Radically Obedient Disciples

The Lord has a long habit of using the last person anyone would expect. In this episode of the Radically Obedient Disciples Podcast, John and Jeff each tell how they ended up in a life of disciple-making they never planned.

They look at examples of people the Lord used for his purpose in scripture and discuss the freedom of being a nobody who simply hears, obeys, and shares.

Welcome to the Radically Obedient Disciples Podcast! Here are the key takeaways from Episode 1:

• Obedience before understanding — John and Jeff share a story from Central Asian leaders who taught them that full understanding of Scripture often comes through obedience, not before it. Delayed obedience is disobedience.
• Biglife's mission — Biglife exists to see "radically obedient disciples in every nation turning the world upside down for Jesus," empowering ordinary indigenous believers (not seminary-trained professionals) to reach and disciple their own people.
• Disciple-Making Movements (DMM) — Since 1985, DMM/church-planting movements are described as the only strategy that has outpaced global population growth in reaching people for Christ, because they focus on generational multiplication rather than one-time evangelism events.
• The Mark 5 story as the model — They walk through the account of the demon-possessed man in Mark 5:1-20: he had no training or theological education, only a transformed encounter with Jesus, yet Jesus sent him immediately to tell his own community — and that obedience allegedly sparked generations of believers in that region.
• "Duck-duckling" discipleship — Training happens on the job, alongside a proven disciple-maker, rather than in a classroom — modeled on "model, assist, watch, launch" rather than curriculum-based teaching.
• Knowledge vs. obedience balance — They're careful to clarify: knowledge of Scripture isn't bad or unnecessary, but it's incomplete without action. The goal isn't obedience instead of depth, but immediate obedience alongside ongoing discipleship and community.
• Ordinary people, extraordinary impact — A recurring theme is that God uses "unlikely" or "unqualified" people, and that every believer already has the only "training" needed: their own transformation story.