Last words are important. Let that truth sink in. Last words are important.
East Side Baptist Church is a little country church down in Perry County, Mississippi. It is the church in which I was converted under the preaching of Brother Wiley Grissom, a fifth-grade educated pastor who preached the Gospel with power. The church is about 200 yards up the hill from our old home place. Behind it is a cemetery where I’ll be buried someday.
Mom and Dad—whom in my adult life I affectionately called, “Mutt” and “Co-bell”—they are buried there. Co-bell died eight years ago; and Mutt five years ago—I still miss them. On Co-bell’s tombstone are the last words she spoke to Mutt from her deathbed, “I’ll see you.” On his tombstone is his response, “I’ll be there.” A great witness to their confidence in eternal life and Heaven as our home. Last words are important.
Listen again to some of the last words of Jesus:
Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshipped him; but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:16-20).
These last words of Jesus to His disciples represent the marching orders that are to be followed until He returns. There is no more powerful motivational text for Christian mission and evangelistic zeal. And yet, this text is not shaping the ministry and mission of mainline churches. Could that be the primary cause for the crises of our mainline churches?
(Parenthetically, if you are not of the conviction that mainline Protestantism is in a crisis and that it cannot continue indefinitely on its present course, then you are in the minority.) There is not a single major mainline church that is growing significantly in membership in the United States. At least four of the major mainline denominations – Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Lutherans, and Methodists – have internal battles that threaten schism. In 1992, distinguished New Testament scholar, Leander E. Keck, delivered the Lyman Beecher Lectures at Yale Divinity School on the theme, “Toward the Renewal of Mainline Protestantism.” He expanded those lectures into a very helpful book, The Church Confident. On the cover of that book was a challenging word. It was not a subtitle—but a sort of personal admonition from the author: “Christianity can repent, but it must not whimper.” That’s a good word. Despite the crisis, God’s people are not to whimper. Acknowledge our sin, and repent, yes, but not whimper.
Keck was mindful of the fact that diagnosing the malaise of mainline Protestant churches and prescribing remedies has become a growth industry. “Perhaps,” he said, “the British historian Paul Johnson will prove to be right in suggesting that the current crises of the mainliners is actually the birth pains of the Fourth Great Awakening” (p.19). Let’s pray that Johnson is right. What would make him right, in large part, swirls around the notion I want to explore with you: A Church Shaped by the Great Commission.
Consider this image provided by Allen Wheelis, a practicing psychoanalyst in San Francisco. In his book, On Not Knowing How To Live, he talked about developing a philosophy of life, using the “big top” as an analogy.
Stay with the main show, do not be drawn off into sideshows, diversions, entertainments. Do only what you are most solemnly charged to do… There in the big top a man is hanging by his teeth, twisting, spinning, spotlights playing over him, the drums beginning to roll. He’s going to fall and nothing can be done, no net, but in the moments remaining he may yet achieve something remarkable, some glittering stunt, a movement perhaps of breathtaking beauty… Any turning away to watch the dancing bears is a betrayal of the dangling man…hold fast, stay with him. (Quoted by Mark Trotter, Grace All The Way Home, Nashville: The Upper Room, 1982, p. 15).
Isn’t that an appropriate and challenging image for us as we consider the Great Commission? There are religious sideshows being offered with enticing attraction all over the world today. All around us the religious versions of dancing bears, stripteases, and peepshows would divert our attention. They come and they go; and then there is the main show.
And what is the main show? At the beginning of His ministry, Jesus announced His mission: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He hath anointed me to preach the Gospel to the poor; He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.” (Luke 4:18-19).
At the close of His ministry, He commissions us for Kingdom work: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to serve all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age.”
Imagine a church shaped by this commission.
Only Disciples Can Make Disciples
Register first what should be obvious: only disciples can make disciples. Steven Covey, the leadership guru of Seven Habits fame, has popularized the phrase, “Beginning with the end in mind.” The bottom line of the Great Commission is discipleship. That’s the “end” we must keep in mind.
James F. Ingle and William A. Dyrness in their most recent book, Changing the Mind of Missions: Where Have We Gone Wrong?, have reminded us that “in the early decades of the 20th century the American church tended toward two distinctly opposite poles. One branch (soon to be labeled as liberal) refused to abdicate its optimistic commitment to social transformation as the central mission of the Church. Unfortunately, the salvation of souls diminished in priority, thus giving way to what was known as the social gospel. The other branch (the fundamentalists) responded in opposite fashion by stressing “the dangers of the world, the comforts of a separated piety, the centrality of evangelism, and an expectation of the end.” (p.63).
The telling manifestation of not “beginning with the end in mind” as we think of the Great Commission is, first of all, a dichotomy between evangelism and social transformation, and second, an evangelism void of discipleship. Os Guinness prophetically observes that the result of these two failures is a church that has lost its impact by becoming “privately engaging, socially irrelevant.” (The Gravedigger File, Downers Grove, Illinois, Inter Varsity Press, 1983, p.80). Let me say that again: the church has lost its impact by becoming privately engaging, but socially irrelevant.
We do well to remember John Wesley’s vision of the Church as “a body…compacted together, in order first to save each his own soul; then to assist each other in working out salvation; and afterwards, as far as in them lies, to save all from present and future misery, to overturn the kingdom of Satan, and to set up the Kingdom of Christ.” (As quoted by Howard A. Snyder, The Radical Wesley, Downers Grove, Illinois, Inter Varsity Press, 1980, p.85).
Discipleship means following Jesus to the end that we are transformed into His likeness. And here is our problem. Most members of our churches do not have any compelling sense that their primary vocation as Christians is to practice those disciplines that will form them into the likeness of Christ; that the dynamic of being a Christian is understanding of and conformity to the clear teachings of Jesus.
The results of this lack of seriousness, this lack of any effortful conformity to the teachings of Christ have resulted in disaster. “In today’s church,” writes Bill Hull, “100 adults and one year are required to introduce 1.7 people to Christ.”
How have we missed the point that the command of Jesus is to “make disciples”? Let me pick on the more evangelical churches, giving the mainline a breathe. The evangelical church is guilty of making converts and not disciples. The more adamant among us may say the mainline church makes neither converts nor disciples. We perpetuate within the Church a “great omission” in the Great Commission. In the document “The Gift of Salvation,” leading Roman Catholics and evangelical spokespersons corrected this “omission” by expressing the close connection between justification and sanctification in our salvation. Salvation is for more than forgiveness; it is also a matter of thorough moral and spiritual transformation.
Salvation, in this view, is far more than forgiveness of our sins; it is also a matter of thorough moral and spiritual transformation. The document stresses this point by denying that faith is mere intellectual assent and asserting that it is “an act of the whole person, involving the mind, the will, and the affections, issuing in a changed life.” It then goes on to insist that Christians are bound by their faith and baptism “to live according to the law of love in obedience to Jesus Christ the Lord. Scripture calls this the life of holiness or sanctification.” (Quoted by Jerry L. Walls in his article, “Purgatory for Everyone,” First Things, April 2002 Issue, Number 122, p. 26.)
To reduce transformed saving faith to mere mental assent to correct doctrine is a serious capitulation to the spirit of modernity that confines faith only to the private world of self-actualization and meaning, or to the acceptance of some propositional truth. As a result, the entire public sector in most places is all too frequently devoid of Christians who witness by following their Master in modeling justice, righteousness, and peace. (Ingle and Dyrness, p.66).
“When the Great Commission is properly conceived as making disciples, it should then become apparent that disciple-making is a process that will continue until Christ returns. In other words, the Great Commission can never be fulfilled, and we are doing a great disservice when we declare any part of the world to have been reached.” (Ingle and Dyrness, p. 66-67).
Apostolic in Passion and Style
Now, a second observation: a congregation of disciples committed to making disciples will become apostolic in its passion and style.
In his book, The Once and Future Church, Loren Mead describes three eras in church history. The Apostolic era of the Church began at Pentecost and was characterized by rapid growth amid hostility and persecution. It ended with the Edict of Milan in A.D.313 when Emperor Constantine “Christianized” the empire. This ushered in a period of seventeen centuries during which the Church existed within a culture generally friendly to Christianity. Mead calls this second era, “Christendom.” Today we’ve entered another era. Much of the Church is once again living in a hostile, or at least, indifferent atmosphere. Mead refers to this as “Post-Christendom.”
A glaring example of this is the three judges who recently ruled that the phrase “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance is unconstitutional and to require persons to repeat the pledge with that phrase is a violation of the separation of Church and State. Fundamentalism is dangerous. It’s dangerous when it comes from radical Islamic quarters, or from the extreme Christian right, but it is also dangerous when it comes from liberal ideologues who seek to make secular humanism the religion of our nation and use the principle of the separation of Church and State to evangelize for their cause.
We need to remember that the Gospel of Jesus Christ was no easier to believe in the first century than it is today. It was a “stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles” (I Corinthians 1:23). I doubt that any of the objections to Jesus’ uniqueness raised today were not raised in the first-century world. The Jesus story and the Gospel was no more credible then than it is now. “The account of Jesus was not credible to Greeks because they knew that an eternal, perfect, changeless Deity could not exist in imperfect, corruptible, material form. It was incredible to Jews that the Messiah could be crucified and die without restoring the Davidic kingdom to Israel. It was incredible to scientists and medical people who knew that ‘dead men don’t rise’ (hardly a modern discovery). It was incredible to adherents of other religions, for these and a variety of other reasons.” (Howard A. Snyder, Global Good News: Mission in a New Context, Abingdon Press, Nashville, 2001, p. 222).
In this post-modern age, we must become apostolic in our style and passions. In style, we must move from being “come-to” congregations to “go-to” congregations.
It is common for us to think of the church in a particular location meeting at a particular time—usually 11 a.m. on Sunday morning—with the mentality that people are to come to the Church. Even when we are serious, we try to order our life within the Church in such a way that people will come to us. We design vital worship services with good music, we seek a dynamic preacher who communicates well, and we try to provide the kind of experience that meets the “felt needs” of people and thus attracts people who will “feel good about it” and hopefully invite others.
Because we are “come-to” churches, one credible observer of Christian evangelism claims evidence suggests that 95% of all Christians in North America will not lead a single person to Christ in their entire lifetime. Even the churches that want to be the kind of churches that people can get to, and would go to, do not meet the criteria of being apostolic. We do have churches that people can get to—with transportation as it is, and ours being a mobile society, people can quickly get to our buildings and our services—but isn’t it true that the problem is not location, or the ability of people to come to us, but that people are unwilling to risk negotiating the cultural chasm between themselves and the Church? So the apostolic question is this: “Is the Church willing, and how can it get to the people, rather than waiting for the people to get to the Church?”
Going to may be the greatest apostolic task that is ours. You know the story: 36 million Americans (14% of the population) live in poverty. Of those, the portion living in our urban centers has increased from 30% in 1968 to about 47% today. (William Pennell, The Coming Race Wars: A Cry For Reconciliation, p.32). Are we going to them?
In his book, Countering the Conspiracy to Destroy Black Boys, Jawanza Kunjufun wrote, “By the year 2000, 70% of all African-American males between the ages of 17 and 44 will be in gangs, in jail, unemployed, be murdered (one out of twenty black boys born in the USA today will be killed by his 21st birthday), on drugs, or have AIDS. [His projections are pretty much confirmed.] In 1940, 90% of black households had a man. In 1992, it was 30.5%.” (Chicago, African-American Images, 1985, n.p.). Are we going to them?
Seventy million individuals in the United States are under the age of 18—are we going to them? Nearly one million foreign-born people immigrate to this country every year. Are we going to them? Thirty-two million people in America speak some language other than English as their primary language. Are we going to them? We have more unsaved and unchurched people in our nation than ever before in our history—172 million. Are we going to them? Ninety percent of the population of the United States lives in urban settings. Are we going to them?
But not only in style, we must be apostolic in our passion. For the apostles, Jesus Christ was the Good News. This conviction is the only power that will give us the passion to be for our age what the first century Christians were for theirs: who Jesus is and what God has done and is doing through Him. What we believe about what Christ can do for persons will determine how we order the life of our Church. We must become convinced and become passionate about what Christ can do for persons and for society. And our big task in every congregation is to contextualize the message to our setting, our community, on the world scale, to the culture where we are seeking to live and proclaim the Gospel. What Christ can do for persons and for society is universal, and not culturally bound. Let me say that again: What Christ can do for persons and for society is universal and not culturally bound.
Six years ago a young man came to Asbury, only recently converted off the streets and out of the drug scene in Miami. He not only received his theological education and preparation for ministry, he found his wife in our community. The two of them are having an effective ministry in Tampa, reaching the same kind of people he was before his transformation, but also slowly yet markedly changing the social structures of the community where they are.
Three years ago we conferred through our E. Stanley Jones School of Missions and Evangelism the D.Miss. degree upon Nantachai and Ubolwon Mejudhon, husband and wife from Thailand. Before their marriage, they were both Buddhists. She was converted to Christianity, and went to do graduate work in New Zealand. Nantachai wanted to marry her but she refused because he was not a Christian. In fact he was a Buddhist monk for a time. Largely through their correspondence, when they were living in different countries for a little over a year, he came to Christian faith. They both became passionately committed to sharing the Gospel with their people in Thailand, primarily a Buddhist nation. They came to Asbury to prepare for that work.
The idea seemed to have awakened in them in the very first course they took with Darrell Whiteman in cultural anthropology—that to be truly Christian, they must be truly Thai. They began exploring the values in Thai culture that could be redeemed through the Gospel. As they got into their dissertation research, they realized that there were some key Thai cultural values that had been trampled over by missionaries and others, including themselves, who were sharing the Gospel. As they started exploring this, they uncovered a number of Thai and Buddhist values that reflected the spirit of Jesus. The one that seemed dominant was the idea of meekness. Thus, both of their dissertations dealt with the fact that most traditional American approaches to evangelism, like Campus Crusade and the Four Spiritual Laws, would not work in Thai/Buddhist culture because the confrontation approach violates the cultural Buddhist style of meekness. They basically developed an approach that respects cultural value and contextualized the Gospel in the Thai culture.
They have grown a large congregation in the capital city, and are now spending a great deal of time doing workshops, speaking to missionary groups and national pastors, because it seems this revolutionary breakthrough is what has been missing for 150 years.
We could catalogue volumes of examples confirming the fact that we must be apostolic in our style and passion, and particularly passionate about what Christ can do for persons and society.
A Missionary Community in the World
A congregation of disciples committed to making disciples, which becomes apostolic in its style and passion, will necessarily see itself as a missionary community in the world. “Mission will become the DNA of the Church,” as William O’Brien puts it. The Church will know itself to exist for the sake of the mission of God.
This will require a paradigm shift of rather monumental proportions. The Church will have to change from seeing itself as an institution, or as an organization, to seeing itself as a Movement—an organism. This will require a move from being clergy-centered to ministry as the responsibility of the whole people of God. The role of pastor within the congregation will take the form of motivation and empowerment. This will be in sharp contrast to what we see too often in the Church today—a model that is adapted from secular culture in which the big boss initiates and controls most of what happens in and through the organization.
I am grateful to Howard Snyder who has called us to begin using inclusive language when we speak of ministry. “The unbiblical use of the terms ‘ministry’ and ‘laity’ is the most extensive and oppressive form of exclusive language in the Church,” he says. “When we use gender-exclusive language, we exclude about 50% of all Christians. But when we use the minister/layman distinction, we exclude 90-95% of all Christians. It is time to be truly inclusive by referring to all Christians as ministers and banning the term ‘layman’ whenever it means Christians who are not ministers.” (Global Good News, p. 230). (Note: maybe a word about my vision for ATS)
This paradigm shift will require at least two other dynamics, which I simply mention. It will require moving from individualism and individuality to community.
It will also require moving in the Church from program orientation, which is a come-to dynamic, to unleashing gifted people to do Kingdom work in the world. This means an intentional commitment to spiritual formation with particular focus on discovering the use of spiritual gifts in a manner consistent with what Jesus said His ministry was all about as He expressed it in Luke 4:18-19:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim
release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.
Resident Aliens
A congregation of disciples committed to making disciples, which has become apostolic in its style and passion and sees itself as a missionary community in the world, will inevitably also see itself and become a community of aliens who are in, but not of, the world.
In September of 1997 there was a groundbreaking service for a Roman Catholic cathedral to be constructed in Los Angeles. The Diocese of Los Angeles had commissioned the famous Spanish architect, Jose Rafael Moneo, to design the building. Their hope was that the cathedral, to be completed by the beginning of the millenium, would be a peculiar witness to the glory of God.
There were models of the cathedral at the groundbreaking service, and on the basis of the models, a Los Angeles reporter wrote a review of the cathedral. This is a part of what the reporter said:
“Moneo is creating an alternate world to the everyday world that surrounds the cathedral, a testimony to the grandeur of the human spirit, an antidote to a world that is increasingly spiritually empty.”
Then he wrote this sentence:
“The cathedral, set in the midst of the secular city, will be an enclave of resistance.”
What an image…the Church, an enclave of resistance. “Resident aliens” is the term Will Willimon and Richard Hauerwas used to describe this aspect of the nature of the Church. Jesus, Himself, provides the model. He was fully in and with the world, but He lived by a contrasting set of realities and was always in tension with the world—and to a marked degree, always in resistance to it.
In one of my favorite Peanuts cartoons, Lucy demands that Linus change TV channels and then threatens him with her fist if he doesn’t.
“What makes you think you can walk right in here and take over?” asks Linus.
“These five fingers,” says Lucy. “Individually they are nothing, but when I curl them together like this into a single unit, they form a weapon that is terrible to behold.”
“Which channel do you want?” asks Linus.
Turning away, he looks at his fingers and says, “Why can’t you guys get organized like that?”
The Church, unfortunately, has never been able to get organized in her resistance to the world. In fact, the Church has never been consistently able to understand what it means to be “in the world but not of the world.” We’ve known in every period of our history that the very nature of the Church provokes some form of resistance. There’s always a sense in which Kingdom ideals are in conflict with the world in which the Kingdom is set. This expresses itself in different ways. We have to be careful about the nature and focus of our resistance—of how we live as “aliens.” We must not deceive ourselves into thinking that if we can get the right king on the throne—that is, if we can elect the right president, the right congress, the right governor—if we can put “our people” in places of political power, then we can win the battle. There can be no kingdom without a king, and the Kingdom to which we are committed has only one King—King Jesus.
The Church must think more in terms of transformation than of confrontation. That means we must overcome what we have mastered altogether too well—the art of talking to ourselves.
We need to think more about “a long obedience in the same direction” than about a quick fix that might bring superficial change. Our task, as an enclave of resistance, is to subvert the callused, materialistic, secular, godless culture of which we are a part—to subvert that culture at its root by living as though we believe that “persons do not live by bread alone,” that there is a kingdom reality of love in which all those things that are expressed in Romans 12 are operative. Our love is without hypocrisy. We abhor what is evil and we cling to what is good. In honor we give preference to one another. We are able to rejoice in hope, but we are also able to be patient in tribulation. We attend to the needs of the saints and we give ourselves to hospitality. We bless those who persecute us; we rejoice with those who rejoice and we weep with those who weep. We associate with the humble and we do not see ourselves as wise in our own opinion. We don’t repay evil for evil; we seek to live peaceably with all persons. We feed our enemies, we give them drink—we don’t confront evil with evil but we seek to overcome evil with good.
As resident aliens our mission becomes incarnational. It takes seriously the words of Jesus, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” Our efforts at making disciples, being apostolic in our style and passion, seeing ourselves as a missionary community, incarnates the love of Jesus Christ Himself, serving others in their need, and at the same time, ready to tell the story of what God has done in Jesus Christ.
Empowered by the Holy Spirit
One final word: a church cannot be shaped by the Great Commission without being empowered by the Holy Spirit. The church that is shaped by the Great Commission, by its very nature, must be charismatic. By charismatic I mean that the church came to birth through the Holy Spirit, thus the church lives and functions by the Holy Spirit. Now theoretically, no one would disagree with that. But functionally, we do disagree. Where is the mainline denomination or the classic evangelical denomination that incorporates this conviction as a core principle by which the congregation orders her life? The charismatic nature of the Church underscores not only a dependence on the power of the Holy Spirit for life and sustenance, but an ongoing expectation of a Spirit-empowered community, love and mutual caring where forgiveness, healing, reconciliation, restoration, deliverance, social witness, and the breaking down of racial, economic, and social barriers are anticipated as the norm, not the miraculous.
At the beginning of his ministry, Jesus gave us the charter of the Kingdom when He announced His mission. And you remember He announced that mission by saying, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He has anointed Me…” (Luke 4:18).
At the close of His ministry, He commissioned us for Kingdom work—giving us the Great Commission. As a part of our work we are to baptize “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”—and we are to remember that Jesus is with us always—to the end of the age.
Not only are the charter and the commission of the Kingdom centered in the Holy Spirit, Jesus’ commitment to provide us power is Spirit-centered. Listen to Acts 1:6-8:
So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” He replied, “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
So, according to Jesus, at the heart of Kingdom business is the Great Commission—the work of mission and evangelism—and the power source of mission and evangelism is the Holy Spirit. What we think about and how we respond to the Great Commission will not matter much unless the Holy Spirit empowers our effort. The Great Commission and the Holy Spirit go together. We can not obey the Great Commission effectively without the power and the presence of the Holy Spirit. But also, if we are following the Spirit’s leading, we will be engaging in the Great Commission—not just talking about it, doing it. Michael Green has noted this bond as a hallmark of the New Testament Church, and a sign of poverty in the experience of the Church today. He asks penetrating questions:
Could it be that we know so little of the Spirit in any powerful way because we care so little for evangelism? Equally, that we know so little of evangelism in any powerful way because we know so little of the Spirit? These two God has joined together, and we cannot put them asunder. No evangelism, no Holy Spirit; no Holy Spirit, no evangelism. There is a vital link between them; and that explains a good deal of the powerlessness in the modern church. (Michael Green, New Testament Evangelism: Lessons for Today, Manila, OMF Publishers, 1982; First published by Discipleship Resources, 1979, pp. 136-137).
(Note: if time allows, use story of Pauline Horde – introduce by my experience at the White House consultation)
Of course we cannot talk about the Holy Spirit and availing ourselves to the Holy Spirit’s power without talking about prayer. Prayer is central to every spiritual awakening and every moving of the Holy Spirit. United, fervent, persevering prayer marks the congregation that would be shaped by the Great Commission. So I close with a prayer of Pascal: “Lord, help me do great things as though they were little, since I do them with your power; and little things as though they were great, since I do them in your name.”