Discipleship - by Pope Shenouda (Paperback)

About the Book

Pope Shenouda III explores how a person is formed in the Christian life through teachers, books, nature, the liturgy, and lived experience. Clear, warm, and demanding in equal measure.

Book Synopsis

Pope Shenouda III was one of the most beloved and prolific Christian writers of the twentieth century. In this book, he turns his attention to one of the most fundamental questions of the Christian life: what does it actually mean to follow Christ?

He draws on Scripture, the Desert Fathers, the lives of the saints, and the created world to show how a person is spiritually formed. A teacher's silence can disciple you. So can a funeral, a sparrow, the roots of a tree, the way a candle burns. The book moves through every possible school of formation and shows how someone with open eyes can learn from all of it.

The writing is warm but demanding. Pope Shenouda does not let the reader settle for knowing the right things. He is concerned with what a person becomes over years of steady, humble practice. Discipleship, in his understanding, is the work of a lifetime, and it requires sitting at someone's feet long enough to be genuinely changed.

This book is part of a broader ministry series written for servants, youth workers, and anyone involved in Christian formation. It has remained in circulation because it speaks to something that does not date: the need to be shaped, guided, and formed by something greater than your own understanding.

Readers of Coptic Orthodox spirituality, patristic Christianity, Christian formation, and devotional theology will find it rich and practical.