Discipleship is not something Christians either choose or neglect. It is something that happens to every human being, constantly. The only choice involved is not whether one will be discipled, but by whom.

This is where the modern church often misjudges the situation. Discipleship is treated as a 90-minute church activity. But formation does not work that way. People are shaped far more by what they repeatedly give themselves to than by what they occasionally affirm. Time, attention, habit, and imitation form a person long before stated beliefs do.

If that is true—and it is—then most Christians are not primarily being formed by Scripture, the Spirit, or the practices of the church. They are being formed elsewhere.

Consider the basic arithmetic. A committed churchgoer might spend an hour in a worship service, perhaps another hour listening to a sermon on the way to work, and maybe a third hour in study or group discussion. That is a generous estimate. The rest of the week is spent immersed in other environments, other narratives, other rhythms. Those environments do not pause formation while the church is absent. They work continuously.

The assumption that a few hours of intentional spiritual input can outweigh constant exposure to cultural formation is not spiritual optimism; it is naïveté.

Culture does not disciple through explicit instruction. It disciples through repetition. Through what is normalized. Through what is rewarded and punished. Over time, this trains instincts—how a person reacts, what they fear, what they excuse, what they desire, what they consider unthinkable.

This is why so many Christians sincerely believe in the authority of Scripture yet interpret life through categories borrowed from the surrounding world. They speak Christian language, but their reflexes are secular. Their moral reasoning follows cultural logic. Their sense of identity, safety, and meaning has been trained elsewhere.

This explains a great deal of what we see in the modern church: believers who know Christian claims but lack moral clarity; believers who speak of love but cannot define good; believers who collapse under pressure, conform under scrutiny, or retreat into silence when faith carries a cost. This is not primarily a failure of belief. It is a failure of formation.

Until the church is willing to admit that its people are being actively discipled by forces outside its walls, it will continue misdiagnosing the problem. It will keep treating discipleship as a supplement rather than a rival system of formation. And it will keep producing Christians who are sincere, well-meaning, and quietly shaped by a world that does not share their confession.

Everyone is being discipled by something. That is not a warning; it is a fact. The question the church must finally face is whether it is willing to form people deeply enough to compete for their allegiance.

Because if it is not, something else already has.