The “Great Confusion” by Reen Waterman
In 2007, Willow Creek Church Senior Pastor Bill Hybels stunned the evangelical world by sharing that despite his church’s annual multimillion dollar budget and “seeker-sensitive” approach, his church had miserably failed to make disciples. Although his church excelled at sharing the gospel, they failed to make new disciples. Sadly, despite their best intentions, this is the same result in many churches across America.
Here lies what we call the “Great Confusion.” While sharing the gospel is important, Jesus’ last command to us was to make disciples–not just converts. To lead people to Christ without teaching them how to mature in their faith leaves them at the intersection of “Just Saved” and “Now What?”
In John 17:4, Jesus said, “I have brought You glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do.” While people know His mission was to pay the price for our sins, this statement came BEFORE His crucifixion or resurrection. So, what was the work He completed? It was discipling His disciples.
The church in America does an excellent job of evangelizing. However, this is just the gateway to discipling others. To complete the Great Commission, it is our calling to disciple others. Matthew 28:18-20 AMP spells out quite clearly OUR mission:
Jesus came up and said to them, “All authority (all power of absolute rule) in heaven and on earth has been given to Me. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations [help the people to learn of Me, believe in Me, and obey My words], baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything that I have commanded you.
In Real Life Discipleship, author Jim Putnam writes,
“Tragically, most believers do not know or do not acceptthat we are God’s Plan A for reaching the world and that there is no Plan B. Too often our idea of being on mission with God (if we think this is even our job) is inviting out unbelieving friends and family to church so the pastor can convince them to accept Christ. If we believe that these new converts should be taught at all, we certainly do not think we are qualified to teach them. We have no idea that conversion is just the beginning of a spiritual growth process and that what comes next-discipleship- will determine if a person matures spiritually to a stage where the disciple experiences real change that others will notice.
Sadly, because of this, many Christians are poorly equipped to do more than attend church. Linda and I really feel that Your Refreshed Life needs to be focused on helping equip our readers to be disciplers. While God could have created any number of plans to evangelize and disciple others, in His grand plan He established a plan for us to “Each One Reach One.”
So, as we grow in our knowledge of God and as we learn to grow in our own faith through spiritual disciplines, our hope is to grow together with all of you. We hope each of us learns better each day how to fulfill the calling Jesus placed on our lives which is to help others learn, believe, and obey Jesus’ words teaching and observing everything He taught and demonstrated while living on this earth. We will be learning together the language, culture, and lifestyle of our new homeland as citizens of His Kingdom in heaven.
