Many churches in America today want to be powerful, relevant, and influential in personal and social transformation. A plethora of programs for outreach, discipleship, and spiritual disciplines are available at any bookstore and on countless websites. Yet what we need most is a renewed understanding of and commitment to the Great Commission. We assume that we already know the nature of this commission and the appropriate methods of carrying it out.
But Michael Horton contends that it too often becomes our mission instead of God’s. At a time when churches are zealously engaged in creating mission statements and strategic plans, he argues that we must ask ourselves anew whether we are ambassadors, following the script we’ve been given, or building our own kingdoms with our own blueprint.
Pastors and church leaders will value this frank and hopeful next-step exploration of the Great Commission as a call to renewed understanding and good practice.
The advertisement for Michael Horton’s The Gospel Commission: Recovering God’s Strategy for Making Disciples captures well the overall thrust of the book. It clearly states what people want over against what the Great Commission wants from people. Sadly, the response that I have heard most often to the book reveals that many just don’t get it. After reading the book people still call for exactly what Michael understands is the addendum and not the object of the Great Commission. Friendship/relationship evangelism, intentionality, programs, and even our day to day vocations are no substitute for the Great Commission’s use of appointed means as the method of evangelism. All other things can only be decorations, window dressing, marquee, and not the main show.
Evangelism is a specific calling, and not one of generalized commission, even though the Great Commission truly utilizes all the people with all their gifts. Evangelism is the calling of the Evangelist, that being, the Preacher/Teacher(s) God has raised up in a body of believers for The Ministry of the Word. As Michael says at the end of the recording, there is nothing wrong with any good activities of any individual, or individuals, in sharing the Gospel. But sharing the Gospel is not preaching it, nor is it teaching it. It is not making disciples, it is not evangelism. Making disciples, baptizing, preaching and teaching are official duties of officers, called and appointed for that specificity. A church’s evangelistic outreach is not, and cannot be one of individualism. Elders are appointed to the preaching/teaching and ruling office utilizing what each member produces by the skills God has given him for the purpose of the Great Commission.
The resources that are being expended in individual efforts drain the church of necessary resources. Each person spending his own resources are resources the church cannot spend in applying that person’s gifts and talents, time and, yes belongings, to the “intentional” objective of making disciples of the nations. Perhaps people have forgotten that the object of the Great Commission is not to form relationships, not to form friendships, not to be good buddies with the guy on the job, not really to be a good anything to anyone. Though all of that is good, it is incidental to the mission as a necessary outcome, but not its object. The object of the GC is to make disciples, by the preaching and teaching by those ordained to do so. And to do that, all the resources of individual members need to be brought in so that “they lacked nothing… having all things in common… devoting themselves to the teaching… (of those called to it) not abandoning the ministry of the word. It is not what each one does, but what all do together as one that makes the Great Commission a family affair. However, the serving of tables, all service, comes after the making, not before. Though I suspect, as Michael points out, that the narcissistic culture in which we live which is self-seeking and self satisfying has penetrated more deeply into the church than is readily recognized even by those trained to discern good from evil.
What is the most alarming about the fact that a wrong outcome is derived from the book’s study by many is the fact that traditions, even this modern paradigm of relational evangelism, can so blind believers that when they are shown the corpse of a dead GC they still stumble over it as if it weren’t there. No doubt as Michael says, the vocational ministry of the individual goes where the minister cannot. But unless we forget, he reminds the questioner that hopefully, those who are in vocational callings outside The Ministry will remember where The Ministry is and where the means of grace are that are given to it so that people are brought into the family through the conversion of souls being added to the church daily. It is after all the birthing into the family and the raising up of children of God that the GC is about. Let us then, all, go wherever we might find the field and spread the word, but let us not forget that we are to bring the catch to shore that the fish might be sorted. We believe in the perseverance of the saints, but perseverance is measured not by those who forsake the congregation or are never made part of it, but by those who remain in fellowship as disciples until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ… keeping and doing all that Jesus taught. It is the Gospel Ministry where conversion takes place, normally, it is there that progression in the faith is, and it is to it we must command people we have any kind of relationship with to turn in their repentance and faith in Christ. For it is in the body where the edification of believers takes place, and it is there they must remain there until they are empowered by the Spirit to be witnesses to Jesus near and far.
