“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” John 1:14 ESV
The Proximity Discipleship Seminar is finished. Twenty-five pastors and ministry leaders have been commissioned and sent. And I am sitting with the quiet weight of a week I will not soon forget.
You cannot disciple from a distance.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer puts it plainly: “Discipleship requires presence.” Proximity. This is the irreducible core of what we have been building toward — to be near enough, long enough, and living Christ-like enough that others begin to want to be Christ-like themselves.
As the Proximity Discipleship Seminar comes to a close in the central highlands of Vietnam, I want to take a moment to walk through the highlight reel.
If we are to pursue Proximity Discipleship in others — if we are genuinely committed to being near enough, long enough, and holy enough — we must first look to ourselves.
We cannot draw others closer to Jesus than we ourselves are willing to go.
Before there is any honest hope of making disciples, there must be a prior and ongoing act of surrender: drawing near to the One who calls us, who commissions us, and who sends us out. The command to go is only ever issued to those who have first come. This was the theological bedrock on which the entire week was built.
Over five days, we worked through these principles with twenty-five pastors from across central Vietnam — representing four provinces and five ethnic minority groups. The time of training was deeply impactful for all involved.
We began on Monday by counting the cost. Discipleship is not a casual undertaking. Obedience is not a comfortable one. Before we could speak of making disciples, we had to reckon honestly with what following Jesus demands of us — and what it costs to answer that call without reservation.
On Tuesday, we turned our attention inward: How do we become disciples? The answer that the Scriptures keep returning to is not a program or a method. It is proximity. We must draw near to Jesus first — genuinely, unhurriedly, at cost — before we can have any credible hope of drawing others near to Him.
Wednesday brought one of the most liberating conversations of the week: our identity in Christ. There is a crucial distinction between living from our identity in Christ and striving for it. When we live for identity — performing, proving, earning — we carry a weight that was never ours to carry. But when we live from identity — anchored in who we already are in Him — the pressure of performance falls away. We are not building a case for ourselves. We are operating out of a settled conviction that He who called us is faithful. That reorientation alone changes how a pastor leads a congregation.
On Thursday, we moved into the practical: How do we model a life of discipleship for others? The formative insight of the day was simple but worth repeating — discipleship is more caught than taught. It is not primarily transmitted through lectures. It is transferred through proximity, through shared life, through being seen. A pastor who is visibly near to Jesus is already discipling the people around them, whether or not a formal program is in place.
Friday brought us to the culmination: How do we go? How do we make disciples? This session carried a particular weight, because it asked these leaders to look outward — to their home villages, their congregations, the communities they have yet to reach — and to consider the possibility that they are not merely recipients of discipleship but carriers of it. We spent time on the multiplication of the Gospel: the remarkable and underappreciated truth that when we are fully formed as disciples of Jesus, and when we then disciple others, we are not merely training followers. We are training future senders. The Gospel multiplies. This is how the church has grown for two thousand years. This is how it will grow here in Vietnam.
The title of this update is not a ministry slogan. It is a theological statement — and its author is not us.
John 1:14 tells us that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. The Greek behind “dwelt” carries the image of pitching a tent, of taking up residence. God, in His infinite wisdom, did not send a curriculum. He did not transmit doctrine from a safe remove. He came. He moved into the neighborhood. He walked the roads. He sat at tables. He called men by name and invited them to follow at close range.
The incarnation is the original act of proximity discipleship.
What we attempted this week was not novel. We were simply following the model.
We look to Jesus as the pattern for how disciples are made through proximity — and the parallels to our week together were not lost on anyone in the room.
Jesus lived with the Twelve. For five days, we lived as twenty-five fellow learners in a mountain villa in the highland mountains of central Vietnam, sleeping under the same roof, beginning each day together before the teaching sessions opened.
Jesus ate with His followers. We shared every common meal together — lingering long over noodle bowls and laughter, discussing the morning’s lesson long after the plates were cleared. Those meals were not incidental to the seminar. They were the seminar, continued.
Jesus celebrated the highlights. We culminated the week with a traditional K’Ho celebratory meal — water buffalo jerky, bamboo sticky rice, and the kind of fellowship that does not require translation. It was a commissioning feast as much as a dinner.
Jesus was present. So, by God’s grace, were we. It is in those margins of time — the side conversations that stretch long into the evening, the Old and New Testament connections that surface over tea, the quiet moments of prayer before a session begins — that I feel most fully in the work I am called to do. No lectern. No agenda. Just presence, and the Word alive in the room.
Our hope throughout this seminar was not merely to offer sound teaching. Our hope was to model what it looks like to make disciples of others — and to do so in a way these twenty-five leaders could carry home and reproduce.
I want to say something directly to everyone who has been praying, giving, and following along this week.
You were here.
I do not say that as a polite gesture. I mean it in the most concrete sense I know. When I stood before twenty-five expectant faces on Monday morning, your prayers had preceded me into that room. When the teaching landed, your intercession had prepared the soil. When we gathered Friday evening over bamboo sticky rice and gave thanks together, the communion of the Body of Christ stretched from the highlands of central Vietnam all the way back to living rooms, churches, and early mornings in the United States.
Proximity discipleship, we have said all week, is the work of drawing near. But this week reminded me that the Body of Christ is not limited by geography. You drew near in the most faithful way available to you. And it was felt.
Thank you.
As these pastors head back to their home villages and churches, my prayer is that they carry with them not merely information, but conviction. That they feel more empowered, first, to draw closer to Jesus themselves — pursuing a deeper and more costly discipleship with Christ — and then, flowing from that nearness, more confident in making disciples of others in Vietnam.
This is how the church has multiplied for two thousand years. This is how the church will multiply here.
May God’s light continue to pierce the darkness in this region and in this country.
From one man He made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and He marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek Him and perhaps reach out for Him and find Him, though He is not far from any one of us. Acts 17:26-27