BLOG 6/8/18. CHRIST’S MANDATE TO ALL OF US: “GO MAKE DISCIPLES!”

BLOG 6/8/18. CHRIST’S MANDATE TO ALL OF US: “GO MAKE DISCIPLES!”

Forgive me if I keep tracking the indescribable obscurity of that discipline that is at the heart of Jesus’ final mandate to his followers: “Go make disciples … teaching them to observe all that I have commanded.” That word: make disciples is a very specific Greek word that demands both our understanding, and our continual obedient response. It is given to all of us, both the weak and the strong, the new followers of Christ as well as the seasoned veterans in the gospel enterprise. In Jesus’ significant encounter with his followers at Caesarea Philippi he asked them who they had determined that he was, and they were persuaded that he was, in fact, God’s great anointed agent to make all things new, to inaugurate his kingdom, God’s New Creation. … Now follow this this sequence as it is critical to our understanding, note: Jesus affirmed that they were correct in understanding this huge reality about himself, … but then …

Nothing would ever be the same. Jesus drops in a whole new dimension to this design of God: Jesus tells them that on that all-encompassing eschatological-ultimate reality, he was going to build his church, i.e., he was going to call forth a New Humanity. Note: he was going to build this new people called out to belong to himself. He was going to build his church. So then, comes the question, what was the role of his disciples in this eschatological enterprise. If he was going to build his church, what was their role. Ah! That is where we come to his final commission to them which would explain their role. They were to “go and make disciples.” He would build his church, … but theirs was to make disciples—those persons who would be his followers, and formed by his teaching. His own disciples were to go and do to others precisely what Jesus had done with them.

Jesus had met his disciples along the way and invited them to come and be with him. Over the course of many months he taught them, modeled his teachings for them, and sent them out on missions and then refined them, i.e., Jesus reproduced himself in his disciples. They were now to go and do the same with others. The apostle Paul would later tell the believers in the church at Phillipi: “What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me—practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.” That’s disciple-making. Paul would also tell others: “Be imitators of me even as I am of Christ.”

I learned this lesson only after I was a credentialed Presbyterian pastor (and had never been introduced to it as a critical discipline in my several years in theological schools). It was my friend, the late Pete Hammond of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, who described disciple-making to me as: “spending such significant time with others that you reproduce yourself in them.” … Do with others what Jesus did with the twelve. This is not tossing out Bible verses, or engaging others in Bible studies (thought that may be a part of it). It is being the model of the teachings of Christ, a communicator of his teachings, and then the mentor to help others to understand them.

As a young pastor trying to figure out what I was supposed to be doing in a very fractured congregation, I stuck up a friendship with a long-time member on the fringe of the congregation who was a salesman for an electronics company. One day, out of the blue, he asked if I would go on his sales route with him. I did. We spent the day together in his car and making calls, and engaged with his deluging me with his question. Toward the end of the day, he turned to me and remarked (to my amazement, as  though pastors were paid to perform some professional church role): “Bob, you really believe in God, don’t you?” That was the beginning of a friendship and disciple-making engagement that had long-range consequences in both his life and mine. He later became a quiet but key voice in critical decisions that brought that church into a powerful witness. It was Pete Hammond’s definition working itself out in my life. The mandate is also yours if you are one baptized into faith in Christ. It doesn’t belong to church professionals, but to you (and all of us). Comments?

About rthenderson

Sixty years a pastor-teacher within the Presbyterian Church. Author of several books, the latest of which are a trilogy on missional ecclesiology: ENCHANTED COMMUNITY: JOURNEY INTO THE MYSTERY OF THE CHURCH, then, REFOUNDING THE CHURCH FROM THE UNDERSIDE, then THE CHURCH AND THE RELENTLESS DARKNESS. Previous to this trilogy was A DOOR OF HOPE: SPIRITUAL CONFLICT IN PASTORAL MINISTRY, and SUBVERSIVE JESUS, RADICAL FAITH. I am a native of West Palm Beach, Florida, a graduate of Davidson College, then of Columbia and Westminster Theological Seminaries.
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