Dear Friends
The story is told in Matthew 28:18-20. This is the story of the famous last words of Jesus Christ. If you’re familiar with your Bible you know that the words are called the Great Commission. And justly so. Because the words that Jesus spoke that day were a charter and a foundation and a blueprint for the movement that his followers were going to establish after he was gone. We are called to be Great Commission Chris-tians and to build a Great Commission church. Disciples who make disciples. To be people in the parade who are bringing others to join the parade, who will bring others who will bring others. We find out the result is supposed to be a spiritual multiplication. The result is to be a church full of spiritual multipliers. A church full of people who can reproduce themselves. As the great parade of God’s purpose moves down through history, and as we join in the march with Jesus Christ, we’re going up into the stands and we’re saying, Hey, brother/ sister, come on down and join us in the parade. When we get our friends with us in the parade, we’re to teach them and then we’re to send them back into the stands and we’re to say, Go get somebody else. They’re to bring them down and they’re to teach them and they’re to send their friends back up into the stands. And so it is that we win one and we teach one and baptize one and we bring them into the church and we equip them and send them back out. And he brings his friends in and he wins them and he teaches them and he sends them out and they win their friends and they come in and he teaches them and we send them out. So it’s an unending cycle of spiritual reproduction.
The real mark of the health of the church is not the size of the budget, the size of the staff, the glory of the music, the wonder of the architecture, or any of the worldly measures we like to use. The real mark of the church in Jesus’ eyes is a church that is 100 percent dedicated to fulfilling the Great Commission. Getting in the parade and bringing others into the parade and sending them back up into the stands to get some other people and bring them back down and send some others back into the stands who will bring some others back down. That’s a good standard for evaluating all our ministries. Are they equipping people to do this? Are they somehow involved in the disciple-making process. If our ministries are not doing that, we ought to change them or adjust them to bring them back into line with what Jesus was talking about two thousand years ago.
If this is the Great Commission, then this ought to be our great commission. Everything else is of lesser importance compared to these ultimate words of Jesus Christ. Nothing is as important than that we become this kind of people and this kind of church.
Peace be with you. Solomzi