Direct Answer
Discipleship is more important than cultural influence because the church's commission from Christ is to make disciples, not to dominate the culture. Cultural change may follow faithful witness, but it is a byproduct of discipleship, never its goal — and never something Scripture promises the church will accomplish.
Discussion
In the New Testament, God's people are called to build God's kingdom through discipleship. Discipleship is rooted in the authority given to Christ over all things (Matt 28:18). The church bears witness to Christ and calls people to come under God's authority freely, committing to Christ and learning to observe his instruction (Matt 28:19–20). God's kingdom grows as people are transformed and learn to live according to God's order through the work of the Spirit. Christian nationalism subtly replaces this discipleship-centered logic with a political logic. Instead of calling people to submit to God through faith, it seeks to establish a form of Christian authority through law and government. In this framework, Christian influence is secured through political power that governs people whether they share the Christian faith or not. The result is a shift away from the church's mission of making disciples toward efforts to secure cultural or political dominance.
Christians are to expand the kingdom of God by bringing new disciples under the authority of Christ while strengthening the community of faith by continually learning to observe Christ's instructions. Will making disciples have an impact on the culture? It isn't clear that it will. Neither Jesus nor the early church set out to transform Roman culture, and yet it outlasted Rome; the impact was real, but it was a byproduct of faithfulness rather than its goal. Jesus's work does not appear to have fundamentally changed Roman culture. It creates a discipleship movement within it, but Roman culture continued despite that movement. The book of Revelation provides a similar picture. It does not paint a picture of a world transformed by the efforts of the church, but of a world that is opposed to God's order and pressures his people to compromise their faith.
Discipleship is not important because it will allow us to “take back the culture.” The phrase itself assumes a prior possession that is difficult to locate historically and impossible to justify theologically. It is important because we have recognized the claim Christ has on us. Christians don't need to ignore the culture around them. We are called to love our neighbors and live faithfully within the societies where God has placed us. At times, that will involve political participation. But the church's primary calling, the one that it cannot set aside, is not to dominate culture but to embody a different way of life that is shaped by allegiance to Christ. Culture change may follow from the church's faithfulness, and we should celebrate it when it happens. Yet the church is not responsible for fixing the broken world, but for living faithfully in a world so broken only God can fix it.
Key Takeaways: Discipleship Over Cultural Influence
Core Concept — Byproduct, Not Goal
Cultural impact is a downstream effect of faithful discipleship, never the primary mission.
Core Concept — No Prior Possession
“Take back the culture” assumes a historical and theological premise the Bible never authorizes.
Scripture / Scholars
Matthew 28:18–20; Revelation; the witness of the early church under Rome.
The “So What”
Measure the church's faithfulness by the depth of its disciples, not the favorability of its cultural metrics — because only one of those was actually commanded.