Jesus left His followers with a command and a challenge, “Go and make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19). He challenged the early disciples and those who would come after them to go into all the world and spread the good news about Him and His sacrifice. At that time they did not even know how big the task was but they went. They shook the world – they changed history!
Today researchers tell us that there could be up to 40 times more people to reach than when Jesus sent His handful of followers out into the unknown. If you could stand today’s population one on top of the other they would more than reach the moon and come back—a distance of more than 800,000 kilometres. And every year the population booms by another 80 million.
We are now looking at a population of 3.5 billion who do not even have a nominal connection with Christianity and almost 1.5 billion who have not even heard the story of Jesus. If we are to take the challenge and commission seriously we need to grapple with the numbers. It seems an impossible task.
Was Jesus just talking to the professional preachers/ministers of the time or to every follower? Peter spells out the concept of the priesthood of all believers (see I Peter 2:9) and presses home the thought that all are to minister. Paul takes this even further to tell as that we are all Christ’s ambassadors, taking God’s message to the world! (2 Corinthians 5:20). It is fair to say that all disciples are “sent”.
At its genesis, Adventist youth ministry was organised and run by the youth themselves. Because of their overwhelming desire to be involved in the mission of the church, they called themselves Missionary Volunteers! We have witnessed a number of different approaches to youth ministry over the past 30 years. We are currently witnessing a move back to missional youth ministry1 and an endeavour to recapture the spirit of mission.
Kirk and Thorne are two young Christians who have thought seriously about the command of Jesus and I have adapted their approach to youth ministry and encapsulated
it in the model illustrated on these pages. There is something very familiar in this approach that Adventists can relate to! Sadly much of what we have been involved in would fit in to the attractional model but I am convinced that change is well under way and what I have witnessed over the past decade is a strong push toward the missional model. Jesus wants to empower His church for the challenge of going out.
The missional model is about being sent, it is about “going into all the world”. It is about believing enough and getting our hands dirty. Rich Melheim, in a passage from his proposed book, retells the experience of Mother Teresa:
Mother Teresa had the annoying habit of leading guests, pilgrims and visiting dignitaries out of the chancel during Holy Communion and into the alleys to place a dying beggar in their arms and whisper, “The body of Christ, given for you” . . . Jesus is out there, touching and healing, loving and living in the strangest of places. The problem is, we church people don’t like strange places. We like pretty places with pretty people talking about antiseptic topics. We don’t like to get our hands dirty.2
Over my 40 years of ministry, I have not seen a time when the youth have shied away from the challenge. Yes it is big and growing, but with God’s Spirit it is achievable. Tony Campolo made the following observation after a conversation with a parent lamenting the fact that their child wanted nothing to do with the church: “Young people are not going to be attracted to a church that tries to entertain them, but they will be attracted to a church that calls them in a ministry to others. Young people want a church that will provide them with concrete ways to become agents of God’s revolution.”3 I believe he is correct.
Back to the challenge—was Jesus asking the impossible or was he for real? Just think about it for a minute. If one Christian young person would win another person and then disciple that person for the next six months so that person could win and train another, at the end of six months there would be only two people. However, if those two won two more and discipled them during the next six months, there would be four . . . But look [above] to see what happens as this unfolds!
If we got serious and just the 17 million Adventist Christians took Christ’s great commission as our mantra, how soon would the challenge be realised!
- See the recent work of Brian Kirk and Jacob Thorne, Missional Youth Ministry: Moving from Gathering Teenagers to Scattering Disciples, Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2011; and Sudworth, T. Mission-shaped youth. London: Church House Pub. 2007. As far back as 1999 Pete Ward, God at the mall, Peabody: Henrickson, 1999, was pushing the missional model.
- www.fifthchurch.org.
- Tony Campolo, Ideas for Social Action, Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1983, pg. 9.
- Barry St. Clair, “Discipleship,” in Ray Willey ed., Working with Youth, pg. 54.
Barry Gane has spent most of his life serving and leading young people. He is currently the head of the Theology Department at Avondale College.
