The Great Commission
In my last post I mentioned Dale and Jononlyn Fincher and their ministry. I have been thinking about another thing he discussed during one of our conversations. He talked about how few really strive to follow the Great Commission. Many have taken this passage and watered it down to mean that the Christian's goal in life is to get people saved. This leads to all kinds of wonderful revivals and camp salvation stories. However, we then have all these "christians" who are not living any differently. This has completely affected the church to the point that there often is not a distinction between a Christian life and lives of those in the world.In the conversation he contributed this in part to a lack of understanding of the Great Commission. As I said earlier many people believe this means the goal of the Christian should be to get people saved. Well what does the passage actually say?
Matthew 28:19-20
All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of teh Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching tehm to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always even to the end of the age.
Christ doesn't say "Go and get people saved". One very obvious reason for this is that is not our job. We can't save people, Christ alone can.
Christ tells his disciples to go and make disciples. His disciples had just spent three years being discipled and taught by him. They were called, they responded to the call, and they learned what that call meant. Now they are told to go and make disciples, baptize, and teach them to observe Christ's commands.
You see the attitude that Christian's are supposed to "go get people saved", has damaged the church. We obey the first part of the command well. We go and call others to "become a disciple of Christ". Sometimes the second part is even observed. We get them baptized. However, the issue of teaching others to observe Christ's commands is left out of many ministries. We simply drop them once we can count them in the "saved" column of the score card.
Why? I think part of the answer is it is to time consuming and not product oriented. I have spent three summers working with a mission. Through that I have gotten a glimpse into many mission philosophies. A constant struggle of missions is to financially support itself. Many of the financial supporters are not involved directly with the mission, they simply send a check. Because humans like to see a product where we put our money, the mission has preassure to deliver a product. That product is of course "souls". In our super sizing world more is always better. If at the end of the summer if we can report to our supporters that "75 children were saved", we will probably continue to receive financial support or maybe get more so we can continue our programs and maybe add more. It is not as exciting to read "We discipled two children who had committed their lives to christ and helped them become part of a church" in a mission report. The fact is that the time our ministry took to get those 75 children saved was less than the time it took to disciple those two.
Many Christian's (including myself) have watered down this passage and believe the focus is on numbers. However, Christ's own ministry tells us something different. Christ calls us to be disciple makers not soul savers. I pray that the church and my own heart would gain this focus as we interact with a lost world! We need to train those who have committed their lives to Christ, to obey His commands.
5 Comments:
God has really been stressing on me lately the importance to encourage my Christian friends at school as well as witness to my non-Christian friends. It is so important to disciple to believers!
Ahh I started a comment and I deleted it or something! Anyway... I was just saying that was an excellent post, Hannah! I totally forgot that you'd told me you still update this! I read the whole thing and it was very thought-provoking. I have a question, though - how could someone like me disciple people? I mean, it sounds so...scary. (Of course, sadly, I am scared of the idea of witnessing to someone, too!) So...what would you say?
great question Charity... but I must ask you to clarify what you mean by "someone like me". You are a pretty unique person so you will have to be a little more specific. Do you mean someone with your personality, someone of your age, someone living somewhere new, or???? but I like the question!
How about all of the above? ;-)
I guess I was mostly meaning someone my age (and maybe also someone living somewhere new).
ok... I will share my thoughts in the near future... :)
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