Urgent Mission Doesn’t Mean Quick Success
Imagine you create a delicious drink with powerful positive side effects. A drink that tastes good and is good for you! Then imagine some business consultants telling you, “We can get this drink to lots of people really fast.” You say, “Let’s do it!” and within weeks the drink is in stores with a vast ad campaign encouraging people to buy it.
Many people respond and buy the drink, but they’re underwhelmed. It tastes “okay” to them. You’re shocked because you know this drink is better than “okay.” So you run to the store, buy one yourself, and you immediately realize the problem. In order to sell the drink quickly, the consultants produced it cheaply, and it wasn’t the same quality of drink you gave to them in the first place.
Your efforts to get this drink to as many people as possible are harder now than at first. People are convinced they have experienced the drink when what they’ve tasted was a fake.
Thankfully, Christianity is not just a good-tasting drink with beneficial side effects.
THE RISK OF A WATERED-DOWN GOSPEL
But we need to admit that the spread of the gospel in the world has often been made more challenging by ways that, in the name of big and fast, we have substituted a watered-down product for the real one, and people think they’ve seen or even tasted Christianity, but it’s not the real thing.
Of course, we want the gospel to spread fast. In the words of 2 Thessalonians 3:1, “Finally, brothers, pray for us, that the word of the Lord may speed ahead and be honored.” At the same time, think about the ministry of Jesus himself. When he left the earth after 33 years, there were 12 disciples (one of whom fell away) and a little over 100 others. That seems pretty small. But there was something God was doing in the least and slow that in his wisdom would resound to his glory around the world for generations to come.
SMALL BEGINNINGS, LASTING IMPACT
Think about it in your life and my life today. What if every one of us led just one other person to Jesus over the next 10 years? And what if every one of our churches multiplied just one time over the next 10 years? We might think, “That’s not rapid. Surely we need to move faster than that!”
But just think about that. Do the math, and if you start with even an extremely conservative number of only 500 million Bible-believing, gospel-proclaiming Christians in the world, if every follower of Jesus and church multiplied one time every ten years, you would literally reach the entire world (all the nations!) in the next 40 years. Reaching the entire world with the gospel in the span of a generation sounds amazing to me.
PATIENCE THAT BUILDS FOR ETERNITY
Unfortunately, much work that is done in the world of mission today can be gospel-less or gospel-light, or church-less or church-light.It’s often done with good motives–to reach people rapidly with multiplying movements. And it leads to large numbers that we like to report. But we would do well to heed the words of John Paton, a missionary who years ago went to the New Hebrides, a cannibalistic people group. Paton said:
“Plant down your forces in the heart of one tribe or race. Work solidly from the center, building up—with patient teaching and life long care—a church that will endure. Rest not till every people and language and nation has such a Christ center throbbing in its midst with the pulses of the new life at full play. Rush not from land to land, from people to people in a breathless fruitless mission. The concentrated common sense that builds for eternity will receive the fullest approval of God in time.”
Especially in a day where it’s popular to say we’re going to reach this many people with the gospel by this particular time, let’s pause and consider how we might need to exchange our desire for rapid results and success stories for devotion to often slow but generationally sustainable strategies that the church has been built on since the beginning.
MAKING DISCIPLES, ONE STEP AT A TIME
As we look at the nations, especially places that are unreached, let’s come alongside and support brothers and sisters who are clearly proclaiming the biblical gospel, carefully planting biblical churches, and wisely training biblical leaders for those churches.
And as we look at our neighborhoods (i.e., right where we live today!), let’s be faithful to do what Jesus calls us to do: to make disciples, leading people to Jesus and teaching them to follow Him, knowing it probably won’t be quick and definitely won’t be easy, but in due time (i.e., in eternity!) will undoubtedly be worth it.
This article first appeared in The Commission—Radical’s biweekly newsletter with gospel stories from around the world and exclusive encouragement from David Platt to help you follow Jesus and make him known. Subscribe now.
