Pilgrim Soldier

A few weeks ago I wrote about the Great Commission (Matthew 28:19-20) and wondered why it is that we have concentrated on the getting people saved aspect, rather than making disciples. This thought came back to mind twice yesterday so I post about them

The first thing was during an Ethics lecture at the Latvian School for Officer Training. I went along as the class was open to everyone and I was interested to hear about Ethics from another perspective. Major Kjell Karlsten who was giving the lecture made reference to Kingdom values taking precedence in everything and used the illustration of the supposedly Christian country of Rwanda and the genocide.

Now something I knew, which he wasn’t aware of, is that before 1994 Rwanda was seen by missiologists as the most evangelised country in Africa, if not the world. With a very high percentage of its citizens going to church and professing a Christian faith, how is that the genocide could ever have taken place? Now there are many causes and I don’t want to oversimplify the situation, but surely if the Church leaders in that country had been concentrating on making true disciples of Jesus, then this genocide would have been impossible. If 90% of the country had been disciples, rather than simply ‘being saved’ there is no way this could have happened.

The second thing that stirred my thoughts was someone’s off-hand comment that The Salvation Army ignores the baptism bit of the Great Commission. The truth of that is open for discussion and I’m not prepared to go into it at the moment, but my first response was that many local churches fail totally to fulfill the “teaching them to obey everything I commanded you.” In fact this has been going on a lot longer than The Salvation Army has ‘ignored’ baptism.

My ever growing passion is towards discipleship. I cannot get over just how much my views on this have grown over the last few months. I am tired of seeing Christians who go to their local church on a Sunday and yet do not get themselves involved in the work of the Kingdom. I’m fed up of the world as it is and want to see disciples rising up and making a real difference, both within the world at large and within the church. I want to make disciples and teach them to obey the Lord’s commands.