“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.”
(Matthew 28:19-20)
Even as a kid, it always struck me as odd. You have a super-spy organization, but they have a ridiculous name (the Impossible Mission Force). Worse, they are involved in top-, top-secret missions, but they don’t have a secure office. Instead, they meet in an apartment so that their neighbors can hear what they are up to. The agents are only part-time; and since their other careers are well-known (actors, athletes and models), you would think that someone might recognize them when they were on a job (but luckily, they never do!). And top-secret missions were delivered, not by a real person or even a secure FedEx envelope, but by audio-cassettes, phonograph records, payphones and even a drive-in theater window speaker; and yet, no one accidentally stumbles upon these devices and either hears a message not intended for them or uses that payphone to call their family in Biloxi, forcing Jim to wait until he has talked to everyone from Aunt Anna to Uncle Yuri. And no one thinks about calling the fire department when a cassette recorder suddenly catches fire in the back room. But the oddest thing is when the voice on the cassette says, “Your mission, Jim, should you choose to accept it.” Should you choose to accept it?!? It’s a mission! You don’t get to choose if you will do it or not. You only get to do it. And if you do it, then you’ve done your duty. And if you don’t, well, perhaps a self-destruction may be in your future after all.
At least, this was Jesus’ understanding. Yes, he spent most of his time gathering his disciples together, but he also spent a significant amount of time scattering them. We see this clearly in Luke’s gospel. In Luke 5, Jesus calls the first disciples. In Luke 6, he appoints them as apostles (the “sent-out ones”). Three chapters later, Jesus sends those “sent-out ones” out; and then in Luke 10, he sends out the seventy-two. In Luke 19, Jesus teaches why we should be so consumed with missions. The answer is obvious–because he is consumed with missions. He says (Luke 19:10): “For the Son of Man came to seek and save the lost.” And if that is true, then we need to follow suit because as Jesus’ disciples our goal is to be fully trained so that we “will be like our teacher” (Luke 6:40). In other words, if Jesus is committed to missions, then we need to be committed to missions. In fact, at the end of Luke’s gospel, Jesus outlines the future. He says (Luke 24:47): “Repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations.” Granted, that’s not quite as catchy as the Great Commission where Jesus says (Mt. 28:19): “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations. . . ,” but it still works. And if there was any doubt, all we need to do is turn to the book of Acts, and right in the first chapter we have Luke’s Great Commission (Acts 1:8): “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” And if you need more proof from Luke, you can read the rest of the book of Acts because it is all missions, all the time. And why are we to do missions? In the middle of Jesus’ instructions to the twelve, he gives this clear answer. He says (Mt. 10:8): “Freely you have received; freely give.” That’s Missions 101. We have received grace; now our calling is to bestow grace on those who are bereft of grace. Missions is of utmost concern to Jesus. It is who he is; and now, he calls us to be his missional hands and feet in his world.
And yet, Jesus’ global mission rarely occupies such a high spot in our hearts, minds or wallets. One report I read suggested that American churches spend “95% of their offerings on home-based ministry, 4.5% on cross-cultural efforts in already-reached people groups and .5% to reach the unreached” (The Traveling Team). Another report claims that 85% of the money raised by the American church goes to the pastor, staff and building while only 15% goes to missions, but only 2% of the remaining amount goes to global missions (Within Reach Global Missions). Howard Snyder recognized this problem as early as 1975. In his classic book, The Problem with Wineskins, he makes this terrible observation about our church buildings. He says: “The Gospel says ‘Go,’ but our church buildings say, ‘Stay.’ The Gospel says, ‘Seek the lost,’ but our churches say, ‘Let the lost seek the church.’” Many years later, Alan Hirsch built off Snyder’s thoughts and argued that our churches make us immobile, inflexible, proud, aware of class divisions and create a lack of fellowship (see The Shaping of Things To Come by Alan Hirsch). If either of these two men are even close to being right here, then we have a serious problem. We love our church buildings and would rather invest in building them than in building God’s kingdom in a foreign country. It is easy to see why we don’t have a passion for going on missions. We’ve sold our commitment to follow Jesus for a porridge of comfort and ease.
John Piper is fond of saying that there are only three options, “Go, send or disobey.” I would prefer, “Go, send or pray” because a disciple of Jesus is defined by a yearning to follow him in all things; and if Jesus longed for the whole world to come into his kingdom, we also have to long for that to happen. More than that, we have to strive to do what we can to make that happen. We can go (short-term, mid-term or long-term). We can send (recruit, deploy, fund, encourage) or we can pray (for unreached countries, for the persecuted church, for the struggling church, for our own country, for our own neighbors and for those who are going and for those who are in the ministry of sending).
What does a disciple of Jesus do? They either go, send or pray. There is no option. See, we have been given a mission, and there is no question asking us if we would like to accept it or not. There is only the call to “go . . . 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.” For you see, mission is discipleship and discipleship is mission. The two cannot be separated. They are one and the same.
For those of you who believe we have a choice to accept God’s mission or reject it, as if God’s mission was just another Ben and Jerry’s flavor for us to choose, I’m not sure you’ve read the story of Jesus and Acts and Revelation closely enough. And if we are going to build our theology based on some 1960’s spy drama, then maybe we need to reject that theology with a 1960’s commercial: “Sinny rabbit, mission is for doing!”
Oh, and by the way, when Jesus says, “go make disciples,” he doesn’t mean, “go make a theology about missions.” He means go make disciples. Go do missions. Go, give or pray for missions. Why? Because we are disciples, and disciples of Jesus are all about the mission.
