Southern Baptists are certainly to be commended for following a divine impulse to develop a strategy that would give rise to what is being termed a Great Commission Resurgence within our denomination.
Don KirklandThe task force given that unenviable, if important, assignment should be one of the most prayed-for band of Baptists ever. Former SBC president and Taylors First Baptist pastor Frank Page and the others on the panel must shape a strategy that will promote oneness among Southern Baptists in a shoulder-to-shoulder effort to obey as individuals, as congregations and as a denomination what Matthew’s gospel records as our Lord’s final words of instruction to his church.
It is good for the collective soul of Southern Baptists, and bodes well for the future of our denomination, that we have admitted our failure to follow our Lord’s instructions to us as faithfully as we ought.
A second element of the work of the task force also can be characterized as unenviable, too. It no doubt will desire to measure the success or failure of the strategy and must devise a method other than math to give an accurate reading. As Henry Blackaby has rightly reminded us, disciple-making is more about relationship than about evangelism. It is one thing to baptize believers in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It is quite another to nurture them in a faith that grows deeper and more meaningful by day-to-day obedience to the teachings of Jesus.
For the churches of the South Carolina Baptist Convention and its sister Southern Baptist Convention, the time of the Great Commission Resurgence is now, not next June. The gospel of Matthew, which contains the Great Commission, was the teaching gospel of the early church, and it should be employed now — along with all scripture — to develop disciples within our congregations. It has been said that our churches — no matter how small or large — must become, if they are not already, theological schools where serious study of the Bible is paramount, resulting in mature, obedient followers of the Way, as Christians were first called.
Our focus as Southern Baptists on the Great Commission must be accompanied by an emphasis on another “great” given to us by our Lord — the Great Commandment. We as believers have from the mouth of Jesus a commission and a command, and we must not emphasize one at the expense of the other.
There can be no Great Commission Christian who is not also a Great Commandment Christian.
It is that love for God with every fiber of our being — and loving our neighbor as ourself — that moves us to invite others into a relationship with God through Christ, in which such self-giving love can not only exist, but which also flourishes, enriching every life touched by it.
In Luke’s gospel, Jesus offered to an inquiring lawyer the twin commandments of equal value — to love God and your neighbor — and followed it with the story of the Good Samaritan to identify who a neighbor is. He is the one in need, the one who — like the wounded victim in the parable — needs to be rescued. That said, Jesus then advises the inquisitive lawyer, “Go and do likewise.”
The history of Christianity is made glorious not as much by the creeds it developed through the centuries as by the deeds of believers who took seriously the words of Jesus the prophet, did as he instructed, and by their devotion to God and care for others sowed seeds of grace among people who are in need of rescue by, and are the objects of love from, a loving Heavenly Father who does not wish that any should perish.
The word of our Lord to you and me today is no different from his instruction to the lawyer then: “Go and do likewise.”