Posts tagged ‘The Great Commission’

Every believer has the responsibility of making disciples (Matthew 28.18-20). However, God calls some people to go into other cultures to make disciples. The mission field is wherever someone is not yet a disciple. Being a missionary is not about travelling to another country. Nonetheless, God calls some men and women to do just that in order to make disciples. This calling is not the call to be an apostle in the Ephesians 4 sense of the word. Not all who are called are apostles.

The call of the apostle is a little different, or maybe a lot different.

The call to a place or a people is often thought of in current mission circles to relate to unreached people groups or unreached cities. I do not believe it is limited to that. I believe the apostle’s function is needed everywhere that there are unreached people, not only where there are unreached people groups. If you want to see why I think that, you can read my article “Our Mission,” which explains my understanding of the Great Commission.

We see this idea of being called to a people or peoples in Peter (Galatians 2.8) and Paul (Romans 11.13 and Galatians 2.8). Paul was the apostle to the Gentiles (non-Jewish peoples). Peter was the apostle to the Jews (a people). Yet, Paul almost always started his work in a new city in the Jewish synagogue (where there was one) and Peter was sent by God to Cornelius, a Gentile. So, we cannot derive that an apostle to a people only works with that people group, but that his primary focus is making disciples among that people.

At a certain point in the history of the church in the Book of Acts, almost all of the apostles left Jerusalem. Only James remained there. From this I derive that his calling as an apostle was to the city of Jerusalem, or perhaps that it extended from Jerusalem into the surrounding region. I do not have a specific verse of Scripture to quote to prove that statement, but that is how I see the situation. There are, in the world today, apostles who state their calling to be within a certain region (or city) and to all the people(s) who reside there, rather than having a call to a specific people within that region (or city). I do not state that in order to use the experience of today to “prove” what I think was the reality of the church then. To the contrary, I want to show that one claiming to be an apostle to a city or a region today is not outside the bounds of Scripture in making that claim.

There should be no confusion about the call of the apostle to a people or place in comparison to a man who has the title of “pastor” or even “apostle” within the hierarchy of the institutional church. The apostle in Ephesians 4 has a ministry that is far larger than any single church. That is not to say that an apostle might not actually hold such employment, but a true apostle will find great frustration in such a position. It must also be clearly understood that the call of the apostle is not the call to climb the leadership ladder of an organization, moving from one place to the next to get ahead in his career as a minister. However, it may occur that an apostle will end up at the head of an organization which ministers within a city or region or among a people or even all the peoples of the world.

Wolfgang Simson cites John Knox of Scotland as an apostle in the history of the church. And, it may be that John Wesley, with his “the world is my parish” thinking, was an apostle. The apostle’s calling will be to a city or region, or to a people.

The call of the apostle will be accompanied by a burden for that place or that people. “John Knox, the reformer of Scotland, an apostolic man, once prayed: ‘God, give me Scotland or I die!’ (Simson, Houses That Change the World, p. 122).” When I heard Simson teach this he followed this statement up by saying that God gave Knox Scotland, and then he died.

When Jesus sent Ananias to Saul (Paul) He explained that Saul would be His instrument to carry the gospel to the Gentiles and the Jews. Jesus also told Ananias that He would show Paul how much he would suffer for His name (Acts 9.15-16). Paul suffered, but yet he had an unquenchable thirst to press on to carry the gospel further to reach Gentiles who had not yet been reached. An apostle today will suffer to get the gospel to the people or place to which he has been called by God. The apostle will weep over that people or place, will sweat to see to it that the gospel penetrates and sticks, will bleed to see Christ made known and disciples made – blood, sweat and tears, and sufferings beyond those are the reality of the apostle. The apostle will be poured out like a drink offering to reach the place or the people with the good news of Jesus Christ (Philippians 2.17 and 2 Timothy 4.6).

I am still processing through one more idea related to the apostle’s burden. Paul consistently wrote about remembering almost every church he planted in his continued prayers. Is this kind of prayer indicative of an apostle? Many people pray seriously and devote a lot of time to prayer. However, the continuous prayer for churches that have been started and the believers who have been discipled may be another characteristic of the apostle’s burden for a people or a place.

I have seen and heard people today claim to be apostles, but few who have been willing to shed their own blood to make the gospel known. I have, however, met a few who are so burdened for the people or place of their calling that “blood, sweat and tears” is not an understatement.

I have just added an article entitled “Our Mission” to the articles page.

This is an article that I wrote as part of the study on Acts that I use for discipleship, leadership training and training church planters. I find it important for the people around me to understand what is going on in my head when I talk about “our mission” and the work here. It was originally written in Portuguese and I translated it into English to post here.

Since I watched the Verge2010 Conference on the Live Stream, I realize that there are churches and leaders in the US who share many of the same ideas I’ve expressed in this article. However, this is my own explanation of what I believe the Great Commission really means.

You can read the article by clicking this link “Our Mission“. Or, you can read it from the articles page and see what other articles are there too.

Also, I’d like to say thanks to the folks at Verge2010 for making the Live Stream available, and for free at that, to those who could not be there live! That was extremely cool of them!