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 observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age" (Matt. 28:19, 20).1
The Christian call to mission has its origin, not in the human person, not in the church, but in the very nature of God. The God of the Bible is a sending God.
He sent Noah with a message of salvation to a world under the judgment of a deluge. He sent Abraham into the great unknown to experience the presence and the power of faith. He sent Joseph into captivity and to Egypt's royal court to preserve a remnant for His name. He sent Moses to Pharaoh's oppressive regime to let the bells of freedom ring through the corridors of history. "Day after day" He "persistently sent" the prophets to His people in the Old Testament (Jer. 7:25).
In the fullness of time, He sent His Son, Jesus. And the Son sent His disciples. Thus Christian mission is an ex tension of the nature of a God who lives and cares enough to seek, to search, to save, the human regardless of where that person is. The living God, the caring God is the sending God. The living God saw Sodom, and He cared enough to send angels to warn of the impending doom, and provided a means to save the few who would heed the warning. The living God cared enough for Nineveh and sent Jonah. The living God cared enough for the world that He sent His Son.
If the basis of Christian mission is the seeking nature of God, the need for that mission is in the lostness of humans. God seeks those who are lost. Mission is to give to the lost the message of a God who loves and cares enough that He is perpetually waiting for them to respond to Him. Thus mission has one central message: Stop wandering and come home.
Mission: coming home
Gathering home is the essential end purpose of Christian mission. Where is that wandering place from where one is to come? It could be a distant land where the name of Jesus has never been heard, or the home across the street from your church, or the fellow seated next to you on a plane, or the one seated on a park bench who is wondering where the next meal will come from. The homeless are everywhere, within your environment, hostile to your beliefs, opposite your culture, rubbing shoulders with you, or sitting at your table. Mission is divine love and provision confronting human rebellion and need. Mission helps the human discover that the Sovereign Lord has a home for the homeless, a hope for the hopeless, a life for the dying.
How does Christian mission bring about this confrontation and response?
Mission: the message
First, mission must ever remain faithful to the message. In a recent visit to a Global Mission project in India, I had an interesting conversation with a newly baptized member. He had moved from the Methodist Church to become a Seventh-day Adventist, and I wanted to know why. His reason did not surprise me: he was impressed by the structure of Adventist organization and the security that it provided for his family and children. Our organization, our well-established schools, our hospital system, and the visible evidences of Adventist upper mobility obviously had their impact. Perhaps nothing may be re ally wrong in such communal security defining one's decision, but that conversation led me to some self-reflections: Is it possible for the strength and structure of a church to convey itself as the persuasive part of the mission of that church? Is it possible for cosmetics to replace the primary content of the mission? Is it conceivable that the objective of taking the gospel to a hitherto unentered heart or hamlet gets side tracked because of the need to achieve a measurable result in a prescribed time?
The issue at stake is, What is the core content of the message of our mission? Allegiance to a structure, or acknowledging the sovereignty of the Lord? Shifting from one denomination to an other, or accepting the crucified Saviour and awaiting the returning Lord? Seeking security in the externals of the church, or total abandonment to Him who bids us come and die to self?
The key operating principle of the Great Commission is not teaching all that Jesus taught, is not baptism, is not expanding the membership roster--although these are important for the life and growth of the church. The key principle is making disciples.
Mission: making disciples
That leads to a second important issue: disciples and discipling. It goes without saying that unless I am a disciple myself, I cannot even begin to understand the meaning of discipleship and the method of making disciples. So much of Christian mission becomes meaningless because the personnel involved in the mission are more like mercenaries than missionaries. The difference between a mercenary and a missionary is one of allegiance and motivation. Self-interest is the preoccupation of the mercenary and the allegiance is relative, shifting, and temporal. Whereas in the case of the missionary, self is crucified; allegiance to the One who sends is total, uncompromising, unquestionable; and the motivation is the unique indwelling love of God for all dying people. So the Lord demands: "If any one comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me, cannot be my disciple" (Luke 14:26, 27).
David Watson in a powerful commentary on this passage says: "The disciple needs to renounce completely the covetous and possessive spirit which characterizes so much of society today. Nothing is his; he has no rights of his own at all. It may be helpful, perhaps even necessary, to think carefully about everything that 'we possess'--bank balance, securities, furniture, valuables, hobbies, pastimes, clothes, family and friends, plans and ambitions, job or profession, the use of time and energy, gifts and abilities--and then mentally and prayerfully to hand the whole lot over to Jesus, acknowledging Him to be the owner of our lives. These are the terms of Christian discipleship. And if we think this to be excessive, extreme, or fanatical, we need to remember that this was the spirit that set the early church on fire for Christ, and this is also the spirit that makes most revolutionary groups of to day so very much more effective than the twentieth-century Christian church." 2
And so, more than policies, more than finance, more than strategies, the greatest challenge facing Christian mission today is modeling in discipleship, gospel in flesh and blood. No wonder Nietzsche's dismay that Christians would have to look more saved in order for him to believe in their Saviour finds its echo in a thousand different ways in today's materialistic, irreligious, humanistic, and generally indifferent society.
If the mission of a disciple is to make other disciples, it follows that discipling goes beyond conversion. Conversion is a change, a choice: a rejection of one set of values and beliefs in favor of accepting another set. Discipleship is more than conversion. Discipleship does call for a change. It does demand that certain choices be made. But above all, it asks for a permanent commitment to Jesus as a person. He becomes the all in all. Discipleship is going to the cross--saying to the Man on the cross that I am nothing, that I am ready to give up everything, that I want His grace and mercy every day of my life, and that with His help I want to take up whatever cross He assigns me--and then going to find someone else and tell that person, "there is a Man on the cross who can do for you what He did for me."
