What ails your church? Hopefully the answer doesn’t come too quickly! Hopefully your church is the picture of health, where everyone’s growing in love of God and love of neighbor.

Or maybe your church has a discipleship disease. If so, then J. T. English can help with his book Deep Discipleship: How the Church Can Make Whole Disciples of Jesus (B&H). Before taking over as lead pastor of Storyline Fellowship in Arvada, Colorado, J. T. served as a pastor at The Village Church in Flower Mound, Texas. He founded and directed The Village Church Institute, which is committed to theological education in the local church.

J. T. sees churches worried about being irrelevant, worried they’re asking too much of busy people. Many Christians seem to think the church has gotten too deep. But J. T. couldn’t disagree more! As you might guess from his book title, he says most churches aren’t nearly deep enough.

The good news is that deep discipleship does not require massive resources, a large congregation, or an enormous ministry staff. It starts with not apologizing when we ask Christians to make commitments. J. T. joined me on Gospelbound to discuss Sunday school vs. small groups, active learning, and commissioning culture, among other topics. He was a good sport with questions such as, “What’s the bigger threat to the church today, CRT or travel sports?” He also explained how this book would be different if he’d written after COVID-19.