It was my first pastoral position, but things did not go according to plan. I guess that is a slight overstatement, considering, I did not have a plan on how it should go. I did not know what to expect. It felt like I was winging almost everything. From the outside, most people probably saw success, but I fear this was not the complete truth.

My story, like everyone, did not really start with me. My dad came from a non-practicing, functionally atheist, Jewish family. My family was not always non-practicing, in fact, the first generation who escaped Stalin’s Russia was quite devout. Rabbi Solomon Katzman, who is my great-great grandfather, and his wife, Bella, made it to New York’s Ellis Island around the 1920s and they become American citizens in 1931. Solomon and Bella were in their late 70s when they arrived in the United States with two of their eight children, Machla and Aida, my great grandmother, who married Charles Schneiderman.

I remember asking my father what happened to the other children in Russia? As a typical American in my early 20s, at the time, I had no real understanding of the world around me. It turns out, Jews were not only persecuted in “Bible times.” In the 1920s, Jewish diaspora in Russia were significantly marginalized to say the least. Eight years before my grandmother made it to the United States, while living in Proskurov, Ukrain, more than 10 percent of the Jewish community was methodically killed in three and a half hours by the invading Red Army. My father told me he remembers his grandmother, Aida, talking about what happened to her six siblings, who remained in Ukraine. She simply never heard from them again. We know what was happing in history, it was not by the hands of the Soviets, because in the summer of 1941, the Germans invaded Russia. This resulted in the Proskurov's Jews being rounded up into ghettos and many of them murdered by the Nazis. When my father told me about his grandmother’s account of never hearing from her siblings, at the hands of the Nazis, he tears up, recalling the pain in Aida’s voice.

In the early 1980s, my parents moved from New York to Georgia where my brother and I were born. It was there in Georgia, when a pastor met with my parents where they confessed Jesus as Lord. I am so amazed how God saved my dad, breaking the generations of people not following Jesus. My dad shared the message of Jesus with me as he did his part to create a new line of God impacting lives.

Discipleship is rooted in the cultural practice of the Jewish people and this is Jesus’ only plan for the church to impact the world. The problem is, no one discipled my father and neither was I. I found myself being drawn by God to leave active duty, as a Marine, and become an associate pastor at a church. Around that time, my mom unknowingly potentially said something prophetic, look into your Jewish roots because there is something there.

I was in the new world of “full-time ministry,” helping to do my part running the machine of Sunday services and events. The church was growing, and things were going well, but this thought hit me, we are not making disciples. We were seeing decisions for Christ, but not disciples for Christ. Although the New Testament mentions “disciple(s)” 273 times, I had not put much thought into it. As time went on, I continued to see a church predominantly filled to max capacity with people who invited people to church, but rarely knew of any members inviting people to Jesus. I realized we put an emphases on the decision and less emphases on discipleship.

There were also so many conversations with people where I realized, they do not know the basics of the faith. I did not feel judgmental, I felt responsible. Jesus told me, a member of the church, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in[a] the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:19-20, ESV). As a pastor, I felt responsible for not equipping them to do what Jesus told them to do. Paul explained the way a shepherd cares for the flock, “equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ” (Ephesians 4:12, ESV).

My wife and I have been part of many different kinds of churches during my time in the military, due to moving around. One church, which was the most attractional style church, was able to attract people who did not grow up going to church. My wife Laura told me of a story that broke her heart and it acts as one of the moments where I realized I needed to do something with discipleship.

My wife Laura was a team leader on a church and Sally began coming to church. Sally was recently saved, but she was still involved in a lot of activities contrary to Christ. Sally did not have a concept of a judgmental God or judgmental Christians, and this allowed her to be open with the things she said. She met a new guy, and Laura came to me trying to figure out a way to guide her in this relationship. This was the first relationship Sally had as a Christian. Sally had not been to church long enough to make it to the annual relationship series. To be honest, my wife and I knew the topic of Christ-honoring relationships was not typically covered in a sermon, since they were focused on “reaching the lost” or “welcoming the unchurched.” I will not, at this point, make a case for or against this, but the fact of the matter is our friend was entering into a relationship that could drastically get her off course. Our friend, Sally, did everything the church system had for her. She came to church, raised her hand to accept Jesus, she was baptized, she went through the next step assimilation process, and was serving on a team. She was at the end of the process and the result was an immature Christian. The Holy Spirit convicted Laura, so she called Sally and explained God’s place for sex in marriage between one man and one woman for life. This is one of many stories I could tell showing how we, in the church, have put significant effort into getting people to come back to church or get them to serve on a Sunday team, but we have done little for discipleship. Jesus did not tell us to make a difference, but to make disciples.