What would happen if we stopped trying to force our long-held assumptions into the Great Commission of Christ to the Church?
What would happen if we took up the discipling of every sphere of existence without any of our traditional views of a pulpit placed before a congregation in a building? What if the new public address systems for preaching the gospel shifted from megaphones on the kerb, on YouTube or otherwise?
What if we drilled down on the Greek word “Ethnos” employed in Matthew’s account of the Commission and appropriately broadened it to include companies, industries and professional disciplines rather than just nations, generations and ethnicities?
What if, for example, Christian medical professionals emerged whose ministries focused on the development of nature-based treatments that truly heal rather than merely manage conditions through palliative lifetime pills with long-term adverse effects? What if their pulpit was the research lab where they developed medicines that work with the body’s design rather than against it and their testimony was the data showing better patient outcomes with no side effects?
What if Christians in the Agro-industry began to operate farms where”discipleship” meant stewarding the land according to natural and Christ-centered principles? What if the sermon of these farms was the vibrant soil teeming with life, producing nutrient-dense food that genuinely nourishes? What if their “witness” was the restoration of local ecosystems and the health of communities that eat their produce?
What if there was a Christian banker who shared his bank’s interest gains beyond the rudimentary saving returns – from every fractional reserve-derived loan – with the depositors whose funds enabled him to raise capital in the first place?
What if global thought leaders emerged whose idea of society did not seek to engineer the collapse of God-given free will, the decapitation of family units or the decoupling of faith from science, fairness from economics or good conscience from politics ?
The implications are far-reaching. Whole professions, industries, and disciplines become a mission field for expressing God’s character and intentions for human flourishing. That expression becomes the harbinger for personal salvation and redemption as well as the transformation of every human system and structure according to divine principles.
The result? A transformed society, as Christ preached.