Foundations of Discipleship w/ Dr. Rev. Eun Strawser

Welcome to the GC Podcast. This year, we’re centering on Kingdom Culture and exploring how it transforms ministry and equips leaders for kingdom living. Through conversations with Grace Communion Seminary professors and a few other guests, we’ll explore how their teachings equip ministry leaders to embody kingdom values.

This is the GC Podcast, where we help you grow into the healthiest ministry leader you can be. Sharing practical insights and best practices from the context of Grace Communion International Churches. Here’s your host, Cara Garrity.

Cara: Hello friends, and welcome to today’s episode of GC Podcast. This podcast is devoted to exploring best ministry practices in the context of Grace Communion International churches.

I’m your host, Cara Garrity, and today we dive back into our 2025 theme of kingdom culture through exploring discipleship. In our efforts to explore discipleship, I am so honored to have Dr. Reverend Strawser join us to discuss her book, Centering Discipleship, A Pathway for Multiplying Spectators into Mature Disciples.

Eun Strawser is the co-vocational lead pastor of Ma Ke Ala o, non-denominational missional communities multiplying in Honolulu, and was a community physician at Ke Ola Pono. She is the founder of IWA Collaborative, a consulting and content developing firm to empower kingdom grounded leaders to navigate, change, grow adaptive capacity, and foster local flourishing.

Prior to transitioning to Hawaii, she served as adjunct professor of medicine at the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine and of African Studies at her alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania, where she and her husband served with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, and after finishing her Fulbright Scholarship at the University of Dar es Salaam.

She is the author of the book that we’re going to explore today, as well as her upcoming book, You Were Never Meant to Lead Alone, with pre-orders available now. The book will be released this fall of 2025.

Thank you so much for joining us today. I am so happy to have you as our guest.

Eun: Cara. You are the best hype person. I’d like to just carry you around with me everywhere I go. You did the best intro. You did the best intro.

[00:02:41] Cara: I would love that. I would love to be your hype woman. Before we jump in and explore some follow up questions that expound on your book, I’m wondering what prompted you to write this book.

[00:03:00] Eun: Yeah, I think that even as you folks at Grace Communion are even thinking about this theme for this whole year of 2025, I think in it, and how you’re describing it, in it already, I think, defines why something like Centered Discipleship needs to be put on the map, because you folks are trying to think: What does kingdom culture look like as we explore discipleship?

I think that word exploring, exploration, means that we’re not certain about things. It’s not discovered yet. It’s not clear or concrete yet, and I just think that it’s such a deficiency in the church today that discipleship is a word that is thrown around. We use it. It’s over-generalized. There’s a multitude of definitions under it.

And because there isn’t a certainty or a clarity for Christians, and Christian leaders in particular, I think that there is such a deficit of discipleship in the church today.

[00:03:57] Cara: I am so glad that you did choose to put your efforts into writing this book. I think that it is so relevant, so helpful. And I am really looking forward to the additional insights that you have to offer to our listeners today.

So, one of the first questions that I have for you is, in the book you do talk about centering discipleship, of course. And so, I’m wondering, can you describe for us the difference between central and peripheral discipleship that you talk about at the start of your book?

[00:04:32] Eun: Yeah, sure. This is such a primer because I want to preface it by saying, okay, I do really, really, really believe in the priesthood of all believers. I sincerely believe that. But I think that in how we people, human beings, do life, we have to consider what is the leaders’ or the leadership role in how structures work, systems work, organizations, what we focus on, what we emphasize, how invitation moves, what visions are there in the life of a church or a faith community.

I think because there isn’t a clarity around discipleship in general, we can probably have a better starting point that there isn’t a clarity or a stronger vision for discipleship to be central to our ministry, central to our churches or our faith communities. And that’s why it’s kept at the periphery.

If you think about what are probably the three things that are on the leaders’ plates to do that nobody else can really do this for the leader. It’s not the thing that the leader can easily delegate out. It’s three things. It’s what the leader emphasizes. Which is usually where all resources, time, finances, even leadership pipelines, go towards whatever it is a leader or a leadership set emphasizes.

The second is invitation. No matter how much people will say that this is not true. It is true. Whatever the leader does the invitation for something, more often than not, people will follow and come. Right? And so, there’s [inaudible] an invitation. And then, the last thing, on vision. It’s a leader’s job to cast a vision and be a broken record about the vision for the community, for the church.

Whenever I do a lot of work around centering discipleship with church plants, inherited churches, Christian organizations, things like that, and I can walk in and ask questions around those three things. And I can tell you immediately if a discipleship is at the periphery of the organization or community or if it’s in the center because of those three things.

[00:06:52] Cara: What are some of those questions that you ask?

[00:06:55] Eun: Yeah. For instance, around the invitation, it’s really questions around: what do you really invite your people to? What do your people actually invite people to? If the bulk of the invitation is — if your people feel like they can give themselves a pat on the back, a sigh of relief because they finally got to invite their friend or neighbor or coworker or family member to attend your Sunday morning worship service. And they’re just like clapping, brushing off their hands and being like, okay, check, now I’m a good Christian, because I made that invitation.

If that is the thing that’s most rewarded, if that’s the invitation that’s most rewarded, probably it’s because we’re assuming that any sort of semblance of discipleship, (and that clarity piece is so important, right?) we’re probably saying that the best chance that people get at understanding what it is to imitate Jesus clearly is going to happen at a worship service. Versus, if discipleship is centered, then I know that everybody would already understand that discipleship is best lived out in practice. So, practicing discipleship, living like Jesus, actually doesn’t happen in a once-a-week Sunday morning worship service, right?

It happens out in the community, in real life, in neighborhoods, in households, at workplaces, in schools, right? That’s where it’s happening. So, wherever the invitation is strongest, I know that discipleship is either center or peripheral.

[00:08:38] Cara: Yeah, that’s a great example. Thank you for sharing that with us.

[00:08:42] Eun: Yeah. Another, I think, important thing is that vision question. I think that leaders assume that their vision is really clear, but I think that we can test it out by asking our people what is the vision of our community or our church? And if your people can’t recite it clearly, then we’re probably not being as clear as we assume that we are.

I think the second thing around vision is my favorite question is asking the leader, okay. In five years from now what do you hope or imagine your church or your faith community to be like, to look like, to smell like, to sound like, to act like — all those kinds of questions, right?

And most of the time, when leaders depict in five years … and I love that five-year mark. It’s so short enough that there’s realistic practical pieces that we could set in place now. But it’s not, and it’s not far enough that it’s some dream, like a thing that, that we can dream too big around. So, in five years, what will your … what do you hope your church to be like?

If leaders are answering that essentially that the church itself will experience multiplication or growth? If that’s the only conversation around it, and if they’re not including the flourishing of their community that the church resides in, or the neighborhood the church resides in, then I know that again, discipleship is at the periphery and not center.

[00:10:11] Cara: Thank you. Those are, I think, helpful places for us to even start reflecting in our own context and kind of start making those assessments about where are we at in our kind of expressions and practices of discipleship in our local churches.

And I’m wondering … a lot of times when we think about discipleship, we can feel like it is something that maybe is meant to be organic or just, maybe not quite “go with the flow” but maybe something that …

Eun: … like Spirit-led …

Cara: Yes. And maybe some of our listeners have maybe a reaction, a visceral reaction to this idea of identifying markers of discipleship. And so, I’m wondering what difference have you seen it make when we do identify markers of discipleship?

[00:11:12] Eun: Yeah, it’s like a really good exercise to run through. The best example I can give for this through story is my family and I, we moved, I was born in South Korea. My family moved to West Philly. I did all my upbringing, I fell in love, got married, had my three babies — all in Philly —and then we moved to Hawaii. Philly was a lot of training grounds for my own ministry, how I see Jesus, how I have love for people, all those kinds of things.

And I was leading in a community, a church in West Philly, and our neighbors were a pretty strong Muslim population. We were really good neighbors to one another and we did a community dinner, hosted it so that we could learn a little bit more about each other’s faith. And there were a hundred people, 50 Christians, 50 Muslim brothers and sisters, and we had a meal together.

It was wonderful. And then we went around and our Muslim neighbors were asking like, “What does it mean to be a Christian?” And so, we’re going through it, different people at the table are answering, “Well, to be a Christian means this and this…”. And at the end of the night, it was so confusing to our Muslim neighbors, because for if there were 50 Christians in the room, there are 50 different answers to what it means to be a disciple of Jesus.

Whereas when there are 50 Muslim neighbors in the room, all 50 Muslim brothers and sisters could answer the five pillars of Islam, very clearly… that that’s what their faith is anchored around. This is what it means to be, to believe in Allah, all those kinds of things. So, already it’s so confusing to other people, let alone to ourselves about what does it actually mean to be a Jesus follower.

If we don’t have clear maturity markers of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus, then I think two kinds of things happen. One, we probably will be more influenced by what the culture and our specific culture, and for us, it’s going to be contending with what Western culture says about us, and probably it’s culture that is defining what it looks like, “to be a disciple of Jesus,” which usually just means, like a nice person who doesn’t want to challenge anything, and attend church. I think on the far other extreme, if we allow our culture to define what discipleship is and not what Jesus sets as maturity markers, that there is a picture, a portrait of what it looks like to be a very visible, recognizable, mature, follower of Jesus all around the world that’s clear to everybody, then the other thing that could happen, because culture is going to set that pace, is assimilation, which is just a PC word for a canonization. And Christian history has already experienced that and continues to experience that. So, I think that the action for why I think that, and why I think leaders should be thinking about that, if we don’t clarify discipleship, and have clear markers around it — it’s not a structure thing — it’s a way to contend against a current culture today.

[00:14:37] Cara: I like that. That’s really helpful to think about why it matters, to identify that, and not just have almost like a fluffy answer of or an unclear answer of, “Well, it just means growing in Christlikeness.”

Sure. That’s great, but what does that actually look like? What does that mean in the real life of a people in a community. That’s really helpful.

One of the other things that you describe on the earlier chapters of your book is this distinction between centered and bounded sets. And I’m wondering both how that helps us as a framework to center discipleship and what makes bounded sets a suitable setting for this discipleship core that you discussed throughout your book.

[00:15:37] Eun: Yeah. Yeah. I’m going to change around some words just because I think it’s more helpful for folks who may not be sociologists in the room, which is pretty much most people.

Yeah, I think that it really is trying to think about what happens in a room when you’re trying to intentionally equip — which is really discipleship, right? We’re trying to intentionally equip and provide spaces and environments for people to have the best chance at really clarifying what it means to imitate Jesus.

If discipleship, in a nutshell, to be as clear as possible, means that a person is imitating Jesus intentionally, actively, within a community — that we don’t believe as Christians that it is a privatized faith, that it happens and is worked out within relationship, within a community — then two things should be happening. Every single person should be actively, intentionally growing and maturing in both their spiritual confidence, but it has to be tethered to their social competence. Meaning that, spiritual competence, meaning what’s the thing that’s forming their identity. They know God. They’re growing in knowing God and loving God. They’re growing in being known and being loved by God. What happens in a person’s identity becomes transformed in that manner?

For the Christian, if you’re imitating Jesus, how you know and love God needs to be tethered to how you live in the world, right? If you know God and love God, then you also need to live like God in the world. You can’t have just one or the other. The flip side, I think in thinking about it that way is that people can’t just be really great at social competence, but not be great at spiritual competence, right? They can’t be people who are just do-gooders, but their motivation comes from someplace else, not anchored in an identity in Christ, right?

So, you have to do both of these things. So, in order for that equipping, and in our culture, where it’s hard to be clear about discipleship and the work is just to clarify what that means in our local context, in our local churches, then there has to be an intentionality to equip a group of people.

So, the bounded set is really just a discipleship core for us. And this can look like a variety of ways, but in the book, Centering Discipleship, it really is a love letter to my church, that the way that we wanted to do it was, I just had 15 people that first year make a commitment. They already love Jesus. They’re making a commitment to love one another and to begin to love of some sort of identified space of mission. So that, that bounded set was, with these 15 folks intentionally going through a discipleship pathway together intentionally being equipped in the ways of Jesus. So, their spiritual competence and their social competence are also being Christ-like.

And then that centered set is really just like the practice space. How do we know that this formation piece is really working? Unless there is practice happening, there’s a practice space where people can actually, like, make mistakes, right? To have the freedom to make mistakes join together in doing work that’s not just alone work to do, right? People can say in formation spaces, oh my goodness, I am being transformed by Jesus because I am growing in patience. You can share that all you want, right?

But you never really, really know if a person is really growing in Christ-like character in the form of patience, unless you see an impatient situation happening. Is that person actually showing that this kind of fruit, this kind of maturity marker of deep patience, a longsuffering with others and for others, you won’t know it until it’s practiced out, until it’s worked out. So, for me, that founded set is really that, that protected, guarded space where people have the space to be equipped, but that centered set is just as important to be tethered to that bounded set because it’s the practice space. It’s the living space for the disciple within that community.

[00:19:54] Cara: Yes. Thank you. That is really helpful and I really love thinking about that centered set as that practice space where we’re really living out what we are saying that we’re being transformed in.

I think that’s, I always to think about that, like, as are we putting flesh on what we’re saying? We’re learning. And so, thinking about being intentional about are we living this out together, I think, is really important. So, I love that you have that as a key aspect of the process of discipleship. And also, …

[00:20:39] Eun: For all the folks who feel like, oh, discipleship should be organic, or you know, that is structured, trust me, it’s that practice space that, that puts that flesh, like you were saying, Cara, to how it’s flexible, it’s organic. You get … it’s unpredictable, like all those things are really happening, but you’re trying to clarify, so that people can pay attention to it, right?

That’s the bounded sets job — you’re trying to help people to pay attention to it, focus on it, put attention to it, prioritize it — to only want people of Jesus to want to prioritize their imitation of Jesus. We want that to happen. We’re just saying that centered set is like how we’re going to live it out.

[00:21:23] Cara: I love that. I really appreciate what you have shared with us so far and I’m praying for our listeners that this importance of really bringing to the center discipleship and what it looks like to begin to shift our, not just our viewpoint and our mindsets about discipleship in our church context, but also what it can begin to look like, to start shifting our practices and our structures is something that we begin to start reflecting on and chewing on.

I, for all of our listeners, want to encourage you if you haven’t already, to please read Ms. Strawser’s book that we are exploring, again called, Centering Discipleship: A Pathway for Multiplying Spectators into Mature Disciples. You will see a link in our show notes in order to purchase that if you would like a copy of it for yourself.

And keep an eye out in the GCI Equipper for some additional information about a book club for this book, so that you can, along with a cohort of your peers, engage with this further and see, really tangibly, what it would look like to engage this centering of discipleship in your local context.

And thank you so much for sharing with us today. And folks, until next time, keep on living and sharing the gospel.

Thanks for listening to the GC podcast. We hope this episode inspired and equipped you to lead with health and purpose. We would love to hear from you. If you have a suggestion on the topic or if there’s someone who you think we should interview, please email us info@gci.org.