If someone asked you how God brought you to faith and grew you in spiritual maturity, what would you answer? For most of us, the answer would probably include a person.

Maybe your parents faithfully prayed with and for you as a child, modeling what it means to live a life of prayer. Maybe a Sunday school teacher memorized each week’s verses alongside you, showing you the importance of hiding God’s Word in your heart. Maybe a youth worker spent time with you, an older church member regularly invited you over for a cup of coffee, or a pastor welcomed you into his home for meals—each of them demonstrating the grace of hospitality and the practical outworking of Christian love.

At every step of our growth in godliness, the Lord gave us someone to imitate.

With our children, we instinctively know that God doesn’t intend for someone to simply hand them a Bible, teach them to read, and leave them to their own spiritual devices. Along with giving the Bible, God also gives kids parents—mature people who live in the same home, experience the same circumstances, and can model what it means to follow Christ in all the particulars of life.

Strangely, though, we sometimes act as if new believers will attain spiritual maturity with little more than a dropped-off stack of resources. Just like kids need parents to imitate, spiritual children need spiritual mothers and fathers to model the life of faith.

This is true in our own countries, and it’s also true on the mission field, as Elliot Clark’s recent article, “Is Your Discipleship Model Missing Something?,” points out. Clark helpfully examines how Jesus and the apostle Paul approached ministry and concludes: “The work of the Great Commission isn’t accomplished merely through instruction or investment. . . . We make disciples of all nations by showing them with our whole self what it looks like to follow Christ.”

Our ultimate aim, of course, is not to make disciples in our own image but to make disciples who look increasingly like Christ. We imitate others, “as [they] imitate Christ,” (1 Cor. 11:1). In a new year, Clark’s words challenge all of us. Who are you imitating? And who can you invite to imitate you?