We see in Scipture in Ephesians that we are called to be holy and blameless. We see in 2 Corinthians that we are called to be ministers of reconciliation, that as believers who have been reconciled to God through Jesus Christ, we then are extensions of Jesus to everyone we meet. We are called to extend the same grace and mercy, the same reconciliation we have experienced to everyone around us. You see this same idea in the book of Acts right before Jesus ascends into Heaven, his last words, he calls us to be His witnesses to the ends of the earth. He calls us to carry out his mission of reconciling all people to God. This is your calling… this is my calling… it is what we were designed to do… to participate in God’s story of reconciliation and redemption.

Now if you’re like me, you feel the weight of that calling. It can be overhelming to think that way about our calling in life… to the point that we would rather think about our calling in terms of just trying to be a good person, to raise a nice family, to do well at my job… or maybe to even disregard our calling altogether and just sort of go through the motions in life. Because life is busy. There are pressures, there are expectations, there are health problems, and we think “I can’t fulfill this calling. I can’t fulfill a calling to be holy and blameless or to be a minister of reconciliation to others around me. I can barely remember to brush my teeth before I go to bed at night.”

Well, you need to know that you’re right. We can’t fulfill this calling on our lives. We don’t have the charisma, the creativity, the ability, or the energy to live this way. But that is why God does not leave it up to us. Romans 8 tells us that we have the same Holy Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead working in us. The power of the Holy Spirit of God working through us enables us to fulfill this wondrous and weighty calling.

Sometimes people think when we go to Jesus we need to get our life in order, we need to be better, we need to work harder so we start going to church, start reading the Bible, start praying for our friends, and somehow we think if we are doing more then Jesus is going to love us more and if we are doing less Jesus is going to love us less, and it feels like this constant yo-yo. but that isn’t the gospel. The gospel is Jesus comes to us, Jesus embodies all the good that could ever be done, Jesus takes all the bad that could ever be done, He dies for it, He overcomes it, and that is why He says all who are thirsty come to me and you will never thirst again. He has done it all.

Now here is where we struggle. When we read Scripture and see that Jesus has done it all we feel this weight removed, we are thankful, but we are also paralyzed a little because we are not sure what to do and we over analyze it. Am I doing enough? Am I doing too much? I am doing better than that guy? But she looks like she is doing better than me and we start to panic. Some of us just give up and stop all together, some of us start working harder, but either way it doesn’t feel like Jesus has quenched our thirst, it doesn’t feel like His burden is light and His yoke is easy, it doesn’t feel like we have found rest. It feels like we are exhausted.

Do you know who the tax collectors are? They are the traitors. They are some of the most corrupt people at this time. They are Israelites who have abandoned their devotion to Israel and now work for Rome. They cheat, manipulate, take bribes from the rich, and take advantage of the poor. They work for the people who have enslaved their people and the collect taxes. Nobody likes people associated with taxes. Right Dan? Jesus is not only talking with him, but goes to his house with other tax collectors which is a sign of friendship in their culture. This is highly offensive to the religious people at the time.

There are a couple of observations we can make about this passage. The first is how Levi responds. What does verse 29 tell us? Levi throws a party. It is a simple way of being others centered. He invites people into his home, invites over other tax collectors, invites Jesus and throws a party. Some of you didn’t know you were so others centered. You have been throwing parties and living out Scripture and you didn’t know. It is that easy. Just as a side note isn’t that a great picture of Jesus, sitting and dining with the people who were considered the worse types of people? Sometimes Jesus is presented as someone who is unapproachable, distant, intimidating, and yet Luke 5 describes him at a party with tax collectors.

Measuring missional engagement at a collective level is a matter of creating environments that explore, model, and celebrate the practices necessary for living a life of missional engagement. Examples of this could be, conducting a Theology of Mission or Missional Practices seminar, offering a tool for intentional prayer, celebrating personal stories of missional engagement during Sunday gathering, tracking number of small groups who regularly serve community, baptism celebrations, etc. The question for gathering metrics on missional engagement at a collective level would be, “How many environments were provided to support missional engagement this month?” and “What were these environments?”

Measuring missional engagement at an individual level is based on relationships. The questions for gathering metrics on missional engagement at an individual level would be, “How many people engaged in a missional practice this month?” and “What type of missional engagement did they practice?” Gathering this data can be done through small group leaders and/or missional coaches. Each month, leaders would be asked to submit a report on these metrics. An example of this report is seen below:

Missional Engagement

Your leadership role (group leader, missional coach, elder, etc.):

How are you doing in life (Connected, Committed, Contributing)?

Names of people you are missionally engaging and where you are on the missional engagement continuum:

Your next steps in missional engagement you plan to practice this month:

13 Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” 15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”

You can almost hear the urgency in her voice. She has drunk from so many wells in her life trying to find what is missing, but none of them have quenched her thirst the way Jesus is describing, “never thirst again.” You can almost hear her optimism in her voice thinking perhaps Jesus is talking about something different than anything she has experienced. Maybe this has been what she has been looking for. Maybe Jesus is describing something she hasn’t been able to find in any husband. At this point she is pulled in, connected, curious.

When we express spiritual truths we should see receptivity. We should see people asking questions. We should see people lowering their guard.

John 4:16-18

16He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.” 17″I have no husband,” she replied. Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. 18 The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”

In one statement Jesus takes her vulnerability and cuts to the core of her heart. He peels back her masks, exposes her shame, and he touches her deepest wound that has occurred over years and years of pain of drawing from a well of empty relationships.

Most of us will get to this point in relationships with others and when we express spiritual conversations we will rely on a memorized gospel presentation. We will walk down the Romans road. We will start drawing a bridge on a napkin. Instead Jesus identifies her pain and speaks the truth in love.

“Plant Jesus, not churches” -Neil Cole. Neil did a great job talking about organic movements that are centered on Jesus, not a church. He makes the case that we should be planting Jesus first and the churches will take care of themselves. Definitely a good challenge to remember that all of this… missional, church planting, ministry… has to be all about Jesus.

My wife Jaya is incredible at this, having a kid helps though.  We’ll be at the store or a restaurant with our daughter and I can totally see it coming.   People will see our daughter Neela, and they just get that look in their eye, that look of amazement ( you know cause our daughter is pretty amazing:) ) and they’ll just start smiling and making faces and talking to Neela and I’m just like, “Who are you?!” And typically if it is just me, I’ll just keep on walking and be like, “I don’t know you, you’re not touching my baby :)”.   But not Jaya… Oh no, Jaya will hold Neela up, she’ll tell them how old she is, ask if they have kids and before I know it we are having them over for dinner :).

One time we were eating at a restaurant in downtown Dallas before we moved to Austin and Jaya has to run to the car with Neela to get a bottle.   Well, on her way back this very friendly, intoxicated man says something to Jaya about how cute Neela is and is kind of gazing at her.  And as Jaya is telling me this, I’m like “you didn’t stop did you?”  And of course Jaya is like, “I had to!”  I mean I didn’t let him hold her or anything, but I just talked to him for a bit and let him see Neela.   Kinda crazy, but when you think about it thats what Jesus did… he walked where people walked, he talked with people as he went about his day.  Here in John 4 Jesus just enters in to a conversation with this woman and before you know it, Jesus is in a spiritual conversation.  He begins to talk about the living water that he offers, the relationship he offers… to opportunity to know her Creator in a personal way.

If we want to be a people of influence, if we want to be missional people… we have to spend some time meeting people where they are and engaging them in conversation.

Then we see Jesus taking a seat by the well… again, some intentionality on the part of Jesus. The well in those days would be a central place where you pretty much were guaranteed to run in to someone. You notice Jesus didn’t go find a shade tree off in the middle of nowhere. He could have sat anywhere, but he chose to sit there. So we see right off the bat that to truly be missional, you have to be in the proximity of people… even just where you walk, where you sit. I think its safe to say that if we want to influence people, we need to be around people… I mean I just got a 3.0, but I’m pretty sure that would be a safe statement.

So many times as Christians we take ourselves out of the sphere of influence by only spending time with each other. Between church on Sunday, small group, ministries we are involved in, and our Christian friends… we don’t have time for anyone else. I mean think about it, when was the last time you had dinner or coffee with someone who didn’t know Jesus? Hey, I’m not saying that we don’t need other believers in our lives. If you hear that then you definitely heard wrong. It is good, right, and powerful to spend time with other believers, to disciple and be discipled, to look at Scripture and learn from others, and grow and mature in your faith…. but we can’t limit ourselves only to that context.

If we are truly going to be missional as God has called us, we must be a people who are building relationships with people who don’t know Christ… we must be a people who are showing compassion to others and pointing them to Jesus. That is what Jesus prays in John 17… that we would be IN the world. So we have to be around people, we have to be in the proximity of people, in order to carry out the mission of God.

One way to remedy this poverty of our interpretation is by reading the Great Commission in light of other biblical commissions. Depending on how we count them we there are at least five commissions, one in the Old Testament and four in the New.¹

The four commissions in the NT are actually variations of the same mandate (Matt. 28:18-20; Mark 16:15; Luke 24:48-49/Acts 1:8; John 20:21), each issued by Jesus, emphasizing a slightly different aspect of what it means to be a disciple. The operative verbs in these NT commissions are: make disciples, preach, witness, and send. They are gospel-driven commands. The OT commission, frequently referred to as the creation or cultural mandate, was issued by God before the Fall of humanity, emphasizing creative activity with the following verbs: be fruitful, multiply, rule, and subdue (Gen 1.27-28).²By producing more creators who rule and subdue the elements of the earth, the creation mandate is a command to produce peoples and cultures.

A surface reading of these Old and New Testament texts places them at odds with one another. In Genesis it would seem that the purpose of humanity is toproduce people and culture, whereas the Gospels appear to advocate pulling away from people and culture. As a result, many have chosen one reading over the other, soul-winning or culture-making, disciple-making or social action. These impoverished readings call for reinterpretation, one that that allows both Genesis and the Gospels to speak. In fact, reading the gospel commissions in light of the cultural mandate will reveal a multi-layered, missional mandate.

Moving beyond poverty-ridden proof texts and into the wealth of the biblical commissions, we will reflect on the differences between the texts. This will require confrontation with the Bible’s demands to make culture and disciples, to care for creation and be agents of new creation. As a result, we will be challenged to understand and embrace discipleship as more that “spiritual disciplines” or an evangelistic program. We will see that Scripture calls us to missional discipleship, a following after Jesus that requires redemptive engagement not just with souls but with creation and culture.

Gospel of Matthew: Distinctive Discipleship

Part of what makes the Great Commission great is its scope. When Jesus said: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations” he was orienting a primarily Jewish audience to a distinctly multi-ethnic mission. As Ralph Winter has advanced, the commission is not calling Christians to Christianize nation-states, but to evangelize ethnic groups. We get the word, “ethnic” from the Greek word for nations, which refers not to modernist geo-political states, but instead to non-Jewish ethnic groups. Christ does not advocate Christendom, a top-down political Christianity. Instead, in affirmation of the cultural mandate, he calls his followers to transmit a bottom-up, indigenous Christianity, to all peoples in all cultures.

As Andrew Walls has pointed out, the command is to make disciples of all nations not from all nations. The Great Commission is not about soul-extraction, to remove the disciple from his culture, but instead, to make disciples within their cultural context. Walls comments:

Conversion to Christ does not produce a bland universal citizenship: it produces distinctive discipleship, as diverse and variegated as human life itself. Christ in redeeming humanity brings, by the process of discipleship, all the richness of humanity’s infinitude of cultures and subcultures into the variegated splendor of the Full Grown Humanity to which the apostolic literature points (Eph 4.8-13).³

What we should strive for is distinctive discipleship, discipleship that uniquely expresses personal faith in our cultural context. Disciples in urban Manhattan will look different than disciples in rural Maehongson. These differences allow for a flourishing of the gospel that contributes to the many-splendored new humanity of Christ.

According to the Gospel of Matthew, distinctive disciples are those who who, in following Jesus, refuse a one-sided, soul-centered gospel, and instead live out faith in context. The distinctive disciple retains the image of Adam — a culture maker — while growing in the image of Christ and becoming a disciple-maker.

Gospel of Mark: A Worldly Gospel

Mark’s commission reads: “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation” (Mk. 16:15).⁴ Where Matthew emphasizes the action of making distinctive disciples, Mark stresses the importance of preaching to all creation.

When Jesus used the word “preach” he did not mean converse. The Greek word for preach always carries a sense of urgency and gravity, as though what is to be proclaimed is of great importance. In this case, it is the gospelthat is of utmost importance. This gospel is a worldly gospel — a message that is culturally relevant and creation renewing.

The Greek word for “creation” can be used both broadly and narrowly, referring to the cosmos or to people. Here it should be taken broadly, referring to the world, its peoples and its cultures. Preaching the gospel of Christ has cosmic implications. So it is with Paul: “this gospel has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister” (Col. 1:23). Thus, Paul perceives himself as an announcer of a worldly Christ-centered gospel, that through Jesus all things are reconciled to himself, whether on earth or in heaven (Col. 1:20). Paul preaches with Mark’s great commission emphasis — preaching for the redemption of all creation.

While this worldly gospel saves, it also condemns. In Mark, Jesus explains that not all will believe this grand Story or receive its great Savior: “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned” (Mk. 16:16). Mark’s commission reveals the divisive nature of the gospel. For some it brings life; for others it brings death, but all are to be given the opportunity to be written into the story of God’s redemption of all creation.

As with Matthew, the scope of God’s redemptive activity is important. From the beginning, God’s design for creation was for it to flourish and become inhabitable. Outside of Eden, the earth was uninhabitable. Humanity was charged with the task of caring for the earth and creating culture, making the uninhabitable habitable.

Adam failed to trust God with this task and sought to rule not only over creation, but also over God. As a result, the creation project was subjected to sin and calamity (Rom. 8:20). Israel would follow in Adam’s footsteps. Then came Jesus. Jesus preached a worldly gospel, a restorative message that put the creation project back on track. His glorified, resurrection body is clearly proof of the new creation to come.

Just prior to ascending to heaven, Jesus told those who believe that they will be given power to heal the sick, restore the demon-possessed, and to speak new languages (Mk. 16:17-18). This worldly gospel is for the redemption and renewal of the earth, the body, the heart, the mind, and the cultures of the world. It is a saving message that rescues people from their unbelief, not their world, and reconciles their alienation from one another, their world, and their Creator.

According to the Gospel of Mark, Jesus died to bring life to all creation, to restore the environment, renew cultures and remake peoples, spiritually and physically. We are called to preach a worldly gospel.

Gospel of Luke: Resurrection Stories

Luke’s commission also emphasizes preaching the gospel: “repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things” (Luke 24:47-48). In particular, we are called to preach “repentance and forgiveness of sins.” A social gospel will not suffice. Christ calls us to repent — to turn our heart allegiances away from all things other, and to receive forgiveness for betraying our Creator. But a forgiven and repentant person is not idle; they are compelled to witness — to tell the story of their transformation.

Where Matthew and Mark respectively emphasize distinctive discipleship and preaching a worldly gospel, Luke calls us to witness — to tell our distinct gospel stories. No two stories are alike, but all share the same Savior. What does it mean to be “witnesses of all these things”? Well, at the very least it means sharing Jesus’ self-sacrificing offer of forgiveness, but that is just onething. What of the other things?

We are to tell of Jesus’ death, but we are also to tell of his resurrection.

Consider the context of Luke’s commission. The eleven disciples were discussing the reliability of Jesus sightings, when suddenly Christ appeared in the room. Thinking he was a ghost, they were filled with fright. Jesus responded: “See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me, and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have” (24:39). To make his point, Jesus proved he had a body by eating some fish and chips. In flesh and bone, Jesus charges his follower to be witnesses of hisresurrection.

The problem with many of our stories is that they contain all spirit and very little flesh. We communicate our mystical encounters with God, our mountain top experiences with Jesus, and our superhuman victories over sin. Many people see right through our spiritual stories, precisely because our witness is too good to be true. We fail to mention our bad, unless it is in the past, failing further to witness of resurrection, in the present. People want to touch redemption, which means they need to see resurrection power in our personal struggles.

Jesus’ body was resurrected as an expression of God’s commitment to creation (1 Cor. 15). God does not jettison the body for the soul. His gospel of redemption is for the whole world, beginning with enfleshed people. His resurrection is a bright reminder of new creation in the midst of bleak darkness, of tangible transformation in gross dilapidation. The stories we tell should boast of Jesus’ death and resurrection, of his forgiveness of sin and of his restoration of sinners — reconciled families and marriages, restored and housed homeless, renewed life among AIDS orphans, and so on.

According to the Gospel of Luke, we are to be witnesses of death and resurrection, to live and recount the stories of a resurrected, fleshly Jesus who lives in the midst of broken humanity offering healing and hope.

Gospel of John: Humble and Cultural Accommodation

John’s commission is short and sweet: “As the Father sent me, I am also sending you” (John 20:21). Whereas the previous gospel writers emphasized Jesus’ command to make distinctive disciples, preach a worldly gospel, and witness a fleshly Jesus, John stresses Jesus sending his disciples. As the text continues, Jesus makes plain that the disciples are sent as a forgiving community, offering the grace they have received from him to others.

According to John Piper, we are either goers, senders, or disobedient, but according to Jesus we are all the sent. Missionary activity is not the exclusive task of people who sell all their possessions and move overseas. All followers of Jesus are called to live as missionaries in their culture. If we are all sent into our cultures as distinctive disciples to share a worldly gospel about a fleshly Christ, how then are we to live as the sent? Jesus said, “As the Father sent me, I am also sending you.” Our paradigm for living a sent life, a missionary life, is the sending of the Son by the Father.

When the Father sent the Son, Jesus left the glory of his trinitarian abode and became a helpless infant in the care of humans he created. This required an accommodating humility. Jesus grew up and became a first century, toga-wearing, sandal-sporting, temple-frequenting Jew. He accommodated first century Jewish culture (also known as contextualization). So, within reason we should take on the trappings of our culture in order to contextually relate the gospel. This can entail wearing broken-in jeans, togas, hand-made sandals or a suit and tie.

However, our accommodation is not purely cultural; it is missional. It leads us to immerse ourselves into the humanity of our neighborhoods and cities in order relate the gospel to people and their needs. Being a local missionary requires more than relevant attire; it demands humility of heart to listen to the stories of others, to empathize with their frustration, suffering, and brokenness and to redemptively retell their stories through the gospel. To be sent by God is to follow the example of the incarnation, to redemptively engage others with a humble heart and cultural accommodation.

In John’s commission, the paradigm of accommodating humility is accompanied by the power of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is not too holy for distinctive discipleship. After sending his disciples, Jesus breathed on them and they received the Holy Spirit (John 20:22). The power of missional living does not spring from cultural savvy or social sensitivity; it requires the otherworldly, utterly personal power of the Holy Spirit. Only the Spirit of God can make men new.

According to the Gospel of John, we have been sent as missionaries to humbly demonstrate and culturally accommodate the gospel of Christ through the power of the Spirit. In being sent, we do not abandon the cultural commission, but instead, unite it with our redemptive mission.

The Gospel of Genesis: Creation Mandate

The “good news” of Genesis 1-2 is that God created all things to be enjoyed, managed, cultivated, and recreated by humanity. The gospel of Genesis 3 is that, though Adam rejected God, God did not reject Adam. Still possessing the creation mandate, Adam was expelled from Eden, but clothed with the hope of a new creation (Gen 3:15, 21).

The creation mandate charges us to be fruitful and multiply, to rule and subdue the earth. This fruitful multiplication continues both physically and spiritually through the reproducing ministry of missional disciples, who increase in number and good works (Acts 6:7; Col. 1:6, 10). These good works include ruling and subduing creation through the careful, creative arrangement of the elements of the earth into art, technology, infrastructure etc. for the flourishing of humanity. The basis for our cultural activity is found in Genesis.

Retaining the cultural impulse of Genesis, the Gospels call us to a missional discipleship that entails creation care, cultural engagement, social action, and gospel proclamation. Missional disciples will not content themselves by preaching a culturally irrelevant, creation indifferent, resurrection neglecting message. Instead, they redemptively engage peoples and cultures through Christ for the renewal of his creation.

By digging deeper into the great commissions, we have unearthed a wealth of cultural and theological insight. This rereading of familiar evangelistic texts has demonstrated that God in Christ has called us not to mere soul-winning, but to distinctive discipleship, to heralding a worldly gospel of a fleshly Christ who humbly accommodates human culture and understands the human condition. These commissions call us to missional discipleship — to redemptive engagement with all peoples and cultures.

* * *

NOTES

1. It is certainly possible that there are more commissions. In fact, the Abrahamic covenant in Gen 12:1-3 contains a programmatic mandate for all of Scripture: Go and God will make you a blessing to the nations, which is progressively manifested in making a new people of God, comprised of Jews and Gentiles.
2. It too is variously repeated in the Old Testament, upwards of 20 times, e.g. Gen. 9:1,7; 17:2-6; 26:3; 28:3; Ex. 1:7; Ezek. 36:11; Jer. 23:3.
3. Andrew Walls, The Missionary Movement in Christian History(Maryknoll: Orbis, 1996), 51. The original Greek reading of Matt. 28:18is literally “disciple all ethne” or “make disciples all nations” and does not contain a preposition. However, the grammatical construction of the phrase leads to an “of” reading, not a “from” or “in” reading.
4. It is widely recognized that this verse and the latter portion of Mark’s gospel (16:9-20) is absent from many Marcan manuscripts. However, we can not be certain that the ending is missing from the original text. If it was absent, our point concerning the “worldly gospel” of Mark still stands in that Mark repeatedly depicts Jesus as the Restorer of creation: driving out demons, healing the sick, resurrecting the dead, calming the sea.

Luke 10:25-37

Matthew 9:12

Matthew 28:18-20

Jonah 3:1-2, 4:11

Jeremiah 29:4-7

Acts 18:9-11

John 4

Luke 19:10

Genesis 12:1-3

John 20:21

Mark 6:7-12