The Bible records Jesus imploring his students and those willing to follow him in the ways of compassion and mercy and love and justice, to “go and make disciples of all nations.”
It has been labeled by the Christian Church the “Great Commission” and in addition to being a heartfelt plea and solid mission statement, it has turned out to be something of a marketing masterstroke, rivaling the greatest advertising campaigns in history:
Just Do It.
Have a Coke.
A Diamond is Forever.
Where’s the Beef?
Eat Fresh.
Go and Make Disciples.
Growing up a Christian, this was drilled into my head as the central purpose of the life of a believer. It has served as the theme of summer camps and youth conferences; been emblazoned on t-shirts, slapped onto bumpers, and woven into catchy alt-rock worship choruses.
Nearly thirty years ago when I became a pastor, it was made the very heart of my job description: produce people who resembled Jesus, who embraced his teachings and aspired to his goodness and who wanted to replicate him in the world.
The same charge to “go and make disciples” is the daily bread and butter of professional religious people like Franklin Graham, Jerry Falwell, Paula White, and of the White Evangelical Church they serve as willing and passionate ambassadors for: the very cornerstone of their sermons and pledge drives and new member initiatives.
The mantra is being repeated right now in Baptist seminary courses and morning chapel services and church staff meetings: let us go and make disciples of Jesus. It is what propels young Christians into foreign villages and onto stranger’s doorsteps and into their schools and onto street corners you’ll drive by today.
The phrase is creating an army of steadfast, sold-out evangelists, sharing what may not be good news, but is certainly loud news.
I’m all for more people meeting Jesus, in fact—I really want these Jesus people to meet him.
I believe we need a new generation of Christian missionaries.
I believe we need to take the Gospel to MAGA nation.
We need to bring the real good news of Jesus to rural Trump supporters and FoxNews-weaned Evangelicals and Conservative single-issue voters and to people embracing a white America-centric theology—because the truth is: the compassionate, generous, diverse, barrier-breaking movement and message of Jesus are as foreign to them as anyone on the planet.
If “reaching people” for Christ is what disciples are supposed to be doing—they’re the most important mission field on the planet because they are the least acquainted with him.
When I see how crippling fear has taken hold in their hearts, I realize that it is precisely because they have not been introduced to the gentle rabbi Jesus, who welcomed the stranger, who touched the hand of the leper, who fed the hungry, who turned over the moneylender’s tables, who set a table for the world.
When I hear their partisan catch phrase talking points about “illegals” and “the radical left” and “socialism,” I grieve because I realize that they don’t know the Jesus who built a sprawling, interdependent community of disparate people who shared all they had—and whose inclusion knew no walls or prerequisites or proof of need or political issue litmus test.
When I encounter their passion for gun ownership and their embrace of war and their adoration for a malevolent bully, I see how far they are from the tender heart of an itinerant street preacher who petitioned his followers to turn the other cheek and to not fear violence and to be peacemakers and to not live by the sword.
When I see professed Christians embracing an arrogant, exclusionary, don’t tread on me religion, I see how estranged they are from the kindness and generosity and gentleness of a Jesus they would likely brand a socialist, a soy boy, and a libtard.
As someone who has spent the past half a century as a student of Jesus, that’s the greatest tragedy I feel in these days: that the very people who most imagine themselves carriers of The Great Commission, have no idea what they’re selling because they have never experienced it themselves—and I want that for them.
I’d love to see Christians making this as their mission as believers: to take the radical, audacious, relentless love of the Biblical Jesus into the places he is most absent right now in America:
into car service waiting areas and retirement home recreation rooms where fearful FoxNews fiction is on a continual loop,
into Republican organizations and Southern Baptist seminaries and Christian youth camps and White House prayer gatherings where white supremacy and nationalistic religion is thriving,
into the heart of red America where the trappings and symbols and iconography of Jesus are everywhere—but his scandalous hospitality to outsiders and his open-handed generosity for the hungry and the hurting are absent,
into Evangelical churches this Sunday, where the directive to make disciples will again be preached and prayed and sung—without the beautiful heart of the one who is supposed to be sending them,
into the kitchens and break rooms and classrooms, where people don’t need more religious tribalism: they need the oneness that comes when you really love your neighbor as your own.
Often evangelism in that world is steeped in conversion: in changing people and winning them over and defeating their immorality.
I’m not interested in that.
I don’t want to beat anyone.
I’m not interested in “winning them for Christ.”
I just want to release them.
I want them to find themselves in the wide open, expansive, perfect love that casts out fear—because then they be able to feed and heal and include and welcome and embrace people without seeing other people as threats or sinners or damned souls, because they don’t look or sound or love or vote the way that they do.
In that place the will understand that every person they encounter is someone who, just like them, could use a little more kindness and something that feels like love.
I want to bring the good news to everyone.
I want to make disciples of MAGA nation.
