No 9

(The Great Commission)

The Lord Jesus Christ gave His Apostles and, by extension all believers, an order to spread the Good News of the Gospel to all nations. He appropriately began this monumental statement by saying the word “Go”. He didn’t say, “wait until” or “could you please?” or even “organize an evangelism committee and….”; He gave marching orders to the 11 Apostles. “19 Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: 20 Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen.” (Matthew 28:19, 20). Mind you, the Apostles didn’t go right away, they prayed and waited until the Holy Spirit came down on them (Acts 1:8); that’s OK. Even then, they stayed only in Jerusalem; it was only until persecution came (Acts 8:1) that they actually went out to Judea and Samaria; that’s OK too. But at least they went!! When will the churches in North America do the same?! Oh, there is some evangelism going on, but it is not the priority in the majority of our churches and there are missionaries being sent to far-off lands but our Judeas and Samarias are neglected. Here are a few excuses that churches give to avoid the uncomfortable task of knocking on doors and speaking on street corners: 1) “We can barely handle the people in our church now, how are we going to minister to new converts?”; 2) “We just don’t have the time”; 3) (this one is a classic) “We have no experienced evangelists in our church”; 4) “The results of door to door evangelism are very negligible”. Here is an alarming statistic I once read in a Christian publication – only 2% of the churches in North America have evangelism as their prime directive. Some churches don’t even have an evangelism committee! We are missing the point, folks. We think that because little or no results are obtained, that is reason enough to not have regular, weekly, church-backed evangelism programs. Our job is to speak the words, God handles the rest. He is the one who prepares the hearts, His Spirit convicts the sinners and it is His Word that saves the unregenerate. Nowhere in Scripture are we asked to pray for the salvation of a loved one or a contact; however, the Bible does command us to “Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth labourers into his harvest” (Matt 9:38 Luke 10:2) and “I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest.” (John 4:35b). When a church does not evangelize, it will fossilize. Jesus said about the Church in Ephesus “thou hast lost thy first love” (Rev 2:4b). Our first love is speaking about Jesus and what He can do to a life; let the Lord worry about ministering to new believers; or providing “experienced” evangelists; experience comes from doing evangelism. Let’s not kid ourselves, the Lord will build His Church in spite of men!!