The Great Commission (Matt. 28:18-20) stands at the center of the church’s life and ministry. Because this passage is so crucial to the work of the church, it deserves our constant study and reflection.
I hope this brief analysis contributes to a conviction that evangelism has two crucial elements: a focused effort to bring people to Christ and a serious commitment to the people’s long-term spiritual formation.
It can be tempting to read the Great Commission’s commands to make disciples (v. 19) and to teach them to obey (v. 20) as if these were two separate ideas or as if the first was more important than the second. This view places everyone on one of two spiritual “tracks.” The first is about becoming a disciple. The second is for Christians and is about growing up in Christ over a whole lifetime.
The danger in reading the text this way is that we can easily assume the goal of evangelism is to help people move from the first track to the second, thinking their edification as disciples is a different matter altogether. The problem is, Jesus describes evangelism as both conversion and spiritual formation. Because of this, we should realize that making a disciple without caring for his long term spiritual needs isn't really making a disciple at all, at least not in the way Jesus envisions it and not in the way Luke describes Paul’s ministry in Acts (specifically 14:21-28).
Perhaps a better way to understand evangelism is to take the Great Commission as a single, unified command concerned with helping people take steps closer to the life God has prescribed, regardless of where they are starting. This would mean our ministry is to help people people take whatever spiritual step is right for them. Practically speaking, this might mean helping atheists come to believe in God, helping non-Christians come to Christ, helping Christians deepen their faith, and helping established Christians discover ways to minister to others.
This approach places everyone on one “track,” where the goal is to move closer to the Christian life as described in the Bible, regardless of the person’s background or current spiritual condition. The goal is not to jump from one track to another, but to constantly be moving closer to our goal of becoming like Christ. Consequently, no one step is more important than another, whether it is a non-Christian being baptized or a disciple experiencing God in a new way, as long as the step brings the individual closer to God. Taking this view, we see that discipleship is a life-long process of transformation into a more perfect image of Christ, and that evangelism is a passionate effort to help people thrive in this process over the long-term.
There is a strong scriptural reason to read this passage as a single unified command. Jesus uses a very rich word, “matheteuo,” when he commands the apostles to “go and make disciples.” This word involves a life-long process of learning to follow Jesus. The word is essentially the verb form of the noun “disciple,” and it means something like to teach someone to follow a master, to be a disciple, or to help someone be a disciple.
The word “matheteuo,” occurs just three other times in the New Testament (Matt. 13:52; 27:57; Acts 14:21). The passage in Acts gives us a very clear understanding of what it means to evangelize in a holistic sense--that is, by bringing them to Christ and helping them grow and mature as Christians.
A New Testament scholar named David Detwiler has pointed out that when Luke describes Paul’s ministry in Acts 14:21-28, he uses “matheteuo,” the same word Jesus uses in the Great Commission. This is no accident. There have been many conversions by this point in Acts, but Luke saves this word for the one passage he believes fully demonstrates what it means to fulfill the Great Commission.
In this passage, Paul preaches the good news (v. 21), helps people begin to follow Jesus (v. 21), strengthens and encourages the disciples (v. 22, 23) appoints elders (v. 23), prays and fasts for them (v. 23), commits the church to God (v. 23), revisits churches he had already planted (v. 26) and stays with the disciples for a long time (v. 28). Notice that his aim is to diagnose a particular group of Christians and help them take the next step in their faith. What is especially significant for this study is that he does all of this in the name of following the Great Commission, not as an add-on that may or may not be necessary.
For Paul, fulfilling the Great Commission meant espousing a holistic view of evangelism that included a passion for these people’s long-term spiritual health. In fact, the majority of Paul’s ministry occurs after the people are baptized. Based on this passage, one could argue that the most zealous and successful evangelist in the entire Bible spent more time strengthening existing disciples than making new ones.
This should give us freedom to invest serious time and energy into ministries that help disciples stay disciples, not just ministries that focus on making new ones. It says a lot about our previous church culture that the vast majority of our full-time staff were considered “evangelists” and not “teachers,” “pastors,” or “worship ministers.” We should no longer feel restricted to this frame of mind. Evangelism is of course a central part of the church’s mission, but we must think of it in a holistic sense and care for the long-term health of the church just as much as we share our faith with unbelievers.
In summary, evangelism must be understood as the effort to help people learn to follow Jesus for their entire lives. Anything less falls short of what Jesus commands us to do. This is because discipleship is a life-long process of becoming more like Christ, and evangelism is about helping form life-long disciples.