Great Commission: one passage, four voices 

The theme of the 2023 Baptist Assembly was Mission Is... – and four short Bible studies focusing on Matthew 28:16-20 were shared and discussed on Saturday morning

Those sharing were: Hayley Young, outgoing President; minister of Cullompton Baptist Church in Devon and former convenor of Baptist Union Disability Justice Hub; Bishop Mike Royal, General Secretary of Churches Together in England; and Helen Dare, Minister of Broad Haven Baptist Church in Pembrokeshire and (part time) Tutor in Biblical Studies at Cardiff Baptist College.

The session was hosted by Isabella Senior, Young Leaders' Development co-ordinator, and Steve Tinning, Public Issues Enabler. 

Following the presentations, delegates were invited to discuss what they'd heard, before a conversation took place on the stage about themes that had been raised. Those participating int his conversation were Lisa Kerry, regional minister team leader at Central Baptist Association; Loriane Roberts, minister of Attleborough Baptist Church, Nuneaton; Josh Nixon, ministerial intern at Orchard Baptist Church, Bicester; and Ruth Conlon of BMS World Mission. 

 

 
'Mission is simple, practical, loving and caring' - Hayley Young
 
Though we really don’t know what the implications of our mission will be, said Hayley, we can be very clear about the kind of mission we are called to - because the Bible gives us 'a very clear road map.'
 
When we read New Testament, one thing is apparent: 'It is all about the kingdom of God and its impact on the earth.'
 
'It’s clear that the essence of our mission is the task of reaching out to the world and pointing it towards Jesus, so that person after person is reconciled with God: father, son and Holy Spirit.'
 
She noted that Jesus commands his disciples to ‘teach them to obey everything I have commanded…’ 
 
'Everything Jesus did was about being the good news of the kingdom of God in words and deeds... Jesus would demonstrate the kingdom of God – and then explain it. This commission is not simply about going about preaching, it is also about doing the stuff of the kingdom of God.
 
'Because the kingdom is good news for everyone: it’s all about underserving people being graciously reconciled to an amazing loving Father God.
 
'It’s not about preaching the message, it’s about demonstrating it.'
 
What does discipleship look like for someone who is lonely? Hayley asked. What does discipleship look like for someone who’s sick?
 
'Mission happens when we reach out to people in need and offer to walk with them through their challenges.'
 
For in these verses, Hayley said, Jesus didn’t tell His disciples, ‘Go and evangelise.’ He told them to ‘Go and make disciples.’
 
'Discipleship is about helping others to come to an understanding of who God is.'
 
Hayley said ‘of course’ there is a place for evangelism and God can and will work through that. 'But it is in the everyday, caring ministries that seem to produce lasting fruit.'
 
'Mission is simple, practical, loving and caring. It’s about being a really good friend, a really good neighbour, a really good member of the community – it earns the right to share what we have.
 
'When your community sees the local church loving, caring for and helping those in need, it speaks to them louder than any sermon. This is how the Gospel is spread.'
 
She said the pattern Jesus sets is that discipleship involves two dynamics: one is ‘being with him’ - drawing close to him, abiding in him and learning from him; the other is ‘going for him.’  His purpose in calling these disciples is to do what he has been doing.
 
Hayley then asked: 'Do you see yourself as a disciple on mission? This commission is not just a question of morality but ministry and mission.
 
'Jesus trained his disciples and sends them out, and he gives us the very same commission.
 
‘How are you training others; how are you discipling?'
 
Though we might feel 'inadequate', we are no different from Jesus’ first disciples - and we take comfort in the same promise: ‘I am with you always, to the end of the age.’
 

 
Inclusive Justice, vulnerable evangelism, beautiful people - Glen Graham
 
The passage is the bedrock of our Declaration of Principle, said Glen, the foundation on statement of who we are as a Baptist family. Mission is therefore at ‘the centre of our very being as Baptists - so it's right to ask the question: what is it that we mean by this word?’

It's also a good passage to think about because 'frankly, sometimes it feels like it's asking us something that's so far out of reach. Or something that is only possible to do for people with certain kinds of personality. 

'I hope to knock that straight out of the water this morning.'
 
In answering the question, Glen said he always returns to Tom Wright's description of mission in his book Surprised By Hope, which he read 10 years ago. These are: Justice; Evangelism and Beauty. And to unpack it further, he said he would add a word to each:  

• Inclusive Justice
• Vulnerable Evangelism
• Beautiful people

 
Inclusive justice
You don't need to read the gospels for long before you see how Jesus brings in people from the edges and the margins, said Glen, 'and that he finds ways of placing such people in the middle of his plan.' 

But let's be honest, he continued, the church in general as this mission catalyst has a great deal of justice to work out itself. 'We have to get our house in order.'

There are many wonderful initiatives already dealing with this, and Glen said he had stepped back from Disability Justice ministry 'because there are people more able to take it on to its next level.'

Glen, who is registered blind, said he represents around 14.8 million people who have a disability of some kind. Although he can 'only speak confidently about what I know,' he said 'every one of us can be somebody who is in solidarity.' For instance, while we 'cannot incarnate their experience', we can be in solidarity with women struggling to find ministry, or with people from another race feeling out of their depth in their churches.

In terms of people with disabilities, Glen said there are 'potential apprentices' who can't get into buildings and attend; and potential apprentices who are sometimes given the expectation that when you are healed and mended 'you will be more fully one of us. You'll be more fully whole.'

Yet this is flawed thinking, Glen continued. 

'A disabled body and mind is a statement which challenges what it means to be human. We're an embodiment of something else - yet we are made in the image of God.' Disabled people experience different attitudes and assumptions, made without conversations.  

Glen said millennials 'will not be quite as polite as I have been over the years... because hopefully we have done some of the fighting for them.'

They will keep you and me to the mark,' he continued, 'and that's what inclusive justice is all about - people bringing us to the mark, reminding us who is left out.'

And who gave the Great Commission? A man who had been blindfolded, 'beaten like mincemeat' before being put on the cross; a man who gave authority from heaven and earth 'with the scars still on his body.'

'They hadn't gone. He hadn't been healed from them,' said Glen. 'He chose to wear them as a badge of the talisman for what was to come: the kingdom of the broken, the kingdom of those who need the bigger table.'


Vulnerable evangelism 
Vulnerable is one of those words that can sometimes be misunderstood as something that's weak, said Glen. Yet it takes great strength for some people to be who they are, 'because they fear that they will not be accepted exactly who they are.'

For others vulnerability means being stretched beyond their comfort zones: for some that is to be quiet, and for others it is to speak and raise their voices. 

But we need to listen to our contexts, said Glen, whether it's a community of the rich or the community of poor. And if you want to see an example of how a vulnerable evangelism works, look at the Celtic saints and particularly St Aidan. 

Glen commended the book Ray Simpson's book, St Aidan's Way of Mission, because it describes Aidan wandering through the landscape on his journey pilgrimage to Northumbria. He spoke to kings and rulers about Jesus, as well as engaging with 'nobodies'.

Aidan was able to listen and to respond, to speak and to be silent because of his closeness to God. 

'Whatever mission you're involved in, you're being stretched, and that's not a bad thing,' said Glen. 'We need to learn that discomfort and perseverance aren't dirty words - they are essential if we're going to stay the course.

To be vulnerable, is to be tough, but tender.

Beautiful people
Moving onto his third point about ‘beautiful people’, Glen shared that he loves poetry ('it clings to my heart') and has a very visual room, with art and lots of books. ‘I love the thought of having beautiful things around.’

But the most beautiful thing is 'humanity taking its rightful place, made truly alive in the world.' 

'Imagine what every Jesus follower and apprentice would be like if as we've been given the Spirit we take our place where we are and where we live. What could that achieve? 
 
Glen quoted Irenaeus, a Greek bishop noted for his role in guiding and expanding Christian communities in the 2nd century: 'The glory of God is when a person is fully alive. The glory of a person is to contemplate God.'

'If you and I are enabling human beings within and without our churches to be truly and wonderfully alive and living life to the full,' Glen continued, 'we've got mission grasped.' 
 
Glen ended with a quote from the canticle from the morning office of the Northumbria community, which he encouraged delegates to ‘remember in humility.’
 
"This day be within and without me.
Lowly and meek yet all powerful.
Be in the heart of each to whom I speak.
In the mouth of each who speak unto me.”
 
 

 
 
A rallying cry for the church to step into action - Bishop Mike Royal
 
Bishop Mike Royal, General Secretary of Churches Together in England, also explored the passage.
 
The Great Commission is the rallying cry for the church to step into action, said Mike. 'To go and impact the world.' Jesus met people on a mountain, a place of retreat.
 
As he unpacked the passage, he asked a series of questions.
 
For in this passage, Jesus meets his disciples at the place where it all started - Galilee.

Galilee is close to the life the disciples left, and close to where it all started. Would they be tempted to return to fishing? Or would they decide to move forward as they were reminded of what they experienced in those early days?

'So perhaps over these few days God wants to take us back to the place where it all started? – your salvation, ministry, the place he called you to.'

'And to encounter our first love; to renew our depth of ministry to the place you minister.’
 
There were sadly only 11 disciples, who carried the pain of losing Judas on the journey. 'Who have we lost on our ministry journey, who is estranged from congregational life?' asked Mike. 'It’s good to lament…. And maybe even, at the appropriate time, to reconnect.’
 
The disciples were also full of doubt and the trauma of the crucifixion of Jesus. 'So what doubts, trauma are we carrying?' asked Mike. 'It’s OK not to be OK! That might be where you are right now.'
 
God is saying three things in these verses, Mike continued.
 
Firstly, there is a reminder of our call to the nations - this is the 'antidote to of Little Britain, Brexit, of pulling up the draw bridge.' God is interested in transforming nations, and whole people groups.
 
Secondly, this verse can help us renew our Baptist distinctives for it focuses on baptism - 'every believer having a definitive, life changing encounter with Jesus.  Baptism is that cross over moment.'
 
Finally, it's a call to radical discipleship, said Mike, focusing on the line teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.
 
'This is not sitting at a desk teaching and learning, it’s more than even sitting in a circle in conversation – it’s learning to obey Jesus as we journey together, because discipleship is a communal experience.'
 
In conclusion, Mike continued, Jesus knew the disciples’ doubts, their weaknesses, their pain, their failure - and yet in that moment he ushers them into a new chapter of ministry.
 
In their own strength they would fail -  but  he promised: 'surely I am with you until the end of age.'
 
 

 
Mission, doubts and questions - Helen Dare
 
Helen Dare, minister of Broad Haven Baptist Church in Pembrokeshire and (part time) Tutor in Biblical Studies at Cardiff Baptist College, began by quoting a lyric from a Martyn Joseph song.
 
‘Faith lost its promise and bruised me deep blue…’
 
'Perhaps not the song lyric that you might have expected when thinking about the Great Commission, or at the opening session of a Baptist Assembly. Maybe you were expecting something a little bit more upbeat.
 
‘Faith losing its promise’ doesn’t really fit with excited disciples receiving instructions to go and make some more disciples, does it?'
 
She said most sermons she had heard on this text have been full of enthusiasm.
 
'But that’s not the whole story, or indeed the whole text,' continued Helen.
 
Because what verse 17 actually says is ‘When they saw him, they worshipped him, but some doubted.’
 
We tend to think we’ve dealt with doubting disciples because we talk about Thomas: his scepticism gives way to faith in an encounter with the risen Lord.
 
But here things aren’t so neatly defined or tied up. For we don't know which disciples are doubting, nor do we find the same resolution here as we do in the story of Thomas.
 
'It is just mentioned in passing, without telling us whether the commission from Jesus clears up their doubting. Does it transform them into certainty and confidence? We don’t know,' said Helen.
 
'Does something happen to their doubt in the full stop before the Great Commission is given? It doesn’t look like it.'
 
It is easy to miss, but also perhaps the notion of doubting disciples makes us just a little bit nervous, Helen continued, for they doubt the strength of their relationship with Jesus, or how they should behave in the presence of the supernatural.
 
She explained Greek word here translated as ‘doubt’, is the word used by Jesus as he catches Peter when he begins to sink below the water. This word is about 'uncertainty, wavering, hesitation, indecision... Can I do this?'
 
We might think doubt doesn't go with worship - worship is about giving our all to Jesus. Can you be fully worshipping God if your heart is full of questions?
 
But, asked Helen, what was Holy Week all about? Emotions up then down, then up again. Also, what about those psalmists who praised God through their lamenting and asking and seeking.
 
'Their questions didn’t show a lack of faith, but demonstrated just how important their relationship with God was. They brought their questions with them to their worship. So did Jacob, Job and even Jesus in Gethsemane.
 
Questions, hesitation, indecision - these can be the experience of any of us, said Helen.
 
'I suspect we know something of when our hopes for something grow, and then are whipped away: the emotional up and down and up and down.
 
'The questions can hurt, the struggling is exhausting, the yearning for certainty and clarity aches.
 
'Perhaps the Great Commission isn’t for me. Faith lost its promise, and bruised me deep blue.’
 
‘They worshipped, but some doubted.’ This is the context into which we preach The Great Commission, continued Helen. These are the people, we are the people, who make up our Baptist churches today.
 
They haven’t lost faith. We haven’t given up on hope. But hands that are high and hearts that are abandoned, also carry questions, uncertainty, maybe a wee bit of wavering. They worship, but some doubt.
 
But this Great Commission to the eleven, which we overhear and apply to ourselves, comes to every worshipper, including those who doubt.
 
Mission Is…not just for those who have everything neatly tied up and certain.
Mission Is …not only for those who have no questions.
 
Mission Is…Commissioned in those who worshipped and doubted.
Mission Is…most authentic when we invite others to faith that has space for their questions.
 
‘And remember’, says Jesus, ‘I am with you always, to the end of the age’.
 
That promise is given to all the eleven, said Helen. And that assurance of divine presence is for all of us.
 
'So perhaps it is time to complete the song lyric with which I began,' concluded Helen.
 
'As Martyn Joseph leads us back to the God who promises to be with us always:
 
‘Faith lost its promise, and bruised me deep blue.
Turn me tender again, through a union with you.’
 

Speaking to delegates on Sunday morning, General Secretary Lynn Green said this session reflected something of our 'multi-voiced, multi-generational movement.'