A Local Church’s Response to the Great Commission
Just before the resurrected Christ ascended to heaven, He gathered His eleven disciples about Him and gave them their prime directive: Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations. And you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth. (Mt. 28:19; Mk. 16:15; Acts 1:8)
This prime directive, this Great Commission, was given to the first group of Christians, the first local church that ever existed. Because of their commitment to fulfill that Great Commission, the world has never been the same. Every local church today has the exact same prime directive, the same marching orders. So, how are the local churches doing today? How is YOUR church doing?
Picture this scene. Your church leadership, including you whether you are a leader or not, are standing together out in the church parking lot when suddenly Jesus appears, restates the Great Commission, then floats up into the clouds. Let’s say your group is the original eleven. What’s your next move? Call a special meeting. Good show! We see in Acts chapter one that the eleven returned to meet together in the upper room. Any thing else? We need to pray. Amen! And that’s what the disciples did.
What if that group of eleven responded to the Commission charge the way the typical evangelical, Bible believing church in America does? Can’t you just imagine the discussion?
Peter: This meeting is called to order. Okay guys, now what do we do?
Thomas: Surely Jesus doesn’t mean that eleven of us are supposed to reach the whole world. We
haven’t even reached all of Jerusalem. We’re going to need some help from other people.
Matthew: But He told us to do it.
Thomas: Then maybe you should be the first to go somewhere.
Matthew: Hey, I’ve got a good job with good benefits. I can’t just drop everything and leave.
Andrew: We’ve all got jobs and families to support.
James (son of Alphaeus): Maybe you could work along the way. A lot of people travel in their
work. Most of you are fishermen. You could fish wherever you go.
James (son of Zebedee): We only know about fishing the Sea of Galilee. That’s freshwater fishing.
Ocean fishing is a whole different world.
John: Besides, how are we supposed to get our boat over to the ocean any way?
James: Our boat? That’s Dad’s boat. He’s not going to let us take it off the lake.
Peter: Let’s get back to the assignment. We are to start in Jerusalem, then go
out to Judea and Samaria. That’s the surrounding country, places we’ve been
before. Surely we can do that much. We don’t all live in Jerusalem.
Philip: I’ll go back to Bethsaida.
Peter: Well, uh, I thought Andrew and I could go back to Bethsaida and that would free you to go
somewhere else.
Andrew: Like Dan or Beersheba. Those are certainly remote places.
Judas (not Iscariot): I think the remotest part of the earth is further away than Dan and
Beersheba. I think Jesus means the whole planet. The gospel is to go even beyond the
boundaries of the Roman Empire, to all of Asia, Africa, and Europe, even to the Gauls.
Philip: (Shudders.) The Gauls! Such barbarians! They say they have blue skin and go
to war completely naked!
Judas: Just the kind of people that need the gospel.
Andrew: Sounds like a job for you, Simon. You’re the Zealot.
Simon: Hey! I’ve got a ministry right here in Jerusalem. I can’t abandon it. Maybe we need to
contact some of the seventy that were sent out. Maybe some of them will feel called to
one of these remote places.
Bartholomew: What about that guy that lived in the tombs of Gerasenes? He was ready to leave
that place to follow Jesus. Or maybe we could support his work there in some way. He’s
in Decapolis and that is certainly beyond Judea and Samaria. Then we could contact that
woman at the well and see if there is someone in Samaria who could use some support.
Matthew: If so, then we’d have all our bases covered. We would cover Jerusalem. The
fishermen cover Judea. Surely someone will be willing in Samaria. And the former
tomb-walker will be our man in the remotest place, whether he stays there or goes
somewhere else.
Simon: Then we could put a map up on the wall here in the upper room showing where
everyone is so the whole church could see how we are answering the Great
Commission. You guys in Bethsaida could do the same thing.
Peter: But this doesn’t have any of us going anywhere new. Didn’t it sound to you like
Jesus meant for us or at least some of us to go somewhere?
Philip: Some of us are! To Bethsaida! We’ll be in Jerusalem and Judea. That’s two of
the four places mentioned. We’re half way home. We can support these other
two and pray God will raise up more workers and send them our way.
Bartholomew: Then we can be the senders. “Goers” and “Senders.” That’s what we
need for this to work.
Peter: It sure seemed to me like we were supposed to be the “Goers”, even to the
remotest part of the earth.
John: Come on, Peter, we’re just eleven guys. Even if we include all the believers in
Jerusalem, it’s just too much. We have to take care of the home church first.
Andrew, Philip, and you can go to Bethsaida. God will raise up others for the
rest of the world.
Peter: But He told us to go, that we are to preach the gospel and be His witnesses even
to the remotest parts of the earth. If not us, then who?
John: Where’s your faith? God will raise up someone……somewhere.
Peter: (Relieved.) But not necessarily us?
John: Right. So, let’s send some letters out and see what kind of response we get.
Peter: I’ll accept that as a motion. All in favor say, “Aye”.
All: Aye!
Peter: The motion passes. Remember to pray God raises up someone who’ll be
obedient to Christ’s call on his life. I’ll accept a motion that the meeting be
adjourned. And someone pray for the snacks Philip brought.
Sidestepping Part of the Great Commission
Does this sound even vaguely familiar? Can you identify any of this reasoning in your local church? Or in your missions committee? Or in you? If you are skeptical, gather any group of believers in your church (They don’t have to be leaders.), and ask them, “Pretend there were no missionaries our church was supporting, how would our church go about fulfilling Acts 1:8?” (And yes, you can have your current missions budget to work with.)
In our imaginary scenario, the disciples were in somewhat of a panic to think that maybe Jesus really expected them to leave their homes and jobs to preach the gospel in some foreign land. After all, they were fulfilling part of the Great Commission already.
Surely that was sufficient. Since God was blessing their ministry in Jerusalem and Judea, that had to take priority over the rest of the world.
Yet, they knew they could not ignore the other part of the Commission. So, what’s a small local church like theirs to do? What was their solution? It was the same as most of our own churches do when we want to send out a missionary. We look outside our church body for someone who will go to the nations. Find those people and take them on as an extension of our local church’s ministry. Then we will be fulfilling all of Acts 1:8. In reality, though, taking one from the outside is not an extension of your local church ministry, but is aiding another church’s ministry to the remotest parts of the earth. In reality, a mission strategy that solely supports “outsiders” on the foreign field sidesteps part of the Great Commission meant for every local church.*
_______
*Let me avoid a stoning by stating I am not opposed to taking on “outside” missionaries to support in the local church. Most of my own church’s supported missionaries are from the “outside”. If it weren’t for God raising up “someone…somewhere” to go to the mission field, many churches would not be supporting any missionaries. Few churches are supporting a “homegrown” missionary. Fewer still have more than one “homegrown” missionary on the field. However, I praise God for those He raises up from elsewhere. Most of those missionaries would have never made it to the field without the help of other churches. Most churches’ missions program would be dead without them.
Of the three parts of Acts 1:8 (Judea and Samaria are one unit.), the imaginary scenario had the disciples not expecting they had to go to the remotest part, nor did they expect any others in their Jerusalem church to go either. They didn’t think all parts of the Commission were to be fulfilled by themselves, the leaders of the church, or anyone else in their congregation. Such is the mindset of the typical protestant church in America. We’ll reach our Jerusalem and Judea/Samaria and we’ll support foreign missionaries, however we get them.
With new churches starting up and old ones closing their doors, it is impossible to pin down exactly how many protestant churches there are in the United States. There is a revolving door of missionaries going to and coming off the field. So pinning down the exact number of protestant missionaries serving at a given time is impossible to do as well. Yet, there are ball park figures people toss around. According to an artricle in the April 2006 issue of Christianity Today, there were an estimated 303,025 non-Roman Catholic Christian churches in the United States in 2000.[1] The U.S. Center for World Missions estimated the number of protestant missionaries from the U.S. in 2002 to be 64,000.[2]
If those 64,000 missionaries came from 64,000 different churches, that would mean that roughly one in five protestant churches have a missionary from their congregation on the field. One in five? Well that doesn’t sound so bad, does it?
Well, first of all, since there are missions-minded churches that have several of their members on the mission field, we know it is less than 64,000 churches sending out the missionaries. But even if it were 64,000 churches, having one in five that has one of their members on the mission field means eighty percent of the churches have no one from their church family on the mission field. Eighty percent is a huge majority of churches not sending out missionaries. And since some churches have multiple members on the field, the number that do not increases to over eighty percent.
So when I say “the typical church” is failing in this area, it’s because I believe when eighty percent of the churches are doing the same thing, it qualifies as being typical. And typically, these churches, regardless of their size, are failing to send out their own people to even the remotest parts of the world.
However, Jesus did expect those eleven to be a part of all of Acts 1:8. They did go the remotest parts of the earth. They were the first local church. Every local church established after them has the same expectation upon them by our Lord. The universal church of Christ is in full agreement. We are to preach the gospel to all nations. However, individually, most local churches, while supportive of missions, have little expectation that their own people will be going to the remotest parts of the earth.
Even churches that are strong in discipleship are not discipling their people to be Acts 1:8 Christians. Discipleship is directed at raising up mature servants for the their church in their “Jerusalem”. They are even disappointed to see some they have discipled,
because of job changes, go into their Judea and Samaria. Because of the transient society we live in today, many churches continually “lose” those promising and gifted men and women that have completed discipleship training. Churches need to quit looking at this as “losing” workers, but as sending them out to our Judea and Samaria. The local church should rejoice God is using them to make disciples and commission them to make other disciples in their new location.
Partial Commission Discipleship
What an ugly title: Partial Commission Discipleship. As one whom is very involved with discipleship in my church, I find that title insulting. Our discipleship efforts are based upon the Great Commission. We stress Matthew 28:19-20; Mark 16:15; Luke 24:47; and Acts 1:8 as every Christian’s assignment from the Savior Himself. We stress the entirety of the Great Commission, not just part of it. Lots of churches have this same dedication to the Great Commission in their discipleship programs. So what is this “partial” stuff? It’s not going on in my church! Nor yours! Right? Right!
Maybe. Maybe not.
Your church may not even use the word “discipleship” in any of its programs. Whatever your church is doing to train believers to serve Jesus Christ falls under the Great Commission, whether it is called discipleship, equipping, or some other tag. It’s all a part of making disciples, which is being called in this book “discipleship”. The question is, what is the goal of your discipleship program? Every church has their own version of the goal stated somewhere, which is something like, “To bring Christians to a mature faith in God and His Word, whereby they can be used by God to fulfill the Great Commission by going forth into the world and making disciples of others.” (No, that’s not my church’s statement. It just sounds like the many I have read over the years.)
Whatever your stated goal is, it surely is a Complete Great Commission Discipleship statement. Reaching the whole world is there, or at least implied. Yet, in the actual implementation of the training, what is the intent and hope of the program? Most likely, your church has several programs under the big umbrella we are calling “discipleship”. There are studies for basic foundations of Christianity, Bible Doctrine, Bible Study Methods, Discovering Your Gifts, Leadership Development, and Evangelism Training. Plus, there are classes for “How To” training for husbands, wives, moms, dads, singles, singles again, single parenting, parenting teenagers, grandparenting, mentoring, finances, small group ministry, Sunday School teachers, discover God’s will for your life, and spiritual warfare. You get the picture.
After one has completed a series of classes, what is the local church’s hope for that individual? The hope is for that person to get plugged-in serving there in the local church! If one who has completed the courses, or worse yet, has been teaching the courses, must move to another part of the country, everyone is disappointed. Why? Because the hope is that they would stay right there in our Jerusalem, faithfully serving until the Lord returns.
If, instead, someone announces their call for full-time Christian service in the pastorate or a U.S. based para-church ministry, people are pleasantly surprised. If someone announces they are called to the foreign mission field, they are pleasantly baffled over the idea. If one from their church actually enters pastoral or para-church ministry, it is a historical milestone spoken of proudly ten, even twenty years later. If someone actually makes it to the foreign mission field, it is a historical oddity that has people scratching their heads in wonder ten, even twenty years later.
Having some of the local church’s best disciples transfer to another part of the U.S. is no reason to despair. It is reason to rejoice that God is using your church to send out others to our Judea and Samaria. We should be commissioning them to go forth and make disciples in their new location. But because our discipleship focus is limited to our Jerusalem, we don’t expect (or hope) anyone will be used beyond our Jerusalem. That is because the heart of our discipleship does not go beyond our Jerusalem. However, the biblical mandate for the local church is to make disciples for our Jerusalem AND our Judea and Samaria AND the remotest parts of the earth. That’s Acts 1:8 discipleship.
The church that makes Acts 1:8 disciples will be regularly sending disciples even to the remotest parts of the earth.
Hold on here! Isn’t God being left out of this process? He is the One who calls people into full time Christian service, isn’t He? True. But we are the ones that are to enable them to answer that call. How so? To whom did God give the responsibility to train new believers to go into all the world and preach the gospel? To whom did Jesus say to teach these new disciples “to obey everything I have commanded you”? (Mt. 28:20 NIV)
To you and I. To the local church. That’s who. Yet the discipleship-oriented church in America, for the most part, is teaching to obey everything except the very last thing He said while still on this earth.
Objection! My church preaches and teaches the Great Commission regularly! We are strong in evangelism. Our church has doubled in size the last _(pick a number)_ years. We support _(pick a number)_ missionaries.
Praise the Lord! Those things are great! May God continue to bless these areas of ministry. But, let’s evaluate your Great Commission Discipleship with a few questions:
1) Is your church discipling with the expectation that God will take some of your best
disciples and move them to other parts of the country and to other countries?
2) When was the last time one from your church entered pastoral ministry? When was
was the time before that?
3) Does your church have any “home grown” missionaries? Were any of them sent
out in the past five years?
4) How many from your church are currently in school being trained for any kind of
full-time vocational Christian service?
5) How many currently attending your church are saying they are considering going
into any kind of full-time Christian service?
If the answer to any or all of these questions is, “None,” or, “I’m not sure,” chances are, your church is not involved in Acts 1:8 discipleship. If the local church is not making and sending out disciples to our Judea/Samaria and the remotest part of the earth, along with the making of disciples for our Jerusalem, then that church is not fulfilling the Great Commission. Making disciples for our Jerusalem is necessary. But that is not the complete commission. It is Partial Commission Discipleship.
In the 1970’s, a new faddish emphasis swept American Christianity called “Life Style Evangelism”. The battle cry was, “Your life should so exemplify Jesus Christ that others will be compelled to ask you what makes you different.” After the “anything goes” lifestyle ushered into mainstream America by the 1960’s social revolution, this call to sanctified Christian living was much needed. The hypocritical examples of worldly Christians and self-righteous Christians was destroying opportunities to win a hearing for the gospel among our peers. It was, and still is, a biblical approach to reaching the lost with the gospel message.
We don’t hear too much about lifestyle evangelism any more. Eventually, people began claiming they were practicing lifestyle evangelism by saying, “I don’t talk about the gospel to others, I’d rather they see the reality of my faith by the way I live.” Lifestyle evangelism became an excuse not to share the gospel. There was a lot of lifestyle going on, but no evangelism. No one ever received eternal life by observing a Christian life.
Observing the Christian life may have made them curious, but it is the gospel that saves.
Lifestyle evangelism that does not share the gospel message is no evangelism. The same thing happened with “Friendship Evangelism”, the fad of the 1980’s. A lot of friendly Christians never got around to sharing the gospel. Friendship evangelism that doesn’t share the gospel is just friendship, not evangelism.
Many churches think they are fulfilling the Great Commission because they have a discipleship program. Some churches, a few, have a Complete Great Commission Discipleship program successfully in place. People are regularly being raised up to go to all parts of the Acts 1:8 mandate. A church that is not raising up it’s own “home grown” missionaries is, at best, involved in Partial Commission Discipleship, for disciples are being raised for only part of the Great Commission.
Time to Take a Look in the Mirror
You, dear reader, are a leader or soon will be, at some level, in your local church. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be interested in this book. From what you have read so far, you should already know if your church is engaged in Complete or Partial Commission Discipleship. If you love your church (and you should), and can see God’s hand at work in many areas of your church (and you should), it may be hard to see the forest because of all the beautiful trees. Good things and good growth are all around the congregation. Besides that, you have two from your church in Bible college and that retired couple just returned from serving a two-year term in Africa. Doesn’t that sound like an Acts 1:8 church? That’s not Partial Commission Discipleship, is it?
Maybe, maybe not.
Just as, by God’s grace, some get saved attending churches that don’t stress the gospel message, we can see, by God’s grace, some going to the remotest parts of the earth coming from churches that don’t stress all parts of Acts 1:8 in their discipleship efforts. Sometimes individuals in the local church head into pastoral ministry or missions by some curious default rather than a prayerfully planned design. The questions, as you look at your local church, are: Is there a prayerfully planned discipleship program that expects to raise up pastors and missionaries from your congregation? And, if so, are you seeing any fruit as a direct result of that effort?
Now you should know how well your church is actively pursuing Acts 1:8 discipleship. But what about you, dear reader? Do you, in your role in the local church, consciously pray that the fruit of your ministry is a cross-section of Acts 1:8 Christians? You see, the local church cannot become an Acts 1:8 church until the leaders themselves become Acts 1:8 Christians. God doesn’t need all the leaders to start with. Just one, actually, who will begin Acts 1:8 discipleship. Will you be that one?
Pray about it. Don’t take this call lightly. You may get little support from the more “mature” leadership in the church. Expect criticism of such “lofty idealism”. But if you will commit yourself to it, your life and the lives of many in your church will never be the same.
Now, put down this book and go pray about it. Confess where you have fallen short. Confess your fears, your inadequacies. Fear and trembling in a heart that truly desires to see God glorified is what is needed. Go. Pray. There’s no sense reading on if you won’t say yes to Acts 1:8 discipleship.
Endnotes
1) Smietana, Bob. “Statistical Illusion”, Christianity Today, April 2006
No comments:
Post a Comment