Our focus as a church is to lead people to Jesus by growing in Jesus
We do what Jesus tells is to do right before He ascended to heaven in what we call the Great Commission in Matthew 28:18-20;
18 Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son
and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
So we look at this and see 4 different things Jesus tells us to do:
“Go,” we’re supposed to be GOING to the nations and be missional
“Make disciples,” we’re supposed to ‘make students’ of all nations
“Baptizing them,” we’re supposed to be be baptizing people into the faith
“Teaching them,” we’re supposed to be teaching them to actually DO what Jesus says we should do. Sometimes, churches put too much emphasis on “Going” on being seeker-friendly, or only spending money on outreach efforts, while they neglect those who already saved in the church. Like after they get them wet, they just leave them out to dry. Or sometimes churches do a lot of teaching and have a million different Sunday School classes and Life Groups, but they never leave the classroom to get into the real world. If you noticed, I didn’t give an example of when it becomes harmful when churches focus too much on making disciples. So here's a fun fact; the words ‘go,’ ‘baptizing,’ and ‘teaching,’ are all subordinate participles in the Greek. And participles are ‘verbal adjectives,’ they all tell us something about the main verb. And what is the main verb in the Great Commission? It’s ‘making disciples,’ which isn’t a participle, but an imperative. What this means is this; Jesus tells His disciples that the only thing they need to do is to make other disciples. That’s what the Great Commission is all about, it’s making disciples who make disciples. It's about leading people to Jesus as we ourselves are growing in Jesus.
