The Mission of the Church

By Vincent Lo

Mt 28:18-20.

Two years ago, I had the opportunity to attend a seminar called the "Growing a healthy church " in Sandy Cove Maryland. Many who attended the seminars were pastors of different denomination. Our instructor was Dr Dan Spader, the founder of the Sonlife ministry. He asked a group of pastors and some laymen like myself a question which seemed to be so simple and obvious that many of us would probably take the answer for granted. His question was "What is the mission of the church ?" Before, we were allowed to give our answer, we were instructed to read Mt 28:18-20. To my surprise, among a group of pastors, there were different answers. One said "The mission of the church is to glorify God." Another said "The mission of the church is to save the lost world." Another said "The mission of the church is to worship God." What they were saying are all true, and good but is it what our Lord Jesus had in mind, when he spoke these last words to his disciples before he left them and returned to His Father.

Let us look from a human point of view. I trust that one’s last words before leaving this earth are utmost important to himself as well as to those whom one leaves behind. Knowing that this is my last chance to tell them what is the most important to me and to them, I will attempt to speak in the most clear and concise manner that I would know how, because I do not want them to have the slightest chance to misunderstand me. Mt 28:19-20 are the final words of our Lord Jesus to his disciples. These final words not only have the most significant impact upon the future ministry of the disciples, but also are the final command or commission of the church from our Lord Jesus Christ himself. The disciples had listened well. They did not misunderstand. They knew what the mission of the church was. They had fulfilled the mission of the church in their time. But my question for us to contemplate this morning is "Do we know the mission of the church? Are we fulfilling the mission of the church today?"

As one looked at Mt 28:18-20 closely, one would discover that there is only one command but three action words. I believe that our Lord’s command here is to call the church to go to make disciples. Making disciples to make disciples is the true mission of the church for the past, for today as well as for the future generation to come. The command is to make disciples, but there are three action words "Go, baptizing and teaching" which describe the process of making disciples. First, allow me to emphasize that making disciples is a supernatural process in each and every step. Yes, we are commissioned by the Lord to go to make disciples, but let us make no mistake that we can do it on our own strength. Our mission must be totally dependent on the Lord.

As I said, making disciple is a process. Our Lord used three action words to help his disciples to fully understand how they are going to do it. Am I telling you that our Lord had a game plan or blue-print for the disciples to follow? Yes I am , and you better believe it. Listen to the following words of Robert Colman who wrote the book "The Master Plan of Evangelism". He said "The Master disclosed God’s strategy of world conquest. That is why it is so important to observe the way Jesus maneuvered to achieve His objective. He had confidence in the future precisely because He live according to that plan in the present.. Like a General plotting his course of battle, the Son of God calculated to win. He could not afford to take a chance. Weighing every alternative and variable factor in human experience, He conceived a strategy that would not fail." For a moment, now let us consider these three action words, which you may call the Son’s strategy of disciple-making. We call it the strategy of "Winning, building and equipping".

First, the word "Go" can be translated in Greek tense as "As you are going". This is interesting because, we often quote Mt 28:18-20 as the Great commission of the church. It is so great that we often equate the Great commission as our foreign mission of which only a few are called to serve oversea. However, the founder of the Sonlife ministry, Dr Spader would like to rename the Great commission as the Daily commission of the church. In fact, he has such a passion, that he wrote a book about it. It is called the "Daily commission church". He is fully convinced that winning the lost should be the daily focus of every disciple of our Lord Jesus Christ. As you are going, or wherever you are going, are you seeking the lost just like our Lord Jesus Christ. If you study the life of Jesus through the gospel books, it is not difficult to discover that Jesus repeatedly told his disciples as well as the crowd that "The son of man comes to seek for sinners." In fact, his critics once said "Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners." Mt 11:19.

Do you remember the story about the Samaritan woman in Gospel John chapter 4 ? Jesus did not have to pass through the town of Samaria. In fact most Jews will purposely by-pass the town, so as to avoid any possible contact with the Samaritans. Traditionally, the Jews and the Samaritans were no friend to each other. Why did Jesus go through Samaria? The story later unfolded to us that Jesus wanted to reach out to this Samaritan woman who had been humiliated and outcasted by her own family and friends. Jesus did it intentionally. He went to her, instead of having her come to him, because as a Samaritan woman, she would never approached a Jew. Jesus was seeking for the lost, as He was going.

Traditionally, the church is very comfortable to sponsor organized evangelistic meeting. In this scenario, the church would invite a well-known speaker or an evangelist to come to town to hold a series of evangelistic meetings. And the believers are encouraged to invited their unsaved friends to come to the meeting to hear the gospel. But many times, the speaker may find out that the majority of the attendants are already believers. Some may even change his message, and call it a revival meeting. I am sure you are familiar with the so call "Revival, Outreach Meeting", as if we believers need to be revived first before we can evangelize. A year ago, we had a survey in our own church. One of the questionnaires in the survey is about how often and comfortable you have been in sharing your personal faith with your friends and neighbors. The survey result shocked all the elders. Only 40 % of our people were either regularly or felt comfortable to share their faith with their friends. Does it surprise you? No wonder, churches across the America are not growing as they should be. In the midst of much reflection and prayers among the elders, our church has re-written our church mission statement. It is something like this, "By the grace of God, Hope Alliance church exists as a community of believers committed to the daily commission of the church to be used to win the lost, build the believers and equip them to make disciples for the glory of God." Yes, we must focus on our mission and constantly remind all of us, why we, the church exists in our community.

Now, I am not saying that there is no place for organized large group out-reach event. In fact, our Lord himself used both methods of large group and small group event to share the good news of the kingdom of God. We must strike for the balance between the two. We must encourage one another in an accountable manner to involve in regular personal witnessing. Let me share with you briefly three essential steps in this process of personal peer to peer evangelism. The Sonlife people called it the Spiritual CPR. C represents Cultivating. P represents Planting and R represents Reaping. Dear brothers and sisters, we are living in a post-Christian era. Many people absolutely have no idea what Biblical Christianity is all about. Not only they have developed an misguided attitude towards organized religion, many of the so called Christian jargons such as faith, waiting upon God, surrender to the Holy Spirit, have very little meaning to them. Many of them have become bible illiterate. Even some of the familiar bible stories that you and I may take for granted, are totally strange to some of them. Many of them are entirely unchurched. They have never stepped one foot into a church building or attend one religious service in their entire lives. Now, would it be any surprise to anyone, that inviting an unchurched person to a church service is so difficult today. So, in order to reach out to the new generation of unchurched people, we believers must go to them. We must learn to cultivate relationship intentionally with them. Almost every unchurched person who finds salvation in Christ knows someone who is a Christian, and it is often through his relationship with his Christian friends that he ultimately let down the barrier and opens his heart to the gospel. Through intentional relationship with our unsaved neighbors or co-workers, we begin to earn our rights to be heard. Friends may not agree with each other all the time, but friends will listen to each other. Stephen Covey, in his nationally # 1 best seller book "The 7 habits of highly effective people" stated this "Seek to understand, then to be understood". In order to win people to Christ in our time, we must seek to understand where they are coming from; what are their values of life; what are they struggling with, before they will listen to us and our personal testimony. Peter wrote in I Peter 3:15 "But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect." Are you prepared to share your personal testimony or the gospel with your unsaved friends? In the last few years, many books have been written to advocate life style evangelism. Yes, it is important to influence others through your life style as a Christian, but I also believe that some where along the line, one must be prepared to plant the seed, the gospel, the word of God with his unsaved friends. Finally, as we seek the guidance and working of the Holy Spirit, we must challenge our unsaved friends to take the final step of receiving Christ as their Savior. This final step, we call it "Reaping". There is nothing more privileged or joyous to lead someone to receive our Lord Jesus Christ as his personal savior. Jesus said "I tell you there is rejoicing in the presence of angels of God over one sinner who repents." Lk 15:10. You see, our Lord’s intent is for all believers to have the opportunity to experience such hilarious joy of seeing someone got saved. Don’t look at your pastors! Don’t look at your elders! Don’t look at your deacons, as if they were the only privileged and chosen ones to have this joy of leading people to Christ. You can and should do it too! This is the strategy of "Winning."

Now, let us turn to the second action word "Baptizing". Jesus said "Baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." Baptism and Communion, the Lord’s supper are regarded as the most important sacraments in the church. For each new believer in Christ, he must face the decision of baptism. While, it is true that our salvation in Christ does not depend on our baptismal status, I personally believe that baptism is the beginning of our walk as a disciple of Jesus Christ. Let me share with you my own experience in baptism. 26 years ago, I accepted the Lord as my savior here in Davis, while I was an undergraduate student here. I remembered, soon after my decision, Brother Lee, and Brother Steve Leung came to visit me in my apartment. We were sitting in the living room, and they began to share with me about the meaning and importance of baptism. Of course, I had never heard about such thing. After, they walked me through the scriptures about baptism, they asked me "Would you be willing to be baptized?" I admitted I did not understand it all, but the word of God is clear and compelling. I felt I had to obey the command of the Lord, if I wanted to become his disciple. Therefore, I said "I am willing." Believe me, that was the most blessed decision that I ever made, other than when I accepted the Lord as my savior. At the conclusion of my baptism, I was given a bible and a pile of spiritual books to read, and that was the beginning of my discipleship.

Many brothers and sisters in Christ had helped me along in my spiritual journey. I was taught how to read through the bible by daily reading 3 chapters of Old Testament and 1 chapter of New Testament. In this manner, I will be able to read through the whole bible in one year. Others encouraged and kept me accountable in my personal daily devotion. In different bible studies, I received instruction of God’s words through many. With the other Christian believers, I attend many special meetings in the House of God in San Francisco. I was particularly impressed by the knowledge and skill of teaching of Brother Wang Kok Hing. Later on, I benefited much in reading his book called "Growing in Christ." Attending different summer retreats in Santa Cruez and Los Angeles brought great blessing to my life. It was in the Santa Cruez’s retreat, after challenged by the speaker, I offered myself to serve the Lord wherever He leads me. I can go on and on, because I am still not yet finished with my journey in following the Lord. You see, what I had just shared with you is my experience of growing in Christ. Each believer must not remain in his or her spiritual infancy. He must grow up in Christ. Growing in Christ is a process. It takes time and people to help us. Just as a new born baby needs a lot of attention and help to keep him growing, a new believer needs the attention of the church to help him grow. The church cannot assume that a new believer will grow automatically, just because he comes to church every Sunday. We must have a strategy to help them to grow. Study the life of our Lord Jesus, you will find that the Lord had a definite strategy to train his 12 disciples. The Lord taught them in front of the crowd. The Lord instructed them privately, sometimes in small group, and at other times, with only a few alone privately. The Lord modeled for them and sent them out to the villages to have practical experience in the ministry. When they came back, he took them for a retreat and gave them evaluation and encouragement. Yes indeed, our Lord had a plan to train his twelve disciples. Alexander Bruce beautifully portrayed the Lord’s method, in his Classic writing "The training of the Twelve." I highly recommended to anyone who is seriously interested in disciples training. In summary, this is the strategy of "Building."

Now finally, let me turn to the third action word "Teaching". Jesus said "Teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you". I call this process the strategy of "Equipping". Every disciple of Jesus Christ must be thoroughly equipped or taught before he or she can become an effective worker in the ministry. Paul wrote in the book of Ephesians "It is he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers to prepare God’s people for works of service…" Ep 4:11-12.

To equip God’s people to do the ministry should be the top priority of every pastor and church leaders. In his book "The Disciple making Pastor", Bill Hull shared his personal experience with his readers. He wrote "In June of 1984 I left an established church and started one in San Diego. My motivation was to see if installing disciple making at the heart of the church would work. Doing that requires three things:

1. The pastor must possess convictions concerning disciple making and declare it as top priority from the pulpit.

2. The philosophy and its goals should be published in church literature and placed into the constitution as the criteria for measuring success.

3. The disciple-making philosophy must be modeled at the church leadership level. The pastor and leaders should be effective disciples makers themselves.

He remained steadfast on these three principles and the result of his ministry was spectacular. Was he surprised by the result? Of course not, but how come so many churches do not see the importance and benefit of disciples-making. I believe that many churches today only give lip service to disciple-making. They talk about it, but they have no strategy or actual plan to implement it. If disciples are the final products of the mission of the church, do we know what a disciple looks like. How can we measure success, if our final product cannot be defined. What is a disciple of Jesus Christ ? I am sure we can come up with different definition or description. To sum it up, a disciple is a matured believer who is Spirit-filled and has developed the characters of Christ as well as his passion for the lost.. He is now fully equipped to initiate the process of disciples- making through the steps of winning the lost, building the believers and equipping them to make disciples. Jesus said "Teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you." You see, teaching them is not enough. It is the mean and not the end. The heart of the matter is obedience. When we are obedient to the Lord, then we begin to understand the true mission of the Church. Yes indeed, the Lord has given the church a Great commission. It is great because of its nobleness. It is great because it reaches a great multitude of people of different nations, tribes and tongues. But let us be sure that this great commission is meant to be a daily commission for the church and every believer. Would you be obedient and true to His commission today? Let us pray !

Title: The Mission of the Church
By: Vincent Lo
Series: The Truth about the Church
Date: 8/22/99