Discipleship Story: Tucker King

I first met Tucker when he was a college student at Virginia Tech. He emailed me one day to ask about the possibility of shadowing me or being mentored. After meeting with him, we brought Tucker on board the Northstar staff as a Ministry Assistant, and he quickly demonstrated a sensitivity and aptitude for ministry that was a deep encouragement. I’m grateful that he agreed to share his story about discipleship:

I’m probably one of a hundred college guys that Jeff Noble has discipled since he came to Northstar 10 years ago. And I’ll start off by saying, that season of intentional and refining discipleship changed the way I experienced God during college and the way I’ve viewed discipleship ever since.

I did the whole church-hopping thing Freshman and Sophomore year going where friends were going, and finally decided to commit to a church home at the start of my Junior year at Tech. (Side note, making a church your home is incredibly important at any stage. There are no perfect churches so find one that you can pour yourself into fully and by doing so you’ll be filled up completely.)

I was interested in learning more about vocational ministry, so after I joined Northstar, I asked Jeff how I could get more involved and soon after he began discipline me and a good friend of mine.

TEACHING

From my time being discipled, I saw two fundamental things a disciple-maker is responsible for. First is to teach, or more specifically, to teach others who will teach others.

“..and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also.” (2 Timothy 2:2)

As a college guy, I remember being asked questions and being pushed in ways I just hadn’t before. I was asked to share about my affections towards God, to verbally affirm a friend’s walk out loud, to not fear challenging popular theology when it doesn’t match God’s Word and to go beyond the surface level life that’s so easy to hide behind.

MODELING

For a lot of discipleship relationships, this is where it stops. However, looking at the way Jesus discipled shows us something pretty different than a weekly meeting. Perhaps even more impactful than his sermons or other teachings was the way he modeled a faithful and obedient life.

“What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me-practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.” (Philippians 4:9)

“Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.” (1 Corinthians 11:1)

Perhaps one of the most memorable discipleship moments I have from college was sitting around the table during a Northstar staff meeting and hearing Jeff challenge the staff and volunteers with the idea that we can’t ask our church to make disciples until we are modeling it first.

I got to see the impact of this first hand. Even though I was learning from Jeff regularly, those things would have fallen flat without also being invited into his life. I got to see how he led his family, how he dealt with real challenges and difficult circumstances and how he personally valued his relationship with Jesus.

Since college I’ve had the opportunity to disciple about a dozen guys both as their “minister” and as a business-person connecting with them before or after work. I’m thankful for the example I had in Jeff showing that making a disciple goes beyond a weekly meeting or teaching someone how to live and is best when following Jesus’ example of inviting them into real life.