed that he should marry a Greek princess. Her family were delighted, on one condition: Ivan must join the Greek Orthodox Church.
Ivan agreed, and a priest was sent to instruct him in the Orthodox faith. When his instruction was complete, Ivan travelled to Greece with his palace guard, five hundred of his finest soldiers. Always loyal to their leader, the soldiers asked whether they could be baptised too, and after a crash course in the faith they were declared ready.
A great mass baptism was planned, with crowds coming from all over the country. As was the custom, it would be by full immersion. Imagine the scene: five hundred soldiers in full battle dress and five hundred priests in black robes, all wading into the sea together.
But then a problem arose. The church, the story says, did not allow professional soldiers to be members. If they were baptised, they would have to give up their profession. That was unacceptable to Ivan and his men.
So a compromise was reached. As each soldier was lowered into the water, he reached for his sword and held it high above his head. Every part of him was baptised, except his fighting arm and his sword.
The popular version names Ivan the Great of Russia, but history does not support it. Ivan III was already an Orthodox Christian when he married the Byzantine princess Sophia Palaiologina in Moscow in 1472. Similar tales are told about other warriors, which suggests it is best treated as a parable. But as a parable it hits home.
Takeaway: Many of us keep one area of life out of the water: money, ambition, a relationship, a habit. Discipleship means giving Jesus every part of us.
Source: Traditional legend, reported by Wayne Dehoney in The Pulpit; historical note on Ivan III.
Arthur Burns' Prayer
Arthur F. Burns was an American economist whose career moved between universities and government. He chaired the US Federal Reserve from 1970 to 1978.
According to the writer Os Guinness, Burns took part in a small prayer group that met regularly in Washington, made up of politicians and senior officials from across the political spectrum. Burns was Jewish, and he was respected and welcomed in the group.
One week he was invited to close the meeting in prayer. The others wondered what he would say. He prayed that God would bring Jews to know Jesus Christ. He prayed that God would bring Muslims to know Jesus Christ. And then he added a final request: Lord, bring Christians to know Jesus Christ.
Takeaway: It is possible to be religious, even Christian in name, without truly knowing Jesus. Discipleship begins with a living relationship with him.
Source: Os Guinness, The Call (Word, 1998).
Roger: The Friend Tony Campolo Didn't Stand Up For
This story involves bullying and suicide. If it affects you, please see the note at the end.
The sociologist and preacher Tony Campolo often told a painful story from his high school days, about how he failed to live out his faith.
There was a boy in his class named Roger. Roger was gay, everyone knew it, and the other students tormented him for it. They heaped verbal and even physical abuse on him, mocking and humiliating him again and again, including in the locker room.
One day the abuse was especially cruel. That night Roger took his own life.
When Campolo heard the news, he said, he realised that he had not really been a Christian. He knew all the right answers. He sincerely believed all the right things, and he lived a morally upright life. But when it came to Roger, he had not lived out his faith.
If he had, he said, he would have stood up for Roger when the others were mocking him. He would have been his friend. And perhaps, just perhaps, Roger would still be alive.
If you are struggling with thoughts of harming yourself, please reach out to someone you trust or a local crisis line.
Takeaway: Believing the right things is not enough. Following Jesus means standing beside the person everyone else is targeting.
Source: Tony Campolo, Let Me Tell You a Story (Word, 2000).
Marco Polo's Father and the Missed Opportunity
Marco Polo is one of the most famous explorers in history. He seems to have inherited his love of travel from his father.
In the 1260s, when Marco was still a boy, his father and uncle, the Venetian merchants Niccolò and Maffeo Polo, made a long journey east to the court of the Mongol ruler Kublai Khan.
When they arrived, according to Marco's later account, Kublai showed great interest in Christianity. He asked the brothers to take a letter to the Pope, requesting as many as a hundred learned men who could teach the Christian faith among his people.
The brothers made the long journey home. When they set out east again in 1271, this time taking young Marco with them, did they bring the hundred teachers? No. The church sent just two Dominican friars. And even they lost their nerve and turned back early in the journey.
What a tragedy. We cannot know what would have happened if Kublai's request had been answered. But it is hard not to wonder how differently the history of China might have unfolded.
Takeaway: Open doors do not stay open forever. The church's missed opportunities are often failures of courage and commitment rather than of resources.
Source: Marco Polo, The Travels; historical accounts of Niccolò and Maffeo Polo.
The Bounty Mutineers and the Bible
In April 1789, in the South Pacific, Fletcher Christian led the most famous mutiny in history, the mutiny on the Bounty. The mutineers set Captain William Bligh and those loyal to him adrift in an open boat, and sailed back towards Tahiti.
Against astonishing odds, Bligh navigated the overcrowded open boat some 3,600 nautical miles across the Pacific to Timor, a voyage of about seven weeks, and eventually returned to England. The British government sent a warship, HMS Pandora, to hunt down the mutineers. In Tahiti it captured a number of them, but others had vanished.
Fearing pursuit, Christian and eight other mutineers had sailed away from Tahiti with eighteen Tahitians: six men, eleven women and a baby. In January 1790 they settled on remote Pitcairn Island, which was wrongly placed on the charts of the time. To avoid detection, they burned the Bounty.
Their story is not a pretty one. The Europeans took the best land and treated the Tahitian men as servants. Jealousy over the women, and alcohol distilled from the root of the ti plant, led to drunkenness and violence. Within a few years most of the men had been killed or had died.
In February 1808 an American sealing ship, the Topaz, under Captain Mayhew Folger, came across the island. To Folger's astonishment, young men paddling out in a canoe spoke English. He had solved a mystery that had puzzled the world for nearly twenty years.
Even more surprising was what he found on shore. The island was home to a peaceful, orderly community of women and children, led by the last surviving mutineer, John Adams. Later visitors were struck by the gentleness and devotion of the islanders.
What had brought about such a change? Historians debate the details, but a large part of the answer seems to be a Bible and a prayer book that had been salvaged from the Bounty. Adams and another mutineer, Ned Young, had turned to them in the later years of violence. After Young died, Adams taught the children to read from the Bible and led the community in daily prayer.
The result was by no means a perfect society. But a place once marked by murder had become a community known for peace and for its desire to live by the teaching it found in Scripture.
Descendants of the mutineers and their Tahitian companions still live on Pitcairn today, and the island's small community has remained strongly shaped by the Christian faith that took root there. It is a remarkable reminder of what can happen when people open the Scriptures and begin to live by them.
Takeaway: "The word of God is alive and active" (Hebrews 4:12). Even in the most broken places, the gospel can bring transformation.
Source: Trevor Lummis, Life and Death in Eden (Phoenix, 1997); history of the Pitcairn Islands.
Transposing the Gospel: A Lesson From Mr Holland's Opus
How do you get teenagers interested in classical music? That is the challenge facing Glenn Holland in the 1995 film Mr. Holland's Opus, played by Richard Dreyfuss.
Mr Holland is a high school music teacher who loves the great composers. For him, music is not about notes on a page. It is about feeling, about moving people, about beauty. But how do you share that passion with a room full of teenagers who have about as much enthusiasm for classical music as they do for household chores? Whenever he talks about the great composers, he is met with blank faces and bored looks.
Holland had only taken the teaching job as a temporary way to pay the bills while he worked on his real dream: composing a great symphony of his own. Instead, he spends some thirty years in the classroom, often wondering whether his life has amounted to anything. The film ends with former students gathering to perform the symphony he wrote, showing how much his teaching had shaped their lives.
Then one day he tries something new. He plays them a pop song from the 1960s. Suddenly the students perk up. Their feet start tapping and their heads begin nodding to the beat. You like that? he asks. Then he tells them it is based on a minuet long credited to Johann Sebastian Bach.
The pop song had taken an old classical melody, set it to a modern beat, played it on electric instruments and given it words about falling in love. All of a sudden the old composer was not a relic of a bygone age. His music was alive, meaningful and relevant to Mr Holland's students. It connected.
When people hear about Christianity, they can sometimes react like Mr Holland's students. Their eyes glaze over. They are not interested in a faith that seems like an ancient relic, answering yesterday's questions and stuck in the issues of the past. They want to know whether faith can speak to the questions they face today.
The wonderful thing about the Christian faith is that it can be like that old melody. It is a song that can be played afresh in every age, a tune that runs through history, but played on the instruments of our time, with a rhythm people can recognise.
The task of the church is not to change the melody. It is to play the ancient song in a way that connects with the people, the mood and the questions of our own time, just as Paul did when he spoke to the philosophers of Athens in their own terms.
Takeaway: The gospel is an ancient song, but every generation needs to hear it played in a way it can understand, without changing the melody.
Source: Mr. Holland's Opus (1995); illustration by Scott Higgins.
Anyone for a Bible Bar? What Does It Mean to Be Biblical?
Based on a product marketed in the United States in the early 2000s. The company no longer appears to exist, so we describe its claims as they were reported at the time.
Feeling peckish? Some years ago, an American nutrition company called Logia, which described itself as making foods of the Bible, offered a snack it called the Bible Bar.
The company was founded on the idea that the Bible sets out God's plan for good nutrition. It pointed out that dozens of different foods are mentioned in Scripture, most of them in a positive light, especially fresh fruit, vegetables, seeds, grains and nuts. If we want to follow the biblical approach to eating, it suggested, we should include as many of these Bible foods as possible in our daily diet.
To help people do that, the company sold a range of biblical nutrition products. The flagship was the Bible Bar, a food bar said to be based on a recipe from Deuteronomy 8:8.
In that verse, Moses describes the good land God is giving Israel by listing seven foods: wheat and barley, vines and fig trees, pomegranates, olive oil and honey. And, the company proudly announced, all seven were in the Bible Bar.
There is nothing wrong with a healthy snack. But the Bible Bar raises an interesting question. The company seemed to assume that being biblical means copying the habits of people who lived in Bible times.
If that is the case, where do we stop? A biblical footwear company selling only sandals? A biblical transport company that insists on donkeys and camels as the only scriptural way to travel?
If being biblical does not mean simply imitating the ancient world, then what does it mean? Jesus showed that it is about more than outward forms. It is about hearing God's word and putting it into practice, loving God with all we are and loving our neighbour as ourselves.
Takeaway: Jesus said the wise builder is the one who "hears these words of mine and puts them into practice" (Matthew 7:24–27). Being biblical is about obedience and love, not imitation of ancient customs.
Source: Product claims reported in the early 2000s; the company's website is no longer available.
Under the Gaze of Christ: Pictures on the Walls of Lima
This story was reported in sermon collections around the year 2000. We have not been able to confirm the details independently, so we share it as it is usually told.
Have you ever driven past a street strewn with rubbish and wondered how anyone could stop people dumping it there?
Around the turn of the millennium, according to the story, city authorities in Peru tried an unusual approach. Some streets in the capital, Lima, were scarred by terrible littering, and some people even used them as public toilets.
So the authorities put up pictures of Jesus and the Virgin Mary on the walls of buildings along the worst streets.
Why? Because most people in Peru are Roman Catholic, and the authorities reportedly found that people were far less likely to dirty the streets while Jesus and Mary were looking down on them.
It is a striking idea. What difference would it make to our behaviour if we remembered that we always live our lives under the loving gaze of Christ? Discipleship is not only about what we do when others are watching, but about how we live when we remember that he is.
Takeaway: "Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord" (Colossians 3:23). Disciples live every part of life aware of Christ's presence.
Source: Reported in sermon collections c. 2000; unconfirmed.
Final thoughts
A pastor in prison, a crowd with water pistols, a sword held above the water, an economist's prayer, a bullied boy, a missed invitation, a Bible on a remote island, an old tune in a new style, a 'biblical' snack and pictures on a city wall. Each asks what it really means to follow Jesus and to share him.
For further reading, Sopranu reviews Timothy Keller's The Reason for God and Lee Strobel's The Case for Christ, two popular books on explaining the Christian faith.
What part of your life is still being held above the water?
More stories you may like:
These stories are retold in our own words for teaching and reflection. Sources are credited under each story.