Thoughts on the Great Commission

One of the things we have been doing this past year at our church is focusing on discipleship. We have been advocating it through our Sunday School and also by using MasterLife groups. MasterLife was chosen as our main curriculum for the small groups because it is organized and reproducible. But our goal and hope is that this will not be treated simply as another Bible study for people to check off the list and think they have been “discipled”. Our goal is to group people together (men with other men and women with other women) so that they will do life together and grow together in Christlikeness. When Jesus gave us the Great Commission in Matthew 28:18-20, He did not tell us to simply baptize people, but to “teach them to observe all He commanded us”. He told us to make mature disciples who will be disciple-makers.

So with this in mind, I am going to pose a question to you in order to challenge your thinking and cause you to evaluate and possibly reprioritize the things you do in this life. So the question is…if our mission as the Church is to make disciples (faithful followers of Jesus Christ who reproduce themselves), then why aren’t more people in our churches discipled?

Before you get too upset with me…I know our churches have been doing Discipleship Training classes and things like that for years. But have our people seen these classes simply as a Bible study? Something to check off their list? Or have these classes actually made a significant enough impact on their lives that they are turning around and investing in others to help them grow in their faith? My observation and guess is that very few in our churches that have gone through these numerous classes have become “disciple-makers”. Now don’t get me wrong, these classes have been somewhat beneficial and have taught our people some valuable truths from the Bible and about life. But where does the practical fulfilling of the Great Commission come into play?

Imparting knowledge alone to an individual is a far cry from true discipleship. You have probably noticed I use the phrase, “doing life together”, quite often. The reason for this is because discipleship and the Christian life best take place in the context of relationships, not classrooms. This is why we use Sunday School as well as these MasterLife groups as our main strategy to fulfill the Great Commission in our church. These two avenues provide a small group setting in which it is much easier to build and foster good relationships with one another. The goal of our Sunday School and these MasterLife groups is to “do life together” in such a way that each and every person in these groups are growing in their faith, reaching out to bring in new people, sharing the Gospel with these new people and helping them grow in their faith as well.

By utilizing these two “group settings” (Sunday School and MasterLife groups) we are seeking to mobilize our church to be missional in their lives here in our local community, but also to be missional in their lives as it regards the billions of lost people among the nations around the world. We are called to make disciples of all the nations…that they may know Him and worship Him alone!