Making disciples

Posted on January 3, 2008
Filed Under Faith, Mae Sot |

This past Sunday, I had the privilege of delivering the message during the Christmas celebration for the Karen service at the Foursquare church in Maepa, just outside of Mae Sot.

Being a special occasion, the church was packed with both church members and their friends and neighbours. Many of whom were non-Christians, and were I’m sure attracted by the presents the church had bought for everyone attending the service.

The Karen celebrate Christmas throughout the month of December, and since this was the last Sunday in the month, it was also the end of the festive season. With this in mind, and because the following day was New Year’s Eve, I deliberately made my message forward looking. I wanted to encourage people to strengthen their walk with Christ in the New Year and to remind people we are not meant to only celebrate God’s awesome gift of His son at Christmas, but all year round. And, for the non-Christians, I included an evangelistic message, stressing that Jesus had been born for all people and that all are free to come to Him.

The end result was I spoke for much longer than the 15 minutes I had been asked to fill up. But, I guess I did something right, because when I asked if anyone wanted to invite Jesus into their lives, around a dozen people raised their hands.

However, later when I asked His Htoo, who is helping to pastor the Karen service if they had commitment cards to collect the contact details of those people who had just been saved, she shook her head and explained they didn’t do that.

Talking to some other church members later, I was told it was normal for people to turn up and raise their hand on cue, whenever a missionary visited the church.

They believe it’s a way of being polite to their visitors. And, I’m sure there are those churches that get a kick out of counting converts. For them, seeing hands go up is a reason to rejoice, as it means they can go home and brag about how many people they saved. Heck, I’ve even fallen into that trap myself in the past!

Remember, we don’t save anybody. As a missionary, I’m just the messenger. It is Christ, through love and Grace, who makes salvation possible.

Our role is clear. In the Great Commission [Matthew 28:16], Jesus says:

“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.”

Notice, He said make disciples, not converts. A disciple is like that seed that falls on good soil [Matthew 13:3] and will yield a crop 30, 60, 100 times what was sown. Converts on the other hand, are like the seed that falls on the path, where it is eaten by the birds or like those that fall on rocky ground, that spring up without growing roots. It seems that many of us fail to make the distinction.

Unfortunately, this is typical of so many churches that I visit.

This is where the Alpha course comes in. Imagine, if when somebody raises their hand during an altar call, not only does someone collect their contact details, but invites then to an Alpha Invitational dinner.

We’re hoping to being introducing Alpha and start training volunteers to run the course in February. Please pray for us. We’ve got enough converts already and need to start making more disciples!