#251 | Fixing Our Evangelism: 4 Ways to Reclaim the Great Commission

In the past, when we were more isolated, like monocultural, so to speak, it kind of.

It worked.

You know, like Bud mentioned the Four Spiritual Laws when I was in college, that seemed to work, and we promoted that.

Now, with globalization increasing, which results in pluralism, it's more likely you're going to encounter someone who doesn't have, like, a Christian history or Christian background.

They may be.

You mentioned Wiccan, or they may be Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, or indifferent.

So as a result, instead of evangelism being what it used to be, like rekindling a faith that they used to have or their parents had, now we're in new territory.

And you can't assume that we can build upon that guilt, justice kind of orientation.

Welcome to those who Serve the Lord, a podcast for those at the front lines of ministry.

You've given your life to serve.

But what happens when the well runs dry?

If you've felt the weight of leaping leadership, the tension between tradition and change, or the challenge of staying faithful while engaging culture, you're not alone.

I'm Travis Michael Fleming, founder and executive director of Apollo's Watered, the Center for Discipleship and Cultural Apologetics.

I've been at the front lines for over 25 years, leading churches to become thriving testimonies of God's grace.

I've wrestled with the same questions you're facing, and I've seen how God brings renewal even in the hardest seasons.

Each week we have conversations with pastors, theologians, and cultural thinkers as we seek to equip you to lead well and stay rooted in Christ amid shifting cultural tides.

So grab your coffee and listen in, because your faith matters, your work is not in vain, and the Lord is still with you every step of the way.

Welcome back to those who serve the Lord.

That quote you heard was from missiologist J.

Moon.

Jay was unpacking how evangelistic methods have changed over time and how those changes have actually reshaped the way we understand the Great Commission.

The Great Commission.

We all think we know what it is.

Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.

And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age.

It's familiar.

It's assumed.

It's a given.

Or so we think.

But here's the truth.

It's not.

Over the next few weeks, we'll be exploring God's blueprint for ministry.

Today One that flows from three interconnected truths, the Great Commission, the Great Commandment, and one that's often overlooked, the Great Community.

These aren't just theological ideas.

They're vital, interwoven components of faithful kingdom living.

Why are we taking this time to unpack this?

Well, because the American evangelical church is in a moment of deep crisis.

Despite having more resources, more pastors, more seminaries, more churches than any other nation on planet Earth, the church in America is in steep decline.

40 million people have walked away from the church.

Pastors are burning out.

Churches are closing their doors.

Even the institutions we thought were strong are fading.

The church I grew up in?

Gone.

And just two weeks ago, one of my alma maters, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, announced a merger with Trinity Western University in British Columbia, Canada, another respected Christian institution.

Moving out of the US and into Canada.

It's painful, but not isolated.

Depending on where you live, you may see things differently.

But having lived in the Midwest, spent time in New England, and now living in the Southeast, I can say the signs are everywhere.

Even the Bible Belt isn't immune anymore.

The numbers don't lie.

There is a spiritual cold front that is slowly creeping across the South.

62% of US adults still identify as Christians.

But here's the deal.

Only 30% of them regularly attend church.

What does that tell us?

We have converts, but not disciples.

And there's a huge difference, as we'll soon see.

It's a product of our theology.

But even in the midst of decline, there are whispers of hope.

I don't want to make it sound like there is no hope.

There is hope in Great Britain, a place where atheists like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens once dominated the cultural conversation.

We're now hearing stories of young men returning to church, of intellectuals coming to faith in Jesus.

In the United States, members of Generation Z are beginning to express a deep desire to know God.

Even in the media, we're seeing cracks in the secular narrative, a resurgence of spiritual curiosity, a reappearance of faith in the public square.

These are good things, signs of life, and I want to encourage him.

I pray they grow.

But to move forward, we need to go back, back to the Great Commission, and not just read it, but.

But really understand it.

Because I believe we've assumed too much.

Let me give you an example.

This past Christmas, my family played a trivia game.

One question was asked, how many animals are mentioned in the Christmas story?

Immediately, the pressure mounted.

I'm watching the other teams play, and I'm thinking, I went to Bible college.

And I went to different seminaries.

I have to know this answer.

I've been a pastor for over 20 years.

And we quickly guessed three cattle, sheep, and a donkey.

Easy, right?

But the correct answer?

Zero.

You see, we had unknowingly inserted lyrics from Christmas carols into the biblical text, like the cattle are lowing, the baby awakes.

But the scripture never says that our assumptions, shaped by familiarity, colored the story.

We do the same thing with the Great Commission.

We think we know it.

But what if our understanding has been shaped more by cultural expectations than by Scripture itself?

What if the way we do evangelism today would be unrecognizable to the early church?

Let me repeat that.

What if the way we do evangelism today would be unrecognizable to the early church?

What if we've lost the relational heart of discipleship and in doing so, misunderstood the very mission Jesus did gave us?

Before we dive deeper, let me offer a gentle warning.

This episode might make you uncomfortable.

I'm going to challenge some of the assumptions many of us hold.

Many of the truths that I've learned and the deep dives that I've done made me uncomfortable.

But let me be clear here.

I believe in the Bible.

I believe Jesus is the Son of God, crucified, risen, and coming again.

I believe in evangelism.

I believe in making disciples.

I believe we are called to share our faith.

But I also believe that we must return to Scripture and allow scripture to dictate to us.

Which means that we don't just read it, but we study it.

We do the hard work of exegesis.

And we must listen to history, because history shows how easily good intentions can drift into distortion.

Think about the Irish monks for a moment.

Church history is full of stories of devout believers like them who, in their zeal, ended up doing some pretty strange things, like whipping themselves or standing neck deep in freezing water while chanting psalms.

They believe these practices showed their devotion.

We now look back and say, that's extreme, a little weird, but distortions happen gradually.

And if it happened to them, what makes us think that we're immune?

If Jesus doesn't return for another hundred or even a thousand years, what will future believers say about us?

What will they shake their heads at in disbelief?

And one more note.

This episode won't cover everything.

I go into much more detail in my book, Kingdom Living in the Modern World.

There I unpack these ideas more fully and explore what it looks like to live out the Great Commission in today's context.

For now, let's go back just a little to the recent past because it's often our most recent experiences that shape our current expectations.

For many of us, evangelism meant inviting someone to church to hear a sermon.

But that approach was built on a very specific cultural framework.

To unpack that framework, I'll let missiologist Craig Ott explain.

And there was enough of a general.

Even if people weren't committed Christians of any kind, there was sort of a general consensus of values.

And yes, there would be a God.

And somehow, you know, church is probably a good thing.

And so that older approach of just invite people to church, just get them in, you know, where they can hear a sermon, you know, that kind of worked.

But that is not the world we have today.

People just, you invite somebody to church and say, why would I even do that?

Why would I even think of doing that?

Why would I go there?

And if they went, they wouldn't have that common.

This is something about secularization is we no longer have a common language, a common vocabulary.

So if we use a word like sin, well, what do you mean by that?

Does it mean you didn't keep your New Year's resolution?

Or you know, what does the word sin mean?

And we use the word God.

My goodness, what do you think God is?

Well, God sort of a higher power?

Or is God some kind of a personal being?

So we don't have a common vocabulary, we don't have a common conceptualization that makes evangelism in that the way we used to do it possible.

And this is why these forms approaches that have a more story oriented or dialogical or more see evangelism more as a process at a point in time.

It gives people a chance to hear the biblical story, develop some biblical concepts that make the gospel sensible.

Because for many people, if you just sort of start out with a cross, that doesn't make any sense at all.

There's no logical framework in which that could make sense to a person.

Dr.

Ott is absolutely right.

When I lived in New England, I tried sharing the gospel with my neighbor.

His response, you believe in God?

Why?

The question hit me and it marked a huge contrast from what I experienced after moving back to the Midwest.

One of the first things someone asked me in church was, do you homeschool Christian school or public school?

Those two moments highlight the growing cultural divide.

Two different regions, two very different worlds.

But what I saw in New England didn't stay there.

It started creeping across the country.

Not long after returning to the Midwest, I saw it firsthand.

A woman in our church, who also happened to be the choir director at a local university, had 60 students in her choir.

She decided to include a couple of hymns in an upcoming program, but as she introduced them, she noticed blank stares.

Confused, she paused and asked, how many of you have ever been to a church before?

Only two students raised their hands.

Let that sink in.

Out of 60 college students, just two had ever stepped foot inside a church.

They didn't know the hymns.

They didn't even know what a hymn was.

That's not just a cultural anecdote.

It's a wake up call.

For decades, our evangelism strategies assumed that people already had some basic framework for the gospel, that they knew who God was, had a concept of sin, heaven and hell, or at least some familiarity with the scripture.

But that assumption no longer holds.

It's not wrong to invite someone to church.

Far from it.

But as our culture continues to shift, we can't rely on ministry methods that were designed for a time when biblical literacy was the new norm.

That world is fading fast, and this isn't new.

In the Book of Acts, we see Paul adapting his approach based on his audience.

When he spoke in the synagogues to fellow Jews, he began with the Scriptures.

But when he addressed the philosophers at the Areopagus, he started with their poets and cultural touch points.

He found common ground and built a bridge to the gospel.

That's the posture we need today.

I'm currently writing a substack series entitled 10 Ideas that have Redefined the Gospel and not for the Better.

One of the articles is called Modernity when the Gospel Became a Formula.

In it, I unpack how many of our evangelistic methods, those clear, structured gospel presentations, how they actually came into existence.

What's surprising is that there wasn't a widely used system of evangelism until the late 18th century.

Over time, these approaches took shape.

Things like the four spiritual laws, the Romans road, the ABCs, the bridge illustration, evangelism explosion, and more recently, three circles and again.

Hear me clearly.

I'm not against these tools, tracks, outlines, visuals.

They can be helpful.

I remember as a young man reading chick tracts and how much they put the fear of God into me.

But in today's cultural context, many of them fall short.

They were created in a world where belief in one God, sin, Jesus, judgment, and biblical authority could be assumed.

That's not today's world.

Now I talk with people who believe in a God or many gods, or even think they are God.

Others believe in Jesus but see the church as irrelevant, outdated, or even harmful.

That's a far cry from the New Testament vision of life in Christ's body.

This is where regional context matters.

Jeremy Treat, a pastor and theologian in Hollywood, California, once wrote an article for the Gospel Coalition where he described how different the spiritual landscape is across the United States.

He compared the ministry in the Northeast, where atheism and secularism dominate, to California, where he lives, where people are incredibly spiritual but in a way that's detached from biblical Christianity.

In the Northeast, you might have to convince someone that God even exists, like I had to.

In parts of California, though, everyone believes in something.

They're deeply spiritual, but it's often a mix of mysticism, self help and Instagram worthy spirituality.

People talk about energy, the universe, even Jesus.

But the Jesus they believe in may look nothing like the Jesus of the Bible.

Treat's point echoes what many of us are seeing firsthand.

We're not facing one kind of culture anymore.

We're navigating a mosaic of worldviews, some indifferent, some hostile, and some open but confused.

And all of this reinforces why our methods need to adapt, not by compromising the message, but by wisely contextualizing.

So what happened?

Billy Graham, reflecting on his life and ministry, once said, we were good at making converts.

We weren't so good at making disciples.

That's painfully honest and painfully true.

There are churches out there doing this well.

They're focused on intentional, relational, scripture, rooted disciple making.

And that might even be your church.

But you are the exception, not the rule.

Let me be clear.

I still believe in evangelism.

I believe in proclaiming the good news and inviting people to respond to it.

But I have a deep concern about what invite evangelism has become.

Rushing through talking points while ignoring the Spirit's work in a person's heart.

We've drawn a line between evangelism and discipleship that Jesus never drew.

He didn't separate them.

He lived them together.

Which is why Pastor Tom Mercer of High Desert Church in California says, whenever.

A pastor says come to an evangelism class, how many people go?

If they say, go to a discipleship class, they're full.

I even advise pastors now never even use the word evangelism.

I mean, unless you're teaching through a text.

And you have to, to be true to the text.

Bury the word because it has so much baggage.

People hate the idea of talking to someone.

Probably they don't know about something.

They don't feel confident in.

Tom is passionate about the gospel and having people come to know Jesus.

But he's right.

Most of our people don't know what to say or how to say it.

And maybe that's why Jesus never gave us a formula.

Neither did Paul, for that matter, or Peter or any of the disciples.

There's no single universal script in the entire Bible.

That's why we need to understand the key parts of the biblical story and understand our place within that story.

Perhaps that's why it feels so unnatural.

We don't understand the story.

In many churches across America, evangelism has been reduced to an event, something that happens inside a building, on a stage, delivered by a pastor.

It's attractional by nature, and that's not all bad.

After all, Jesus said, come and see.

But there's more to it than that.

The event is most effective within a relational framework.

And without that, our task becomes all the more challenging.

One of the reasons we find it so difficult to share the gospel today is that we haven't seen it embodied enough.

Many of our churches have focused on the event and separated it from the process.

In our disembodied world, that produces dehumanizing isolation.

It's up to us to show that God wants to bring about a relational transformation.

Part of our issue is that we have simply copied what was before us, and there was a belief that salvation was found through an event.

This is how you do evangelism.

This is what we do, this is what we say.

But that often was a cultural expression that worked in a certain context and may work still in certain places.

But what is needed more now is the relational connection.

Missiologist J.D.

payne put it this way.

We reproduce what we know, and we know what's been modeled before us.

You know, Paul would often talk about in his writings, he would say, at least on three occasions, he would say, you know, imitate me as I imitate Christ.

He became imitators of us.

In the lord, writes in 1 Thessalonians, chapter 1, what you see is a part of the tradition of the church.

The apostolic involvement is there is this notion of not only passing along right doctrine, orthodoxy, but also orthopraxy.

This notion of how do you apply, how do you contextualize the teachings of Christ that have been passed on to you?

And so what we have often done in church history, when I say we, I'm talking about those of us in a predominantly Western context and specifically with me in the United States, we have often taken things in our cultural traditions the way that we think about church and ministry and liturgy and preaching styles and worship styles, and how we train leaders, how we share the gospel, things that work really well at home, things that the Lord may have used to even bring me to faith and grow me in the faith.

And we have wed those so tightly to the biblical teachings that oftentimes we believe that our methods and our cultural expressions are our Bible.

In other words, to separate those expressions, those cultural preferences, is really bad and sinful because you're not passing on what is biblical, when in reality what I'm doing is I'm not being able to distinguish between what is my cultural preference and what is biblical.

And so for centuries, we have taken not only the gospel to the world, but we've also taken a very heavy dose of our cultural expressions to the world, and we've passed those on to others with an idea that if you express yourself this way in your context, therefore you are doing it the right way, because this is Bible, this is biblical, this is doctrine.

Dr.

Payne puts words to what many of us have felt deep down, that if we're not doing evangelism in a certain way, we're doing it wrong.

We've tried to imitate those we perceive as successful, which often means mimicking the big box churches that dominate our news feeds.

But the reality is that many of today's popular evangelistic methods reflect more of American church culture than they do the heart of the Great Commission.

Jesus didn't command us to make converts.

He commanded us to make disciples.

A disciple is a learner, a follower, someone being shaped over time, not just someone who makes a one time decision.

Unfortunately, we've placed most of our emphasis on the initial moment of salvation.

That would be the theological concept of justification.

And we have separated it from the lifelong journey of sanctification.

See, this is where catechism comes in.

It's the slow intentional process of forming a disciple over time.

Now, some may still protest, but before you do, let me ask you this.

What's more important, the wedding or the marriage?

The event or the relationship that follows?

Both matter, of course, but one lasts a day, the other a lifetime.

You can't have a marriage without a wedding.

But a wedding without a marriage is tragic.

This is where our theology needs to be recalibrated.

Catechism steps in here.

It bridges the event of salvation with the ongoing process of discipleship, as missiologist Timothy Tennant has so clearly explained.

Problem is that the church quit catechizing new members into disciple them into the faith.

That's the basic problem.

So in my world, the Western world, we call this the first half of the gospel and the second half of the gospel.

The first half of gospel being justification, second half being sanctification and growth and suppleship.

And I think unfortunately in the modern period there's been such an emphasis on lowering the bar, making the gospel simple, reducing it to very, you know, kind of bite sized pieces.

You could actually go into many of the kind of big box churches today.

What you're actually hearing is not a message of salvation, but a message of justification.

Now praise God for that.

We're not against that.

But the point is you can't confuse justification with salvation because salvation is a much larger transformational project that God's involved in with us.

And so part of our concern is that we have not really passed on the faith well.

We aren't trained our children well.

And it used to be that for a while we survived on kind of cultural cues where there was a kind of a cultural Christianity where certain things were passed on through the culture, but that's obviously now evaporated.

So we're left essentially with a church that's uncategized.

That's a serious problem.

And no church can survive that.

No church can survive that because the culture is doing a lot of catechesis day in and day out.

So if you think about the full force of cultural formation is very powerful in this culture.

So to counteract that, we need more than a 20 minute sermon on Sunday morning.

Let's break this down for a moment by starting with the Old Testament and looking at Israel's Exodus as a pattern.

You'll understand what I mean here in just a moment.

But the rest of the Torah shows a long painful process of sanctification.

Wandering, grumbling, learning, trust.

And in First Corinthians 10, 1:13, Paul uses this story as a warning to believers, showing that initial salvation didn't guarantee endurance if disobedience followed.

Or let's go to the New Testament.

Let's look at Peter's story as he goes from conversion to sanctification.

Peter follows Jesus in Luke 5, but his formation is ongoing.

He denies him in Luke 22 and even needs public correction after Pentecost.

In Galatians 2, 11, 14.

His discipleship arc reminds us that the call to follow Jesus continues even after faith begins.

Or the parable of the sower in Matthew 13:1 23.

Jesus makes it clear some respond quickly with joy, like praying a sinner's prayer, for example.

But only the seed that endures bears fruit.

It's not the immediate response that counts most, but the lasting fruit over time.

In Paul's own language, a life of progress, not just a past decision.

If we look at Philippians 2:12, 13, where he says, work at your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you.

See, salvation is something to continue working out, not to be reduced to a past moment.

Or Philippians 3, 12, 14 not that I have already obtained all this, but I press on to make it my own.

See, Paul says he hasn't arrived even as an apostle.

His life is still being formed.

This is why we have to keep the scriptural framework there.

Justification, sanctification and glorification.

Justification, I have been saved.

Romans 5:1.

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, a declared status by grace through faith.

But then there's sanctification.

I am being saved.

2nd Corinthians 3:18 being transformed into his image with ever increasing glory.

Those who are being made holy already justified, but still being sanctified.

Or Romans 6:19 now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification.

And then we have glorification.

I will be saved.

Romans 8:30, those he justified he also glorified.

Or 1st Peter 1:5 a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

See, the gospel is not just a doorway we walk through, it's the road we walk on.

Justification is when I'm declared righteous by grace.

But that's just the beginning.

Sanctification is the Spirit shaping me into Christ likeness over a lifetime.

And glorification is when I'll be fully renewed in his presence.

Scripture never celebrates a one time decision without the life that follows it.

As Canadian missiologist Jeff Kristofferson explains, if.

Our understanding of believing is not just a, you know, a few facts about the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ that we'll give some intellectual assent to, but it's actually a whole new order of life.

It affects everything.

This is what believing means.

It doesn't mean I've, you know, believe something and now I've prayed a prayer to confirm it, but it actually means my whole life is invested in this new thing.

I can't do that immediately or emotionally.

I have to count costs.

Jesus talks about this.

I have to weigh all that kind of a thing.

And especially we're in A day with no religious memory when people don't know anything about Scripture, it takes some time to cook.

What Jeff highlights is something many of us have felt, but maybe haven't been able to articulate.

Belief isn't just about accepting a few truths and saying a prayer.

It's about entering into a whole new way of life, a reordering of everything.

That kind of transformation takes time.

It's not instant.

It requires intentional formation, patience, and counting the cost.

And this brings us to the deeper question, what exactly did Jesus call us to in the Great Commission?

Was it to just share information or to form a new kind of people?

Christopher J.H.

wright helps us step back and, and look at the broader biblical and theological context of the Great Commission, especially through the lens of Matthew's Gospel.

Listen how he frames it.

It's important exegetically, simply because this is the way Matthew chooses to close his Gospel.

But it's not all he had to say.

I mean, it is the climax of a whole scroll, the scroll of Matthew, which clearly has shown who Jesus is.

The son of Abraham, the son of David, so he's the man for all nations.

Abraham is this King David's son, so he's the Messiah king.

And then you get all the life and works and teaching of Jesus.

So if Jesus says, go and make disciples, teaching them to obey all that I've commanded you, you'd have to look back through Matthew's Gospel and say, well, what did Jesus command his disciples?

And he didn't only command them to go out and evangelize the world.

He commanded them to be those who would be works of compassion and love and forgiveness and healing.

You know, there's so much in just Matthew alone, apart from the rest of the New Testament, about the way Christians are supposed to be living, rather than simply about what we're saying.

That to treat the Great Commission as simply to do with the preaching of the gospel or even just the teaching of the doctrines or something seems to me to be illogical because Jesus didn't just say, teach them all that I taught you, as if it was just transfer my teaching to their heads from your head.

He says, teaching them to obey all that I commanded you.

Which brings it right down to practical living, to actually living out the gospel, becoming the gospel, to use the phrase that Michael Gorman has used as a title of one of his books.

So therefore, I think that is one reason why the Great Commission, even just in Matthew.

But the other thing I would say about the, as I say in my book, is that the, the Phraseology that Jesus uses in these closing words are thoroughly Deuteronomic.

That's to say, they're rooted in the book of Deuteronomy at several levels.

First of all, the opening gambit, all authority in heaven and earth has been given to me.

For any human being to say that is basically adopting the Yahweh position.

Because in Deuteronomy, Moses says to Israel, israel, you need to know that Yahweh, the Lord your God, is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath, and there is no other.

And here's Jesus saying, guys, you know who I am now?

I'm the Lord of heaven and earth, the God of all creation.

So that is a cosmic reality which has to do with God's whole purposes for all creation, if you see what I mean.

In other words, it's a connection right back to the creational language of Deuteronomy and indeed of Genesis.

And when he says, teach them to observe all that I've commanded you.

That again, is pure Deuteronomy.

It's what Moses or God say again and again, be careful, O Israel, to obey all that I, the Lord your God, am commanding you this day.

And that whole scriptural element of the commands of God have massive amounts of what kind of people they were to be in their social, economic, political, legal, family life.

And so if Jesus is, in a sense passing on, transmuting, as it were, the ethics of the Old Testament scriptures, he's effectively saying to his disciples, I want you to be what Israel was really supposed to be according to God's law.

And then I want you to create replicating communities of obedience, which is why Paul talks about the obedience of faith.

So that profoundly transformative life element is intrinsic to the Great Commission.

It's not just something that comes afterwards.

Get people saved first, and then we see what happens.

Which is one reason why I agree with you that I don't.

I think the language of, quote, fulfilling the Great Commission suggests that, you know, it's a kind of ticking clock, you know, that to do with the people we happen to have reached with the gospel.

Now, again, I don't want to be misunderstood here for anybody who's listening, because I do not want to be heard, to be disparaging those whose passion it is from God that the Christian church is way behind where we ought to be in terms of reaching to people who've never yet heard the Gospel, that there is a reality in our world of peoples and groups and languages who have no connection with the knowledge of the Lord Jesus.

Christ.

And that is wrong and scandalous.

So, yes, we should be doing that.

But to make the Great Commission in a sense refer only to that, as if to say Jesus is sort of waiting until we've reached the last people on earth and then he can come back is not really even what Jesus.

He didn't say just evangelizing.

He says disciple, the nations make disciples.

And so when I think of my own country here, Britain, you know, Britain was reached with the gospel within the first century.

But does that mean that Britain is discipled?

Of course not.

I mean, you know, even the church in this country needs to be rediscipled.

So to turn the Great Commission into a sort of a mechanism for human effort in order to somehow accomplish something for God, I think is diminishing its impact in terms of what God is calling his whole community of disciples to be and to do in the world.

It's difficult to truly reach and disciple the people around us when many of our approaches feel transactional.

Discipleship was never meant to be a spiritual checklist.

It's meant to be transformational.

The real question is, is Christ still transforming lives today?

Absolutely.

But do we see that kind of transformation here in the United States?

Some would say yes, and I believe that's true.

Transformation is happening all the time, but we often don't hear about it because it's drowned out by cynicism and negative headlines.

At the same time, I believe we're not witnessing transformation at the scale we could be.

At least not like we see in other parts of the world.

Why is that?

Well, I think in many instances it's because our gospel has become compromised.

It's been mingled with cultural idols syncretized into something more American than Christian.

We've bowed to the idols around us.

I'll let Chris Wright explain.

I mean, I think, yes, West, Western, Western, post Enlightenment Christianity has sadly become, in some quarters.

I mean, one doesn't want to generalize completely, but certainly there are great swathes of Western Christianity which have become very syncretized with idolatry.

In other words, going after the gods of the people around us.

So we syncretize with the gods of materialism, consumerism, patriotism, nationalism, whatever it happens to be, all the various ideologies, and we assume that's that's what it is.

And recent conversation I had with some good friends from Lausanne, and of course, as you know, Lausanne 4 is coming up in, in Seoul in South Korea in September this year.

And I'll be going.

I'm not involved particularly in any way, but I was asked to comment on the big document that has been prepared for Lausanne, which has the title the State of the Great Commission.

And I struggle a bit with that phrase because it suggests that the Great Commission is again, somehow a management task that we have to accomplish.

And what is the state of it?

How far have we got in accomplishing this?

But it also made me think of, well, if Jesus says, teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you, what's the state of that in the global church?

We can't just ask, what's the state of the Great Commission in terms of how many more peoples are still to be reached with the gospel?

How many people have we reached with the gospel since the last Lausanne Congress or something like that?

In other words, simply a kind of metric of evangelistic success and so on, which is important.

It can't just be about that.

If the Great Commission actually includes the language of teaching to obey what Jesus commanded, how well are we obeying Jesus?

You know, what's happening in some countries in the world today where evangelical Christians are divided politically, who are going after all kinds of idolatries?

What sort of obedience is that?

What one call about the state of the obedience to the Great Commission, when you look at some forms of evangelical Christianity, especially in the West.

Now, that is a question that I don't think the state of the Great Commission as a phrase is asking.

So the Western post Enlightenment Christianity has sadly become, in some quarters.

I mean, one doesn't want to generalize completely, but certainly there are great swathes of Western Christianity which have become very syncretized with idolatry.

In other words, going after the gods of the people around us.

So we syncretize with the gods of materialism, consumerism, patriotism, nationalism, whatever it happens to be all the various ideologies.

And we assume that's that's what it is.

And, and of course, you know, Leslie Newbiggin was very strong on this, that because he observed the idolatry of Western culture having come from years, decades of his life, lived in an idolatrous country of India, and saw that there, the only way to make the gospel plausible was not just to preach and teach it, but to live it, there had to be a community that was visibly transformed by the gospel in some way, was actually living out the gospel, which I rather like the book by Michael Gorman, becoming the Gospel, because he, as you may know, there's been a debate among biblical missiologists for some years, why does Paul not tell all his churches, go out and evangelize well, he doesn't use it in quite so many words.

He doesn't tell them to go all out and do what he'd been doing, you know, evangelizing and planting churches.

Mind your own business.

Work with your hands.

Yeah, I mean, that's not total.

Because he does say, for example, in Philippians, that they should be holding forth the word of truth.

I mean, the word of light.

You know, you're shining light in the world.

So Paul does expect Christians, I think, to be bearing witness to their faith.

But the point is Michael Gorman is making is that he expected that when communities in that Roman pagan, highly imperialistic, very religious, very idolatrous and very immoral world, when there are communities of men and women who are just living a different way, that they would be demonstrating the truth of the gospel in such a way that the lordship of Christ and the kingdom of God and the need for forgiveness and all of those things would then become the topic of a conversation in which the gospel would be shared.

So I think there's a lot in what he says in that, of course, in many ways goes back to Leslie Newbiggin as well.

Well, it goes back to Jesus, doesn't it?

Jesus says, let your light so shine that people will see your good works and glorify your Father and have not hear your great testimony, but see the way you live.

So I just can't.

Yeah, I really can't understand those who want to separate, you know, the preaching of the Word, the explicit bearing witness to the truth, which we have to do.

There is a message to be shared, you know, all for evangelism, but it has to be rooted in authentic Christian living, which is then taught to others, teaching them to obey all that I've commanded you.

The Great Commission isn't just about making converts.

It's about making disciples.

That means teaching people to obey everything Jesus commanded.

Let me put it this way.

The Great Commission is about sharing Jesus as we go about our life.

We share Jesus with people as they also see our life.

Yes, there may be a moment when we confront someone with the truth of who Jesus is.

Sometimes that happens quickly.

Other times it unfolds over months or even years.

I'm not saying we must build a deep relationship before sharing the gospel every time.

No, scripture is full of examples where people encountered Jesus in a moment and responded.

But more often than not, gospel impact deepens through relationship.

It's in the context of trust, honesty, and life shared that people begin to see what obedience to Jesus actually looks like.

Dr.

Jerry Root, who is passionate about sharing his faith tells stories from everyday life, ordinary moments that turn into extraordinary gospel conversations.

His examples remind us that the Great Commission isn't a distant calling for a select few.

It's a way of life available to all of us right where we are.

I remember one time I thought, I need to tell people about Jesus.

And I've always had this since I became a Christian.

I was talking to people about Jesus.

I still do it.

I have conversations every week with non believers about faith.

And so I decided I'd go to a donut shop, you know, and I'll just talk to people at the donut shop.

Maybe a cop stops by for a cup of coffee or something.

If you want to go to a donut shop, you go from six to eight in the morning and you see these people dropping by for their donut and their cup of mud before they go to work.

And I think you could write a doctoral dissertation on the sociological subcultures of donut shops in America.

They were about eight or ten little tables at this donut shop, Chairs around them.

Every day I'd go, I'd see people sitting at the same table.

Same people, same table, all that stuff.

I didn't have any strategy.

I was a doofus.

I had a heart.

I was praying for the people at the donut shop.

My strategy was this stupid.

I thought I'd go have my Greek Bible there.

I'd be reading my Greek Bible.

Somebody come in and say, what's that?

I'd say, it's a Greek Bible.

They say, oh, can I ask Jesus in my heart?

You know, that's how stupid I was.

There was this guy who would come into the donut shop every day and, and, and I would just go on Tuesdays and Thursdays, come in.

He.

He looked like Walter Mathau.

Remember that actor?

Looked like he'd either been weaned on a dill pickle or baptized in lemon juice.

I mean, he had a smile on his face.

And he'd walk in and I'd say hi to him.

He would scowl at me and he'd sit at a table just to my right every day.

Never said a word to me.

I'd say, hi, hi, good to see you.

He'd say, I had in my prayer book, you know, the grumpy guy.

One day I'm reading in my Greek Bible and all of a sudden I hear somebody say, can I sit here?

And it was the grumpy guy.

I said, yeah, what's your name?

He said, gene.

I said, what do you do for a living, Gene?

He says, why are you writing a book?

And I made a dumb mistake.

I asked too much too soon.

And I realized you can ask a public question of a person.

What's your name?

This donut shop was in Whittier, California.

I could have said, are you from Whittier?

It's a public question.

It's not intrusive.

He's in Whittier.

And then you listen to the answer, and the answer lets you go deeper with the next question because the answer gives you permission to ask about the data.

They said, one time I met a guy.

I said, what's your name?

He said, peter.

I was in Chicago.

I said, are you from Chicago?

He said, no.

I grew up in Albuquerque, but when my parents divorced, I moved with my mom to Chicago.

Struggle.

He didn't have to tell me that, gave me permission to ask about that.

And eventually, as we asked deeper and deeper questions and he gave deeper and deeper answers, I knew how to share the gospel with him in a way that would be heard.

Because I got to that place.

Now with Gene, I screwed up.

I didn't know this then.

And a lot of times what happens is if we share our faith with somebody and it doesn't go well, we just say, okay, I'm out of here.

This is too difficult.

I don't want to do this and stuff.

We don't treat any other area in our life like that.

If you're married and you get married and it's all great fun and stuff, and then all of a sudden you have a little spat, you say, whoa, this is a little more complex than I thought it was going to be.

Do you bail on your marriage?

You have troubles with your kids?

Do you bail on your kids?

The first time you go to work and you've never worked at that place and you make a mistake, do you say, okay, this is nuts.

I'm never going to do this again.

It's too complex.

No.

Why do we treat evangelism different than any other area in our life?

And I don't understand this thing.

Well, first off, with Gene, though, I realized I went too fast.

But it ended up that every Tuesday, Thursday after that, he started sitting with me and we started going deeper.

And in time, I found out he was a guy who had twice been married, had no clue where his former wives were, had two kids in the world, had no clue where they were.

Have you ever heard of a deadbeat dad?

Dean was the guy.

And guess what?

God loves deadbeat dads.

And if we're not in context where we can meet those guys to tell them of the love of God, you know, they may still hear it.

I think God engineered Gene and I meeting.

He became a Christian nine months later.

But it took time, you know, and.

And I had to learn from my mistakes.

But Gene was a good teacher in a sense.

He hung in there with me.

He didn't reject me when I went too fast too soon.

But another example would be, and this would be an outgrowth of what I've learned from these things.

I was coming back from Slovakia.

I was in Bratislava giving some CS Lewis lectures over spring break.

And I had to fly back to Wheaton because they had classes after spring break.

And the people dropped me off at the Vienna airport, which is only about 45 minutes from Bratislava.

I check in my luggage, I go through passport control, and I go into the.

Where I was waiting for the gate, the gate area, and I'm told the flight's three hours delayed.

I love the anonymity of airports.

I pull out a book, I start reading.

I see this young woman walking into the gate area, and she's got a clipboard and a lanyard, and she's going up to people, and I can hear her talking in German.

Vienna is a German speaking city.

I figure she's doing a survey for the airport.

Sure enough, a moment later, she comes up to me and she speaks some flawless English.

And it gave me great insecurity.

What was I wearing that gave it away?

I wasn't German speaking.

Then I realized I was reading a book.

She probably saw it was in English and spoke to me in that language.

She said she was doing a survey for the airport.

And I said, what's your name?

Public question.

She said, allegra.

I said, allegra, are you from Vienna?

She said, no, I grew up in southern Austria.

Oh, well, what brought you to Vienna?

Public question.

She's in Vienna, and she says, I'm a student.

So now I've got a billion questions I could ask.

Where do you go to school?

What are you studying?

And you follow that line of questioning all the way through?

And then I say, do you have any other family in southern Austria?

Only my father.

And he's a very bitter man.

Why is he so bitter, Allegra?

She didn't have to tell me that.

Well, my mother left him to go with her lover to Canada.

But she had good reason to leave him.

He's very toxic.

And so we could Talk about her relationship with her father for a while and find out how that was troubled and difficult.

I said, well, do you have any other family members?

She says, a brother.

Where's he?

He's also at the University of Vienna.

Well, do you have much relationship with him?

No, we're kind of estranged too.

And then she goes, and it's worse than that.

I said, how's that?

I like that.

She said, my boyfriend went to Florence to study art for six months and asked me to wait for him.

I waited dutifully.

He came back yesterday to tell me he met somebody better in Florence.

Here's a woman whose whole life is full of estrangements.

Relationship longing, but vacuous as far as the reality.

I know how to share the gospel with her.

I know the place where when I shoot the arrow, it won't be at hazard aimed.

It will be aimed at the target.

Because I could talk with her about the God who wants to reconcile us to us to him and have a relationship with him because he loves us.

So finally, 20 minutes I've been asking her questions.

She hasn't asked me one question.

I said, allegra, and I know her life.

I said, allegra, you need to ask your questions.

But I said, but I need you to know I've been sent here to tell you something.

Then she thought I was a plant at the airport to see if she was doing her job.

I said, no, it has nothing to do with that.

So she asked me her questions, how long it take me to check in, get through passport control, all the things you'd expect.

Finally she says, what is it you were sent here to tell me?

And I think every one of us needs to realize we are people who are called to Christ and sent.

And to the world come and go.

Jesus says, come unto me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

Go into the world to make him known.

So she said, what were you sent here to tell me?

I said, allegra, the God of the universe knows you and he loves you.

Allegra, he loves you.

Sometimes you have to say it three times for it to fit in.

Allegra, he loves you and he won't abandon you.

And she just started sobbing in the airport.

Loud sobs.

Everybody's looking at me as if I'm torturing this poor girl, you know.

And she says to me, volunteers herself, but I've done so many bad things with my life.

I said, oh, he knows about every one of them.

And so great is his love that he has forgiven you of all of it.

And he longs to have a relationship with you.

She heard it.

She heard it because you.

You went slow and you listened to her.

You asked appropriate questions.

And I don't think we take Jesus to anybody.

He's already there, more in love with that person than you and I will ever be.

We go to make explicit what God might be doing already as he's tugging at their hearts.

But we have to listen.

I love Dr.

Root's heart.

Heart.

It's so encouraging, and I hope it's been encouraging to you.

As we wrap up today, here are four waves we've misunderstood the Great Commission and how we can begin to reclaim it.

First of all, we've reduced the Great Commission to a moment, not a movement.

We've made the decision for Christ, the finish line, instead of the starting point for a lifelong journey of discipleship.

Even Billy Graham admitted that the church, church today wasn't equipped to make disciples.

That has to change.

And it starts with catechesis.

A great tool to begin with is the New City Catechism.

It's a simple way to build a biblical foundation.

And many of you have already told me how helpful it's been.

Keep it up.

Secondly, we've made the Great Commission transactional, not relational.

Evangelism became about delivering a message and hoping for a decision, often without building relationships or walking with people long term.

But Jesus didn't just give information, he gave us himself.

In a disconnected, fragmented world, we must offer more than truth.

We must offer presence.

Third, we've assumed a Christianized culture in a pluralistic world.

Many evangelistic models rely on shared values and biblical literacy.

But those assumptions no longer hold.

We now live among people from many faiths and backgrounds who may not even know who Jesus is.

We must adopt the posture of missionaries, listening well, asking good questions, and contextualizing the gospel with humility.

Fourthly, we focused on heaven later, not kingdom now.

The gospel is not just about life after death.

It's about life under the reign of King Jesus.

Today, it's about transformation, restoration, and living.

Living as a signpost of the new creation.

I want to leave you with one final thought.

If God has touched you in this episode today, here's what I want you to do.

This is your assignment.

You have one thing.

Just one.

Not many.

Just one.

And here it is.

Start with one person.

That's what I want you to do.

Ask God to show you someone in your life to walk with intentionally.

Listen well.

Be present, share your life.

And when the moment comes, invite them not just to believe in Jesus, but to follow Him.

If you're looking for a guide on how to live this out in today's world, check out my book, Kingdom Living in the Modern World.

It will give you a framework for rethinking discipleship, evangelism, and what it means to live as a citizen of God.

Kingdom right now.

Stay tuned for next week as we delve further in into God's blueprint for the world ministry today as we explore the next great in our list, the Great Commandment.

Thanks for listening.

Keep watering our world with the hope of Jesus.

Thank you for joining us on today's episode of those who Serve the Lord, a podcast of Apollo's Water, the Center for Discipleship and Cultural Apologetics.

We trust that what you've heard has inspired and encouraged you in your walk of faith.

Remember, serving the Lord isn't just about what we do.

It's about who we are becoming in Him.

Whether in the small moments or the grand gestures, each step of service brings us closer to his heart.

If you found today's discussion meaningful, we invite you to share it with others who might might be encouraged.

And don't forget to subscribe and leave a review.

It helps spread the message to those who need to hear it most.

Until next time, may you continue to serve the Lord with joy, humility, and a heart full of his love.

God bless you.

This is Travis Michael Fleming signing off.

Stay watered, everybody.