On the lostness of mankind...
The Good News is oh-so-good because the bad news is oh-so-bad. The bad news is that all have sinned and are separated from God [Rom. 3:23]. Psalm 14:2-3 - “The Lord has looked down from heaven upon the sons of men, to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God. They have all turned aside, they have all become corrupt; there is no one who does good, not even one.”
All of us sons and daughters of Adam are in fact born into this condition, born with hearts which instinctively do not seek after God. “Through the disobedience of the one the many were made sinners” [Rom. 5:19]. And there is a penalty for sin - “The wages of sin is death” [Rom. 6:23]. This has manifested as both a spiritual death and a physical death. In the moment that the first man chose what he wanted instead of what God wanted, to stray outside of all that God permitted, his spirit died, instantly came under condemnation and separation from God, and his body also began to die. This death subsequently spread to all his descendants. To every last one of us. “Through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned” [Rom. 5:12].
We are born this way. Every person on this planet comes out of the womb hardwired for sin. We choose what we want over God and what He wants. It is now a part of our nature, a fallen nature. “Behold I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me” [Ps. 51:5]. We “were by nature children of wrath” [Eph. 2:3]. Thus we come face to face with our predicament, these dire straights. To fully pay this death penalty means eternal separation from God and His goodness. It is a debt we dare not pay - our desperate need is for someone to pay our penalty for us, someone who is innocent of sin. And yet at the same time we need a new nature. We need to be rewired internally. We need to be rescued, saved, from the penalty and the power and the presence of sin - and we entirely unable to accomplish any of this on our own. We need a Rescuer.
The Great Commission passages: Mt. 28:18-20, Acts 1:8
The Good News then is that God came to our rescue. He sent His only Son, Jesus, to be our Rescuer, our Savior. Jesus Christ lived a life completely without sin, and His execution on that cross paid the full penalty for sin, such that everyone who believes/trusts in Jesus receives complete forgiveness for all their sins. Not only that, God gives each believer a new nature and His Spirit, giving them the power to say no to sin. This same Holy Spirit then also gives believers the power to help others believe in and follow Jesus.
The last thing Jesus told His followers before He ascended back to heaven was that they were to teach others about Him: “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you will be My witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” [Acts 1:8]. In other words, everywhere you go, even to and including the ends of the earth, tell others what you know about Me. “Make disciples of all the nations,” He said, “baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you” [Mt. 28.19-20].
It is clear that Jesus expected those who believed in Him to carry the Good News about Him to all the peoples of the earth. The phrase for “all the nations” in Mt. 28:19 the Greek is panta ta ethne, which suggests not only every geopolitical nation but every ethnic group. In fact, Rev. 7:9 describes the future scene in heaven where people “from every nation and tribe and peoples and tongues” are standing before the throne and before the Lamb of God - this One Who died on the cross for them and Who gave them this mission to spread the news about Him to all peoples everywhere. And not only does He expect believers to do this, to carry out this Great Commission, but again, He gives us the power to follow through with it by His Holy Spirit.
Interaction with the “Growing a healthy Church” Philosophy
The essence of the Growing A Healthy Church philosophy is that our goal in the church is to raise up multiplying Great-Commission disciples out of a healthy foundation of loving relationships and devotion to prayer and commitment to the Word of God. At its very core, the Great Commission to “make disciples of all nations” cannot mean that we simply gather existing believers from other churches. Jesus said, “Follow Me and I will make you fishers of men” [Mt. 4:19]. That is a promise - those who are truly following Jesus, He will transform into persons who “catch” other people for Jesus. Such that it is fair to inquire, if a person is not catching people for Jesus, are they truly His disciple? He said, “I have other sheep, which are not of this fold; I must bring them also” [Jn. 10:16]. Implicit in the Great Commission in Mt. 28 is the command to make disciples who are taught to likewise fulfill this command to make disciples. This is what programmers call an infinite loop - it turns back on itself repeatedly. Disciples make disciples who make disciples who make disciples and so on and so forth. If we stop at conversion and do not teach believers how to witness and make disciples, then we are stopping short, failing to fully carry out the Great Commission. And these Great Commission disciples are best produced not in isolation but in the context of community, a loving church family, one which understands that God brings about this missional increase in response to the broad sowing of His Word by people who are striving to love one another well and who are learning to depend on Him, expressed in persevering believing prayer.
We could fairly ask, what does it take to be a witness? To make disciples? This is not rocket science. It doesn’t require some advanced degree, or months or even years of training. We can take a cue from the woman at the well. The very day she believed, she went and told the people of her town what she knew about Jesus, and we read that many of them believed in Jesus because of her testimony [Jn. 4:39].
This in no way minimizes the benefits of training. Those first followers of Jesus were watching Him and learning from Him, and He gave them instructions before He sent them out [Mt. 10:5]. In order to carry out the command to teach new disciples all that Jesus has commanded, would-be disciple-makers must be versed in those same commands as well.
Suffice it to say that making disciples involves life-on-life transactions of a spiritual nature. New disciples will benefit most from being trained to depend on the power of the Holy Spirit for witnessing. They can of course be taught helpful ways to talk about how others can learn to know Christ personally and which verses can be used to help them journey towards faith in Him. Some people will need to be taught practical ways to overcome their shyness. Others will perhaps need to learn practical answers to some of the more challenging questions asked by unbelievers.
We must also recognize the significance of maturity on fruit bearing. Jesus said, “By this is my Father glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be My disciples” [Jn. 15:8]. The more mature the tree, the more fruit we can expect it to bear.
But in the end, Jesus makes it clear that He bears the fruit. “I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing” [Jn. 15:5]. Jesus bears the fruit. His Holy Spirit gives us the power to be His witnesses. We must teach believers the importance of depending on Christ and on the power of His indwelling Holy Spirit to be fruitful disciple-makers.
Demonstrate a strategy that implements this philosophy in one’s personal life
What might this look like for us? Jesus gave us a blueprint in Acts 1:8 - “You will be My witness in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth.” We are called and commanded and sent to be witnesses - by the power of His indwelling filling Spirit we tell others what we know about Jesus, that He died on the cross to pay the penalty for our sins and He rose from the grave, proving that He is the only way to have eternal life.
But to that end, we all have a Jerusalem. This is where we live and play, work and go to school. There are people all around us who need to hear about Jesus, about His great love for them, His death for them - and how will they hear unless someone tells them? We can leave it to others, or we start fishing. We can inquire about their own personal story, their faith journey, and we can tell them about ours, about how we came to know Jesus, the Good News about Him.
There are many other people living in the region around us. This is our Judea. It could be the city or county where we live. Invariably our journey will take us into these regions not infrequently. Whether on our own or together with other believers, we can and should be looking for opportunities to help our fellow “Judeans” learn about Jesus.
Samaria is the people who live in or close to our region who are different than us. We may not like them. We may try to avoid them, avoid going into their neighborhood. We often pay little or no attention to them, or else we are afraid of them. But our witness must tend to them as well. It must penetrate the region where they live, their culture, their world. We may be able to partner with other believers within that culture, or we may need to find a way to go there ourselves.
And our witness must somehow extend to the ends of the earth. All nations. Every tribe and tongue. We may not receive a direct call to go and live and be a witness among some distant people group, but we can surely help to send those who do go. We can pray and give to help support the work of those who go to witness and make disciples among peoples who are at some distance from us, whether separated by geography or language or some other barrier.
The local church commitment to world missions
There are almost eight billion people in the world (at the time of this writing), most of whom do not yet know Jesus. Many have not even heard of Him. As believers do gather in their local assemblies, they must remember that the Great Commission is far from being fulfilled. There is much work still to be done. The command to go and be a witness has been given, whether it be to one’s own Jerusalem, to their Judea or a Samaria or to the ends of the earth. It’s been at the top of our to-do list for two millenia. Believers everywhere must be ready to respond to a call to go, ready to give an account for the hope they have in Jesus [1Pet. 3:15], or else they must be doing all they can to help send those who go. And the beauty of the local church is that there is synergy at this level. There is strength and power in numbers. A local church can mobilize far more prayer and financial support to help send missionaries than can individual believers.
The leader’s role in mobilizing the local church in Great Commission completion
I like to say that people need to “pray to receive missions” - and this needs to be true of a local leader as much as anyone. The mere fact of working for a church or ministry, having a seminary degree, even being a gifted pastor or speaker does not mean that a person sees the Great Commission as a priority, or that they fully understand the mandate of getting the Good News to all the nations. Would-be leaders must be entirely committed to prioritizing the entirety of the Great Commission in their church’s strategic plan, for they need to be able to cast vision for the Great Commission, equip the saints to engage in fulfilling the Great Commission, and then they need to be able to set the pace. This involves leading to engage both in our Jerusalems as well as to the ends of the earth, and the leader is the one who needs to allocate precious resources: time and money as well as people.
We can get so busy with many different programs in the church, but local and global missional efforts need to be an integral part of the regular and seasonal activities of every church. As much as anything there ought to be prayer for missions and for workers [cf. Mt. 9:37-38], as a core part of the ongoing ministry of the church. This needs to (and will likely only) flow from the leader’s own commitment to praying for the Great Commission. Pursuing the Great Commission also means budgeting for it, whether funding for training activities or for sending short-term teams or contributing to the funding of long-term workers or partnering with indigenous ministries. Sending workers and meeting needs and planting churches requires funding.
But this prioritization will also involve allocating people: entrusting leadership to other (staff and lay) leaders, involving them and empowering them to lead in the mobilization process. It must involve the local leader (and again very likely needs to start with him), but it cannot rest solely on his shoulders. Part of this requires that the leader release “his” people - he needs to be openhanded enough to allow his people to serve outside the church, to mobilize them to “leave his church”, and to celebrate that. When God calls some to go to the ends of the earth, to make disciples among least-reached peoples, the leader needs to celebrate that. It will involve releasing some great volunteers, “losing" them for the sake of the Great Commission. The mandate and the scope of the mission is far broader than any one local assembly.
And inasmuch as no one church or organization could ever hope to accomplish the mission by itself, it falls on the local leader to be really good at partnering. He needs to be openhanded and humble enough to be able look beyond the confines of his own experiences and his own personal ministry aspirations, and to be able to recognize and value the gifting and roles of other like-minded leaders in other churches, other like-minded ministries and denominations. He must be able to understand the power of synergy, that far more can be accomplished for the kingdom when the citizens of the kingdom find ways to unite and mobilize and cooperate together.
Surely therein lies the key, for Jesus said it Himself: “By this all men will know you are My disciples, if you have love for one another” [Jn. 13:35].
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