The Great Commission, found in Matthew 28:18-20, has been heavy on my heart lately. Let’s take a look at it, together:
And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 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.”
Making disciples is what we are-comissioned-and empowered to do. What is the context in which this happens? Are we being equipped to do this in the current church model, in the current small group model? Are there ways we could improve? Are we allowed to even ask the question? In an interesting article entitled, “Can Groups Be Missional & Make Disciples?” the author, Neil Cole, makes some great points. I’ve included a couple of excerpts, below, but you can read the entire article here.
Your church is only as good as her disciples. A hot band, dynamic preaching, state-of-the-art facilities and wonderful programs do not make a great church if the disciples are simply consumers and unengaged in the grand work of making disciples. But if the disciples in your church are empowered and engaged in mission, than your church is strong and healthy, even if you do not have laser lights or fog machines. We have done things backwards for too long. We must reverse the order. We think that the solution to having good disciples is to make better churches, when in fact the way to have good churches is to make better disciples.
Part of the beauty of small groups being on mission is that discipleship will happen among just two or three, within the context of the larger group-at least that is how it seems to naturally happen, in my experience. This is how Neil phrases it:
A small group of 12-15 alone will not be able to accomplish the work of missional disciplemaking. But if disciple-making groups of 2-3 are already at work transforming souls out in the fields of life, then gathering those disciples into spiritual families will be far more productive. We need to put less weighted expectations on small groups and reorient the responsibility of disciple-making to the right context–a disciple in relation to another disciple. Small groups do not make disciples; disciples do. If your disciples are missional then your spiritual families will be missional, but, as we have all discovered, this will not work the other way around.
Confirmation is a beautiful thing.
