Two Ways the CGGC is Defiling the Great Commission

Please understand that there are two emotions I regularly feel when I encounter what I believe the Spirit is telling me is well-intentioned unrighteousness among American/Western Evangelicals, particularly among my those whom I love in the CGGC.  The emotions are:

• Anger, and
• Sorrow.

I have dealt with those emotions since I began to embrace my belief  that I am gifted to be a prophet. 

In the past, normally I felt anger but, more and more, recently it is sorrow that I feel.

I memorized Matthew 28:18-20 many years ago and, over the years, I have meditated on it many times.

When I think of what those I love in the CGGC have done in response to the Great Commission, I am both furious and heartbroken.

These days, two realities break my heart.

First, in the CGGC, we abuse Jesus' admonition that we "make disciples" (NIV) by twisting His desire and do all we can to have new churches.  Until the past few years, we tried, with many failures, to plant churches.  We don't do that so much these days.  We have too few people who are not shepherds.  Now we talk not so much about church planting but also acquiring, through adoption, new churches, i.e., we try to convince established churches to accept the CGGC brand.

Try finding that in the Great Commission.

The truth is that Jesus doesn't ask us to be concerned about starting or adding to the number of churches.  He sends us, one by one, into the world to disciple individual sinners.

We pervert Jesus' simple commission in a way that, in the end, satisfies our shepherd mafia but, in truth, entirely distorts what Jesus sent His followers into the world to do.

Second, we abuse Jesus' admonition that we "make disciples" by focusing on reaching communities, not individual sinners.  This passion for community transformation appears to be the coming fad in the CGGC.  Others have been at this task for some time.  We are now becoming serious about jumping on that bandwagon.  Recently, it was presented as being the "Best Church FOR and WITH Community."

But, Jesus doesn't send churches into the world, he sends disciples.  And, He doesn't send them to transform communities.  He sends His people to make disciples out of people who were lost in sin.

Show me a New Testament church adopting a part of its community.

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Trust me, because every time I've made this prediction about the CGGC in the past, real world life has proved me right (think Transformational Church, Hear the Call):  This community transformation fad will be a flash in the pan--if it even achieves that status.

Earlier today, I was texting with a coworker with whom I engaged several other coworkers in a discussion of the meaning of faith and repentance and the meaning of baptism and I said, of myself,

I'm the grammar Nazi [a nickname given to me by some of them] who quotes Kierkegaard to cashiers and baggers.

And, I do. 

Much of my criticism of the CGGC is similar to the wrath K heaped on the Danish Lutheran Church in the days that another hero of mine, John Winebrenner, was talking "the New Testament plan."

I look real, individual people in the eye and speak directly into their ears about what faith in Christ really is, what holiness (though I never use the word) is and, time after time, about the truth and authority of the Word of God.

Am I living out the Great Commission?  I won't say that I am.  I will only say that I take the Great Commission seriously and am attempting to live it.

But, I will say that this new churches thing and community transformation stuff is off track, as far as the Great Commission is concerned.  Jesus called you and me as individuals to go into the world in His authority to make disciples of individuals who have not repented and do not believe in the Gospel.

If you want justification to work on community transformation, read the Old, not the New Testament.  If you want to increase the number of your churches, check out the ministry of the church in the Middle Ages, not in the New Testament.

We must repent.