Escaping the Learning Loop: Love, Discipleship, and Real Growth. The Greatest Commandment (Love) & The Great Commission (Mission)
When Teaching Is Not Enough: Moving Beyond the Learning Loop
Many churches today do a good job offering courses on missions and teaching on discipleship. The Great Commission is preached, studied, and discussed often—and that is a good thing.
Yet for many of us, something quietly stalls.
We remain at the teaching layer. We listen, take notes, attend classes, and move from one course to the next. Over time, we fall into a teaching–learning loop where knowledge keeps increasing, but lived experience does not. The gap between knowing and experiencing grows wider, and eventually, spiritual growth slows—not because we don’t care, but because we never move out of learning mode.
Why does this happen so easily?
Why Teaching Becomes the Default
1. Teaching Is Easier to Organize and Measure
Teaching scales well.
One preacher can speak to many listeners.
Attendance numbers, sermon series, and course completion are easy to track.
By contrast, discipleship and love are difficult to measure. You cannot easily quantify patience, faithfulness, or transformation. What can’t be measured often gets sidelined.
2. Teaching Feels “Safe”
Teaching creates distance.
It carries far less relational risk than mentoring or life-on-life discipleship.
Listening feels safer than being known. Learning feels safer than being challenged.
3. Cultural Influence
We live in a culture that values information and expertise.
As a result, faith slowly becomes something we know rather than something we live. Spiritual maturity is mistaken for theological fluency, and discipleship becomes content consumption instead of character formation.
4. Time and Volunteer Limits
True discipleship requires:
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time
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mature leaders
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smaller groups
Some churches—and some of us —may lack a structure, confidence, or capacity to do this well. Teaching fills the gap because it is efficient, even if it is incomplete.
Recovering the Biblical Balance
Scripture never separates love, teaching, and mission.
Jesus gives us:
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the Great Commandment: Love God and love your neighbour
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the Great Commission: Make disciples, teaching them to obey (Matthew 28:19–20)
Matthew places these teachings near the end of his Gospel intentionally.
They belong together.
A Simple Gospel Flow
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Love God and neighbour (Matthew 22) → our inner orientation
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All authority given to Jesus (Matthew 28:18) → who we follow
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Go and make disciples (Matthew 28:19–20) → our outer direction
When this flow is broken, something always suffers.
Without love, mission becomes pressure.
Without mission, love becomes private.
From Knowing to Living
Teaching is necessary—but it was never meant to be the final destination.
The goal is not to produce better listeners, but transformed disciples who live out what they have learned. Growth happens when teaching moves off the page and into relationships, habits, and everyday obedience.
The invitation of Jesus is not simply:
Learn from me.
It is:
Follow me.
And following always leads us beyond the classroom—into love, into mission, and into real life.
Start Small: Love Begins Closer Than We Think
When Jesus speaks about loving God and loving our neighbour, He does not begin with global strategies or large-scale programs. Love starts close to home—with the way we care for ourselves and the people already within our reach.
Loving yourself is not self-indulgence; it is stewardship. It means paying attention to your limits, your spiritual health, and your readiness to walk with others. Burned-out people rarely make good disciples.
Loving your neighbour, likewise, does not require a mission trip or a new church initiative. It often begins with small-scale faithfulness:
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checking in on a lonely neighbour
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mentoring one younger believer
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inviting someone for a meal
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serving quietly in your local community
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walking alongside one person in prayer and accountability
These small projects may not look impressive, but they are deeply biblical. Discipleship grows best at human scale.