The Mandate for Missions (1967)
Message delivered at Urbana 67by Warren Webster
This talk came as part of a panel on Motivation for missions, called "My Life to Give". David Howard ("The Need for Missions") and Arthur Glasser ("The Lord’s Return") delivered the other talks.
"The history of missions … is predominantly a history of the Holy Spirit's work in the hearts of men. For this reason, I would caution you against basing the motive for your missionary involvement simply on the tremendous need."
If you want to understand
The Bible itself is missionary literature from beginning to end. In Genesis we read of the God who made all things. In Revelation we read of the consummation, when all things are made new. And in between we read of the divine concern for the redemption of a world of sinful men.
Since the Bible is itself a missionary textbook, we should not expect to find either the basis or the motivation for missions in a single verse of scripture, but, rather, in the tenor and teaching of the Bible as a whole.
Nevertheless, we can turn to certain passages that help bring into focus the global image of divine concern. One of these familiar passages is found at the end of Matthew's Gospel, where we find our Lord on a hillside in Galilee, surrounded by a small band of rather insignificant disciples. We count them and find eleven rather ordinary men. But they are men who have just been given an extraordinary commission to go out and conquer the world and to lay it at the Master's feet.
Other men have tried to conquer the world. Remember the names of Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and Napoleon. But only Jesus Christ will ultimately succeed, because the authority to do so has been given by God to him alone. No other commander, either before or since, has given such a command to a group of eleven men.
It is all the more audacious when you realize that the commander had no money or political influence and very little status or prestige to back up his command. Perhaps it is even more astounding that those eleven men believed what he said. And they went out and did it, because they had the promise of their leader to be with them always. In that perspective we see that eleven men, plus the Holy Spirit, are not such a small minority as we might have thought. I suggest to you that back there two thousand years ago, before the terms were ever coined, we find real commitment and real involvement. Within thirty-five years these men had planted churches in all the major cities of the Roman Empire apart from Gaul.
The Great Commission as we find it recorded in the first Gospel (Matt. 28:18-20), outlines for us the universal, all-inclusive scope of the missionary mandate in four dimensions: our mandate is based upon all authority, it reaches to all nations, it includes all teaching, and it extends validly to all time.
Jesus said; “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore” (Matt. 28:18 RSV). This authority roots in the sovereign God of the universe, who created men and by whose power alone men can be recreated. It is an authority that was given by the Father to the Son, and which, in turn, he imparts to his disciples as an authorization for missions. He imparts the authority through the Holy Spirit who is given to those who obey him. There is no adequate motivation for missions apart from this inner mandate or authorization that comes from the Spirit of God himself.
The history of missions, not only in the book of Acts but throughout succeeding ages, is predominantly a history of the Holy Spirit's work in the hearts of men. For this reason, I would caution you against basing the motive for your missionary involvement simply on the tremendous need of men.
The need of the world is immense and staggering. As a result it has sometimes been suggested by enthusiasts that if you have no clear call to minister at home, the need itself is all the call that you require to go abroad. Frankly I doubt that very much. The needs of the world are so tremendous that they will crush you. It is the inner, divine authorization alone which can sustain you.
David Bentley-Taylor, who served the Lord faithfully in the land of Indonesia, reminded us in his little booklet on the call of God to the foreign mission field that Paul and Barnabas did not go to the uplands of Asia Minor just because they had no call to stay in Antioch. They were sent by the Holy Spirit. Then he pointed out that God's call to individuals is communicated in a different way to almost every person. There simply are no stated laws for what constitutes a missionary call. That is why we have not stated them for you.
The way God calls one person may differ as much from another person's call as your conversion in a mass meeting differs from the conversion of another person in the quietness of his room. David Bentley-Taylor suggests that in all of these divine leadings there is a common denominator: the continual sense that a certain course is God's will for me, that I must do this and not anything else. This conviction is common to missionary calls throughout history, and comes from the divine inner authorization, that divine inner mandate.
Now, the Holy Spirit does lead people in terms of needs, also in terms of their ability to meet particular needs around the world. But let no mission ever be undertaken without the additional inner mandate of God's Holy Spirit, who alone empowers the work of missions. Recently a very stimulating book in missiology appeared with the title Pentecost and Missions.
It points out that the missionary movement in the century and a half that has elapsed since William Carey appeared on the scene has been pre-eminently a Great Commission-oriented era. Obedience to the Great Commission has been the dominant theme and the dominant motive for missionary conferences and missionary sending. But by contrast, the author finds that in the New Testament missionary expansion was motivated and directed primarily by the continuing experience of Pentecost in the life of the church.
It is perhaps instructive for us to note that following Pentecost there is no restatement of the Great Commission, either in the book of Acts or in any of the Epistles. We have church growth and missions on every side, but they continued without any urging or exhorting or laboring of obedience to the Great Commission as the primary motive for witness. Rather, we find in the church then, as today, that wherever men are filled and motivated by the Spirit of God, urging and exhorting them to witness is quite unnecessary. And wherever men are not motivated by the Spirit of God, seemingly no amount of urging to missions is very effective.
Missions, in the last one hundred and fifty years, has put a great emphasis on going in an age when historical and technological factors have made extensive going more practical and more possible than ever before. Nevertheless, you and I should be aware that in these verses called the Great Commission only one of the four Greek verbs is in the imperative, and it is not the verb "to go." The main Greek verb and the only one grammatically structured as an imperative is "to make disciples" of all nations. The command is to disciple nations: All the other action words here are expressed by participles in a subordinate relationship to the main verb. They tell us what is involved in making disciples. That is, we make disciples of men and nations by going, by baptizing, and by teaching. Going is necessarily involved; but the goal of missions is discipling, not merely going. A literal translation from the Greek might read, "Having gone, or by means of going, make disciples.”
I am reminded of the comment of a mountain preacher who was trying to get this text across to his young people. He said that what Jesus is saying here is, "Bein's as how you're goin', be sure to make some disciples while you're about it." Now I doubt very much if that mountain pastor knew any Greek, and you might think that his paraphrase was overly casual, but he came surprisingly close to capturing the import of the original text. It really means wherever you go as Christians, wherever you live, wherever God sends you, your main job is to make disciples.
Some find here a case for what might be called migration evangelism. It reminds church historians that much of the most effective and extensive growth of the church throughout the world, past and present, has taken place when members of the body of Christ moved about in the normal course of seeking their livelihood, taking their faith with them. This is happening today in South America and Indonesia and many other places. When the honest emphasis of the Great Commission is placed where it belongs, putting the imperative on the command to disciple, you may get a new picture of missions. I leave you with a whole lifetime to work out its fascinating implications for yourself.
Now before you go back to your campuses and communities to get completely involved in discipling just the people who are around you, I would remind you that the command is to disciple all nations. That means that some of you will, and some of you must, go to the nations. Those of you whom God clears to live and to minister in the land of your birth will nonetheless be involved in reaching all nations through prayerful intercession, sacrificial giving, and concern for peoples of the world who come to you here. All of Christ's disciples are in this great world mission together. We have seen that we not only have all authority to go, but we are to go to all nations. And we are to teach them to observe all that he has commanded us. Communication involves more than just going or speaking. It is possible to speak and yet not to communicate. In fact, someone has said that the most difficult aspect of communicating the gospel of Jesus Christ is not slogging through the jungles of the Amazon or Central Africa. It is not going to live in the desert of Pakistan halfway around the world, ten thousand miles away. The most difficult, the most crucial aspect of communicating the gospel is in getting across the last eighteen inches after you arrive. If you and I fail to communicate Jesus Christ in face-to-face situations where we confront men and women who are lost, then we might as well have stayed at home. Our going, however difficult, is rendered useless and ineffective.
Jesus said, "Go and tell. Go and communicate all that I have commanded you." What is the "all"? It would take a long time to list all the commandments of Jesus; however, they are very conveniently summarized in I John 3:23. There we read, "And this is his commandment, that we should believe on the name of his Son Jesus Christ"—yes—"and love one another" (RSV).
Now we find a strange phenomenon: There are some individuals, churches, missions who put a great emphasis upon the heart of the gospel, the sinfulness of man and his need for redemption through Christ; and they stop there. They have little to say about love for one another or the social implications of the gospel. There are other groups who have little, if any, gospel message, and so they major almost entirely on the love aspect and the social part.
I declare to you that both of these single-emphasis presentations are inadequate representations. If we only preach half the gospel, we should not be surprised if we are getting less than half the expected results. The wonderful thing is that when the gospel is preached and proclaimed in its two-pronged fullness, we see lives transformed and societies changed even today. The divine mandate is both intensive and extensive. We are to go, but we must stay long enough to teach. That is why we will never fulfill the Great Commission by simply running into a village, hooking up a loudspeaker or phonograph, distributing a bit of literature, checking off one more village, and running on. This may contribute something to the extensive outreach of the gospel, but it hardly meets the intensive requirements. We must stay long enough to teach them "all that I have commanded you."
Finally, we note that the promise of Christ's living presence is with his people for all time even "to the close of the age." The word here for time does not depict endless time, but rather the period of time preceding the end. The Great Commission looks to the great consummation. It is because of this promise of his presence always that we know that the mandate for mission was given to the church in all ages, not just to those first apostles, as some have erroneously thought.
Jesus here implies what he clearly taught elsewhere, that the proclamation of the gospel as a witness to all nations is itself a sign of the end. The coming of Christ in his kingdom does not depend on the ultimate success of missions, but primarily on the fact of this world-wide proclamation, which has never been more evident and widespread than it is today. Nevertheless, only God himself can say at what point obedience to both the extensive and the intensive aspects of the Great Commission have been fulfilled so that his purposes are completed and Christ may return. In the meantime, the existential question for you and for me is, How are we going to give and live our lives for the cause of Jesus Christ?
Let me talk to you personally in conclusion. When I was a student like you, though a Christian, I had no serious anticipation of serving Christ abroad. But I remember when the Spirit of God brought to bear upon my life the words of a man who had lived a long and fruitful existence. When he came to the end of it, he said, if I had my life to live over again, I would live it to change men, because you haven't changed anything until you've changed men.
I began at that point to change my university major and to prepare specifically for a life of changing men. Subsequently I went to seminary, but with no thought of serving God abroad. As late as my senior year in seminary, I expected to remain in this country. But I had to come to a moment of truth. I realized that I could not stand in a pulpit in America and challenge young people to go out and do a job I was not willing to do. Nor could I minister in the same way in a university. When I squarely faced this fact, the implications of the Great Commission were brought to bear and I offered myself for God's service. He progressively opened the doors and said, Come ahead. I have been an ambassador abroad ever since.
I know that many of you are in this same position. I respect your realism and your sincerity. You have already said (some of you last night), "I am willing, under God, to go where he wants me to go." But for many of you this is a passive sort of dedication. Today I want to challenge you to go on to the next step: begin today to pray positively for the privilege of being a missionary. But I warn you, don't pray if unless you mean it. You may be surprised at how quickly he opens the door and says, "Come along: this is what I've been expecting you to do all the time."
And for those of you to whom God says, "No, I have another privilege," you have cleared yourself before him, to remain in the land of your birth without any sense of guilt or complex whatsoever. He will help you to work out a lifelong ministry in your land, working to change lives to the glory of God, and to have your impact felt abroad.
I close with this story. During the last world war, on the Gold Coast of Africa, there lived an elderly African man who had honorably served his Majesty's government and had been given a small pension. With it he retired to the hills to farm. One day while he was working with his hoe, he heard a message come by drumbeat across the jungle forest. He stopped to listen and to translate it for himself. He learned that a great war had begun and that his Majesty's government was in great need of help. About a week later at the little ramshackle post office down on the coast, the postmaster processed a grimy little post card on which this eloquent message was written "Your Majesty, I am coming." May God hear that from hundreds of hearts today: Here am I, send me.
Unless otherwise noted, all materials on the urbana.org web site are Copyright InterVarsity Christian Fellowship / USA. All rights reserved.
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