Video Transcript: Great Commission Central

Well, hello again. We're continuing with our course developing great commission skills. Today we're working on skill one, and we're moving into unit two, the skill  topic that we're going to be looking at today is called Great Commission Central. Now here's the thing, I have come to understand, that the Great Commission is  

central to both the vision and the strategy of the church, you know, God has a  vision of a church that goes in the authority of Jesus Christ to make disciples,  baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and  teaching them to obey, to observe all that He has commanded, resting in and  

empowered by his continual presence through His Holy Spirit. Now the church  that follows through on this commitment is a church that is effective at reaching  the lost among the harvest and is effective at being a great commission, church  bringing glory to God. So here's a vision question, a visionary question for you to ask for any given church. For that matter, what will the ministry look like if our  church commits to being truly a great commission, church centering our ministry on the mandate of the Great Commission. Now, let me just point something out  for a moment. Most church leaders that I have worked with over the years have  indicated that their desire is for their churches to commit to the Great  Commission, to see the people come to Christ, to go and make disciples. No  one ever says, No, I'm not interested in that. No one ever says, No, the Great  Commission is not that important. Everyone agrees that it's important. Everyone  agrees that they would love to see more conversion growth, more people  coming to Christ. And yet, when I take a deeper look into the life of the church, I  find very few indicators of a commitment to the Great Commission. I don't find  the time that staff people are devoting to ministry to be that centered on the  Great Commission. I don't find budgets that are creating ample resources for  great commission types of ministry, the list goes on and on. So you know, it's  one thing. It's one thing to say you're about the Great Commission. It's quite  another to actually follow through that visionary quest. What would ministry look  like if we really did commit to being a great commission church, if we, if we really looked in the mirror at ourselves and recognize perhaps that we're not really  living up to that ideal, to that expectation, when You look at the criterion that are  being used, the criteria that are being used for decision making. For example, is  it a great commission criteria? When you look at how resources are being  allocated, are they being allocated according to the Great Commission? Is  ministry being evaluated on being effective with great commission? Ministry?  Now, when we turn our thoughts to strategy, the question becomes, okay, fine,  how are we going to make disciples? How are we going to do this, if we really  commit to the vision of the Great Commission, how are we going to do this?  What is our strategy going to be, the broad strategy of our church at large, as  well as the the individual strategies of the different ministries, the different  departments, the different ways that staff is being utilized. How are we going to  do that now, as you begin to really answer that question, the question of how 

strategy will begin to emerge so with both vision and strategy being driven by  the great. Commission. The Great Commission will stand as the central core of  the missional enterprise, great commission Central. Now, as we move further  into this session, I I'm going to recommend that you pull out page 22 from the  developing great commission skills. Presentation notes. You should have the  presentation notes as a download as part of of this course. And I really, really  think you should have this in front of you as we proceed, because I'm about to  show you, I'm about to show you a diagram, a chart that we are going to spend  a lot of time with and it would be helpful if you had that. So if you don't have it  right at your fingertips, I'm going to suggest that you pause the video and find it  and then come back and and we'll dive back in. Okay, so I'm assuming now that  you have done that, that you have page 22 of the presentation notes, and so we are going to dissect this rather, rather flavorful, colorful diagram I'm calling this  the Great Commission model, or the Great Commission triangle. I don't much  care what we call it. It's the concepts that are important. I'm trying to create  some dots and then connect those dots for you. This is the kind of diagram that  you might want to print out and hang on the wall, on the bulletin board, sit on  your desk, hand it out to your staff, your leaders, something that is a reference  sheet of information, the Great Commission model. So I'm going to walk through this with you and show you how it works. First of all, I want you to note at the  corners we've got outreach, evangelism and discipleship. This is our strategic  tool, and we're going to lean into this tool to help understand how to formulate  Great Commission strategy, outreach, evangelism and discipleship. Now,  conventional churches tend to view their ministry programming as central to  their approach to ministry. A lot of churches, particularly if they are carryovers  from say, a mid to late 20th century approach to local church ministry. Many of  those churches are program driven, and the central core, the spinal cord of the  church, is its programming. Folks sense that whatever success we might be  having as a church is because we've got these programs in place. The problem  is that programming, conventional programming, tends to be congregation  focus, in other words, people that have already been reached. And it it doesn't  do much for reaching out to the lost in the community, whereas a great  commission, central approach to ministry would place, would place those folks  out in the community, right in the center of what it is we're trying to do. Now I  want to introduce a term, and I'm going to define that for you. And the term is  this, ministry movements. I want to suggest to you that outreach, evangelism  and discipleship, are not going to function as conventional ministry programs,  per se. They are going to function as ministry movement. Now, let me give you  an example, many years ago, before I went into local church ministry, we're  talking we're talking mid 70s. Now. I was part of a church that had roughly 1200  members. Now we had an evangelism team, and we had about 15 of us on this  evangelism team. Do you see a problem? See anything out of balance there? 

15 are part of the evangelism team. 1185 are not. However, my guess is that if  you were to speak with any of those 1185 and ask the question, Does does your church engage in evangelism? The answer would have been Yes, we have an  evangelism team. Here's the thing, though, if you have a church, a church of  1200 you should have 1200 on the evangelism team. Now how, how do you  make that happen? Well, you make evangelism a movement and not a program. Okay, so hold on to that for a moment. The question that you're probably  wondering is, what is a ministry movement? How do we define ministry  movement? Well, a ministry area becomes a movement rather than a program  when it's positioned as a thread that runs through every ministry area or every  program or every department, however you want to, want to frame it, it runs  through every ministry, every program of a church, every ministry does outreach, every ministry has the capacity to do evangelism, every ministry has the  capacity to do discipleship. We don't just have a handful of people on an  outreach team, a handful of people on an evangelism team. You know a few  people leading the charge in discipleship. Every ministry area incorporates  these three movements of outreach, evangelism and discipleship. Now I  probably need to distinguish between outreach and evangelism, because often  those two terms, those two concepts, are used interchangeably. So here's how  this works. Outreach is when people in the church connect with people outside  of the church, outside of the faith, and build sustainable relationships. The idea  is to get involved in people's lives, to walk alongside them, whether it's at work,  whether it's in your neighborhood, whether it's in your family, whether it's in  some affinity group that you're part of, like, you know, a cycling group. Recently,  I heard someone talk about having been involved in a working out at a fitness  center for a dozen years or so, and that person could point to about 40 people  who had at least visited the church from his meeting them at the fitness center,  getting to know them, extending The invitation. Okay, so outreach is about  ongoing, sustainable relationships. Evangelism is when people who are outside  of the Christian faith are exposed to a crystal, clear rendering of the gospel  message. The basics gospel 101, Jesus, sin, forgiveness, cross, resurrection,  repentance, eternal life, the very basics of the gospel. If the gospel has not been clearly articulated, evangelism has not happened now many times evangelism is made possible through outreach, as we connect with people in an ongoing way,  over time, they get to know us. They get to respect us, appreciate us. Trust us,  and then that moment happens in life when they're now interested in matters of  the soul, well, we're right there to fill that, that gap. Okay, so outreach,  evangelism, discipleship, are movements within a church, and this has to be  done intentionally as part of the the congregational strategy that filters into every ministry area of the church. Now let's move inside the triangle to reach preach  and teach. Now part of this, of course, is just the gimmick of having these three  rhyming words. It makes them very, very memorable. But this is a shorthand 

way of representing the Great Commission. You know, oftentimes the Great  Commission is succinctly narrowed down to the phrase go make disciples.  Obviously, there's much more to the Great Commission than that. But, you  know, I get it. I understand that that's a very marquee spot within the Great  

Commission. Well, think of it is reach, preach and teach. Outreach, of course, is  associated with with reach, you know, creating and leveraging the going  ministries of the church. Evangelism is associated with preach, creating and  leveraging the proclamation, ministries of the Great Commission church and  discipleship is associated with Teach engaging both the congregation and the  individual. Now, the objective of Christian maturity and the emphasis in  developing Christian maturity needs to focus on obedience to what we know,  and not just on knowing what we know. You get that maturity is about obedience to what we know, not just knowing what we know. Now, God has a vision of a  church that goes and makes disciples, moving from vision to strategy. The  question becomes, how will our church go and make disciples? Answer, we will  reach, we will preach, we will teach, we will do outreach, we will do evangelism,  we will do discipleship. Now I want you to notice the small upside down triangle  in the middle of the larger triangle, and it's got two phrases there that are  prominent. One phrase is come to faith. The other phrase is grow in faith. Now  think about it this way, outreach and evangelism work in tandem to help  someone come to faith. Discipleship helps someone to grow in faith. Now the  text box to the right that features several important scripture references,  Matthew, 28:18-20. That is the Great Commission, All authority in heaven and  earth has been given to me. Therefore, go and make disciples, baptizing them.  You know, you know how that goes by now, there's a couple of other things that  I want to point out. One is Acts 2:47, Acts 2:42-47 in Ephesians 4:1-7, 11-16. I'm  actually going to read those to you, what these do is, when you harness them  together, you have something that I refer to as the Acts 2, Ephesians 4 church. I  think it's important as a model. It's a description of the first century church, but I  think it also gives us a prescription, a prescription of the 21st century church. So let me, let me read those to you, the prescription of the first century church that  comes from Acts 2, beginning with verse 42 they devoted themselves to the  apostles teaching and the fellowship to the breaking of bread and the prayers  and awe came upon every soul. And many wonders and signs were being done  through the apostles. And all who believe were together and had all things in  common, and they were selling their possessions and belongings and  distributing the proceeds to all as any had need, and day by day, attending the  temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food  gladness with glad and generous hearts, Praising God and having favor with all  the people and the Lord, added to their number, day by day those who were  being saved. Prescription of the first century church description, back up  description to the first century church prescription of the 21st century church 

turning to Ephesians 4:1-7, Paul, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a  manner worthy of the calling to you to which you've been called, with all humility  and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another, in love, eager to  maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. Unity is a big deal to Paul.  It's a big deal to the Great Commission church, there is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call, one Lord, one  faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of  Christ's gift. Well, let's move over to verse 11 and talk about that, that  distribution of gifts and he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the  shepherds, the teachers, to equip, as that word equipped that we saw in  Hebrews 13 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body  of Christ until we all attain the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of  God, to mature manhood to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.  It goes on. So we've got this idea of unity, of commitment to those, those five  giftings of leadership in the church, equipping the saints for ministry as we move toward maturity. That is the picture that we want to see, the model of the Great  Commission church. Now, one final scripture passage I want to refer to is Ezra  7:1-10. I'm not going to read that to you. It would take too long, but I do want to  point out again, looking at that upside down triangle, in the center of the larger  triangle, you see the phrase obedience, know, live, share. Well obedience is  taken out of the Great Commission teach them to obey all that I have  commanded you, but to know, to live, to share that is an interpretation that  comes out of Ezra 7:10. You know, Ezra was an amazing servant of the Lord.  We're told that he was a descendant of Aaron, so he was the high priest, and he was skilled in the Law of Moses. So in the in the one man, Ezra, we had the one two punch of Aaron and Moses and God selected Ezra to play a pivotal role.  Following the exile, Ezra is the one who came back to Jerusalem out of exile to  reestablish the law of God as the law of the land. What were his qualifications?  Well, Ezra 7:10 tells us. It says that Ezra had devoted himself to three things. He had devoted himself to the study and observance of the law, the study of the  law, the observance of the law and to teaching its statutes and decrees all  throughout Israel. Well, if we bump that over to the New Testament, here's what  we get. Ezra was a man who knew his faith. Ezra was a man who lived his faith,  and Ezra was a man who taught his faith in an effort to be obedient to the  commands of Christ. We need to know our faith. We need to live our faith. And if we're going to be faithful to the Great Commission, we've got to share our faith,  great commission Central. Now let's wrap this up. What is our vision we will go  and make disciples. What is our strategy? We will actually go now, why is it  important that I spell that out. Well, again, I've worked with lots and lots of  churches that will claim that they have a vision for the Great Commission, but  they don't have the strategy to back it up. Our vision. We have a vision of going 

and making disciples. And strategically, we're actually going to go. We are going  to center our actions on going that outreach part, the evangelism part, and as  people cross that starting line of salvation. We will grow them in their faith to  maturity. Ephesians 4, we will grow them into being true worshipers. Well, that  completes this video. Next time we're going to be looking at the skill topic called  a reached community. A reached community, may God bless your ongoing  studies. Amen.