Going into all the world . . .

Our church just hired a pastor of “family ministries” who is from Quebec. While he and his wife feel they are just learning, they can speak some English. One of their young boys speaks only French and now they are living in the West, where French is rarely heard.

Yesterday, as people greeted them, I happened to be nearby when a young Chinese student, new to our congregation, shook their hands. My mouth dropped open when this fellow, fluent in English and two Chinese languages, began talking to them in French.

Looking around our congregation is like being at the United Nations. There are people from several countries in Latin America, several who are Chinese, also people from Japan, Vietnam, Korea, and other parts of the world. One of our other pastors is Australian. Not only that, two other congregations hold services in our building. One is Hispanic and the other is French Congolese.

Today I am reading what is called the “great commission” at the end of Matthew. Jesus said to His disciples:

Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. Amen. (Matthew 28:19-20)

This mandate seems obvious to us today with Christianity now an overwhelmingly Gentile religion subscribed to by roughly one-third of the world’s population. Disciples use modern technology in Bible translation and methods of reaching others with the message of the Gospel, the goal being to make disciples in all nations, people groups, and languages.

In those early days of Christianity, the first believers were Jewish. They may have had a strong desire to remain God’s only “chosen people” and perhaps struggled with this command to go into all the nations.

Actually, these verses sound like three commands; go, baptize, teach, but in the original language, there is only one: make disciples. This process involves three steps: going, baptizing, and teaching, especially the last two. Baptism is evidence of a decision to trust in Christ. In fact, there are no believers in the New Testament that were not baptized. Christians also need to be taught. We enter the kingdom of God illiterate to His ways and need help learning how to live this new life.

For me, the teaching part speaks loudest, particularly since He says to teach them everything He has commanded me. I’ve had several from these people groups in my Sunday Bible class and watch them furrow their brows as they try to understand English, never mind the teachings of Jesus Christ. Teaching them is a challenge for me too.

Others in our church are involved in an ESL program that is often overflowing with folks from five or six language groups. They come to learn English and some also want to learn about God. Some of them come from countries where they were told that He does not exist, but at least one of those has discovered that is not true and one will be baptized in a few weeks.

Statistics say that today the bulk of new disciples are not white and not Western. Of course they bring different cultural perspectives into the church; we see this in our own congregation. We face the challenges that the original disciples faced at the time Jesus gave the great commission. We must fully understand and accept that Jesus is Savior for all nations and God’s plan is to make disciples of people throughout the world.

I’ve never had the opportunity or felt any calling to go abroad and be a missionary, but God is doing marvelous things in that He is bringing the nations to us, even right into our church, giving me and others the challenge of obeying the great commission. We are delightfully surprised that going into the world has suddenly become a short journey.