PARSONS: In our study of Romans at Saint Andrews Chapel, I took some time and looked at the
mission of God in Scripture.
And the mission of God is something I could spend the rest of my life studying, because
I can't read a page of Scripture without seeing the mission of God.
And looking at the Great Commission and how it ties together so much of what we see from
Genesis and from God's promise to Abraham, there's so much there.
And of course, I deal with some of that in the series.
I dealt with a lot more at Saint Andrews Chapel during that series, that series on the Mission
of God.
BINGHAM: We got the extended edition.
PARSONS: Right!
I mean those series are so difficult, because you're…in my case preaching without notes
and trying to pull so much from memory and then in front of this, you know, cameras and
lights, it's very uncomfortable and for me it's very nerve-racking.
But the Great Commission of course is something I think is neglected because we do not, we
do not know or understand the fullness of the Great Commission.
I think typically when people think of the Great Commission, they immediately think of
evangelism and they think of evangelism only.
Now it's appropriate we think of evangelism when we think of the Great Commission, absolutely
appropriate.
Evangelism needs to be a part of our lives, a part of the warp and woof of how we live.
It's a daily part of our lives, as we are reminding ourselves of the gospel, as we are
preaching the gospel to our children, to our friends, to those that we work with, as we
are repenting of our sins and reminding ourselves of the gospel, reminding our children of the
gospel.
So we carry that forth wherever we go and remind each other and others of the gospel.
And as we go out and talk to people in the world and talk to them about our sins and
their sins, we can't help but talk about Christ.
And so we need evangelism, and the Great Commission in one sense contains that.
And at the very heart of the Great Commission of course is discipleship, baptism and discipleship.
But a lot of times when we think of discipleship, what do we think of?
I think that a lot of people think only of teaching.
Sometimes we think of mentoring, and that's a good thing, or sometimes we think of small
group discipleship.
But I think too often, too many Christians think simply of teaching.
Now, teaching is right.
Teaching is the, if you will, one of the foundation imperatives of the Great Commission.
But what Jesus says is "teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you."
Often as we hear the Great Commission just quoted from memory we hear people say, "Teaching
them all that I have commanded you."
That's not what Jesus says.
Jesus said, "Teach them to observe all that I commanded you."
Teach them to guard—that entails knowing what He's commanded.
And so that means that we are training people, not just teaching them but training people.
We are training them and helping them, and that means it needs to be life-on-life and
face-to-face, it needs to be real.
We can't do online church.
We can't, we can't be discipled and we can't grow as disciples simply by following people
on Twitter.
We can't grow as disciples simply by listening to a podcast.
We have to grow as disciples by hearing the Word of God and by striving to imitate those
who are striving to obey the Word of God and observe all that Christ has taught.
And so we need to be in communities, we need to be in the church, we need to have friends,
we need to have men and women that are older than we are that are helping us and teaching
us and that we're looking to and that we're humbling ourselves under and listening to
them.
So there's so much more to this, of course, to the Great Commission.
But that's one of the, I think, key elements that is so missing from the church, particularly
the megachurch and the online church and even the campus church model.
We're missing that one-on-one life discipleship.
And of course pastors, we can't do all of that, we can disciple individuals as we're
able to, but really it's the work of the church to do the ministry of that work as they are
gifted and equipped, as you've discipled many over the years, even our church and elsewhere.
To disciple those that you can as they are humble, as they learn, as they are trained,
so that they might in turn disciple others in their lives.