Vision 3: Send Equipped Christians to Serve the Church in France and Beyond (Matthew 28.18-20)

This is the final week in our series on our church vision . As we've seen over the past two weeks , we need to be clear about what our purpose as a church is and why.

Just as a reminder, here is the vision of our church . Eglise Connexion exists to:

• Embody the gospel for Parisians;

• Train disciples who make disciples;

• Send equipped Christians to serve the Church of Jesus Christ .

We've seen what it means to embody the gospel in the city; we've seen what it means to train disciples who make disciples. This week, we'll look at the final point of our vision: sending empowered Christians to serve the church of Jesus Christ .

And the good news is that to look at this third point , we'll be in a single text, as I prefer to do . It's a text that most of you are probably already familiar with ; we talk about it a lot in the Church , but I'd like to take it little by little. We'll start in the text and then we'll see together just a few ways in which we can accomplish this mission within our Church .

The Mission of the Church (Matthew 28:18-20)

The text we have read comes at the very end of the Gospel of Matthew. Jesus fulfilled his ministry , he died and rose again . Then he appeared to the disciples, and now at the end of the Gospel , he entrusts them with a mission, which they will then pass on to the churches they will establish in the years to come . This remains the mission of all churches today, Christ's mandate to us.

18Jesus came to them and said, “ All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me . 19Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you. And I am with you always, to the very end of the age. ”

There are essentially four commands in these three verses. They are all necessary ; each command depends on the others. And when we consider them , we should see them as assured — as not just commands, but as promises . The work is not yet finished , but the work is assured , because Christ has all authority ( v. 18), and he is with us in carrying out this mission (v. 20). No obstacle can stand in his way; nothing will prevent God's plan from being accomplished .

But now it has to be done .

So, what are the commandments that, together, constitute the mission that Christ entrusts to us?

The first is very simple: it tells us to GO (v. 19) . From all​​​ everywhere, in all nations .

Even though this command to go is very , very clear — I don't see how Christ could have said it any more clearly than that — it 's still very surprising how often we forget it , and expect people to come to us.

The mission of the Church is a mission that is necessarily centrifugal. When you put something in a centrifuge , what happens ? Everything is pushed towards the end , towards the outside .

And this is the mission of the Church . This is the direction in which the Church is called to go — not toward Jerusalem , where the disciples are at the time of this text, but outward , to all nations. We are called to go to people , not simply to bring them in . towards us.

Of course , this doesn't mean we shouldn't pay attention to what's going on here—quite the contrary. We've been talking about this for the past two weeks : the more we pay attention to what's going on inside the church , the better equipped we 'll be to carry out our mission outside . The Bible is full of commands about how we should behave and conduct ourselves . when we come together ; and as we saw two weeks ago, one of the most powerful tools we have to show people the gospel is the life of the church , which lives the gospel together.

But very often , churches are so focused on what's happening here that we forget to go out . We forget that there's a whole world outside , to which we're supposed to go . Where do we go ? We go outside, into the city, obviously — but even further afield, into all the nations. We'll come back to that later .

So we have to go, and once we 've gone, we 're called to make disciples.

Last Sunday we discussed where and how disciples of Christ are formed — they are formed in the local church — by Christians learning together to carry out the work of ministry .

Much has been said about Ephesians 4 in the past ; we won't reread it now , but in this passage Paul says that building up the church and doing the work of the ministry is not my job as a pastor ; it's our job as Christians . It 's not me as a pastor who builds up the members of the church ; it 's all of us , as members of the church , who have that responsibility .

This is how we grow in maturity . This is how we become more like Christ . We draw closer to one another and help one another understand the Bible, see how to live the Bible. We lovingly correct one another when we sin , and we humbly repent of that sin and help one another overcome it . We observe one another, encourage one another , and exhort one another — all parts of the body, working together to build up the whole body . We are not spiritual orphans, but brothers and sisters , members of the same family , following the same Master .

But how do we get people ready to enter this family? How do we get people ready to start this process? How do you get people to change — from hostility toward God to love for him and his family?

Occasionally, God does this in the twinkling of an eye , independent of any outside intervention : that 's what he did for the apostle Paul . But most of the time, that 's not how he does it . Most of the time, we are brought to faith in Christ because someone has preached Christ to us . As Paul says in Romans 10: 13For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved . 14But how then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? Or how will they believe in him of whom they have not heard? Or how will they hear of him unless someone preaches him ?

At some point , people who don't know Christ will need to hear the gospel — the good news of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection — because the gospel is the primary way God's Spirit works in our hearts to transform us . The gospel is the way he gives us faith, makes us aware of our sin and our need for a Savior, and compels us to put our faith in Christ and desire to walk with him.

People need to hear the gospel . And they need to see the gospel lived . ( So you see, I think there 's a natural overlap between last Sunday's point and today 's . )

At some point , it is not enough to stay among ourselves: the gospel must go out , it must be shared , because it is through the gospel that God draws people to him, and changes their hearts , and makes them disciples of Christ through the witness and life of the church , which lives the gospel before their eyes .

So these first two commandments are considered to be commandments almost exclusively centered on " evangelism " : that is to say : we are called to go out and share the gospel with others .

And even if that is the purpose of these first two commandments to go and make disciples, the problem is that many Christians stop there . They share the gospel ... without necessarily paying attention to what happens afterward . Listening to the gospel and praying a prayer is very good ... but what about the next day ? And the day after that ? And the day after that ? ?

There's a reason Jesus did n't just say, " Go and make disciples . " There's no point in going out and making disciples if those new disciples have no way of learning how to live as disciples. I was talking this week with someone who shared his burden for the church , for people who seem to be living a half-hearted life for Christ : all the right things are said , but there's no fire, there 's no life behind it . He's right to feel that burden. The Bible is clear that if we don't cultivate our faith, if our faith isn't " kindled , " we risk learning one day that it does n't really exist.

And as we have seen the last two Sundays, the context of our faith, in which and through which our faith grows, is the Church . This is why Jesus continues .

Which brings us to the third commandment . We must go . We must make disciples. And then we must baptize them. in the name of the Father , and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

This may seem like a somewhat incidental addition, but it is anything but. A disciple of Christ cannot grow without other disciples of Christ; and baptism is the visible sign that we now belong to this community of disciples.

The fact that Jesus gives this command here , in the midst of his great evangelistic mission , should shatter many of the preconceived ideas we have about what baptism is .

Many people see baptism a bit like the Baccalaureate. You go to school for twelve years, you learn a lot, you grow as a human being and as a student , and at the end of high school , you get your Baccalaureate, which proves that you have been well educated , and that you are ready to face your higher studies .

For many people, baptism is seen as the entrance exam to higher - level Christianity —the thing you do only after you've passed a certain number of spiritual milestones. They see baptism as a rite for mature Christians , to show the world that now they've " arrived " —they're no longer baby Christians , now they 're adults .

There are two huge problems with this way of thinking . The first is that no one seems to agree on what these "spiritual milestones " should be . Many churches couldn't even tell you what they require for someone to be baptized . It often comes down to a feeling. subjective opinion that church leaders have about the believer before them .

The second problem is much simpler: according to the Bible, baptism does not exist to be a validation of spiritual maturity . Baptism is the visible sign that shows that a person has been brought into the family of God by faith in Christ. And the Bible tells us that this integration into the family of God happens immediately : as soon as we repent of our sins and place our faith in Christ, we are members of his body, we are adopted by God and become brothers and sisters in the faith.

This is why , for example, in the book of Acts, the profession of faith of a new believer and the baptism of this new believer took place almost simultaneously . The gospel is preached , people believe, they repent of their sins , and they are baptized right away .

I said all this to say that this command of Jesus to go and make disciples of all nations is meaningless if these new disciples are not then brought into the local church , in which they learn to grow in their faith with the help of other Christians . Baptism is the first step in this process.

The second step we have already touched on a little . We must go and make disciples, baptize them to confirm their entry into the Church , and then, finally, we are called to teach them to observe all that Christ has taught us .

That was last week's message , so I won't repeat it all. But to put it simply, the church is supposed to spread the gospel by their words and by their lives together, not just so people go to heaven, but to equip the church to teach new believers to live as Christ commands us to live — and that applies not just to the words of Jesus found in the Gospels , but to everything taught to us by the apostles who followed him , for they were inspired by the same Spirit of Jesus Christ . The purpose of evangelism is not just to save people , but to teach them how to live like God . tells us to live .

We talk a lot about sharing the gospel , and it needs to be done. But I'm sure some of you have had this experience : You heard the gospel preached thousands of times when you were a child . But at some point, you met someone who was actually living in obedience to the commandments of Christ. And when you saw that person 's life — their joy in God and the choices they were making and the effect those choices had on their own life and the lives of others — when you saw that, Finally, You have understood the gospel . We have finally seen the effect that the gospel has on us, because we have seen what life is like when we obey the God who saved us , who gave us these commandments because he loves us.

This is our call:

Go [therefore] and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you.

Sending qualified Christians​​

That 's the foundation. That 's the calling of every church . And there are three ways in which these initiatives of going and doing and baptizing and teaching take place .

The first has a more local scope : Christians share the gospel with those around them , and the people around them encounter Christ . This is by far the most common way , because it is the calling of all Christians throughout history .

But sometimes we have to go a little further. The second way the church works to fulfill Christ's mission is when it sends people trained in specialized areas to do specialized work elsewhere .

The classic example is the sending of missionaries and mission teams . We have a lot of missionaries in our church , and that's what they do. They've been trained , often in specific, targeted areas , and they 're sent to another city or country to do something specific .

It has been said that today will be Mission Sunday: at the end of this service, and even more so this afternoon , we will talk together about what the mission of the church looks like outside the borders of our country. We have a mission trip planned for this fall to Togo, and there will be others in the future . Our prayer is that these discussions and trips will light a fire in members of the church , and that they will be sent out to proclaim Christ where he is not yet known . If you have not heard this before , I hope you can stay with us this afternoon to discover this.

Another example of this sending would be church planters and church planting teams . This was the case for me — after receiving general theological training , I spent two years with Loanne being trained to plant churches in France , and then we were sent to plant this church . This is the case for the church planting currently taking place in the 10th , at Oberkampf Church ; Romu and Liz joined Connexion a few years ago with the goal of putting together a team to go and plant a local church on the other side of the Place de la République . Philip Moore and his family launched the Mountain Church in the 5th last Sunday . God is doing His work in particular cities through planted churches that will proclaim the gospel for His glory.

Another example for us at Connexion is our interns. This year we have three interns: Eva, Dahlia, and Silvain. The goal of these internships is to help Christians interested in ministry find their way so that , God willing , they can serve at Connexion or elsewhere . Marjolaine completed her internship with Connexion last year before she was “ sent ” to work with women at the church on Rue de Sèvres .

In short: this is the first way in which this sending occurs — the church sends people trained to do a specific job in a specific place .

But there is still one way to accomplish Christ's mission, which is a little particular to us and linked to our context .

Last week we talked about being disciples who make disciples of Christ. We talked about the biblical reasons why this should happen, and at least a little bit about how it should happen. And there's a very strong sense of this need, because the reality is that when Christians want to learn what it means to be disciples of Christ, all too often the church sends them somewhere else , outside of the church , to be trained .

The church , more often than not, outsources the training needs of the church , rather than taking them on itself .

The reality of our church is that there is a good core of people who stay here for the long term , but there are also easily 40-50% of people who will be with us for two or three years, before leaving for entirely legitimate reasons .

Rather than seeing this turnover as a constraint, we want to see it as an opportunity . We want to use the time we have with you to train you to be pillars in the church where you will find yourself tomorrow. That 's why we have everything we have outside of worship. That 's why we train community group leaders to prepare their Bible studies . That 's why we have Entre Elles (the women's meeting) and the men's group. That 's why we have the monthly Sunday Training sessions , where we train more deeply to understand the teaching of the whole Bible, and the application of that teaching. And that 's why we now have a very robust internship program. The purpose of all this is so that when people leave Connexion after their time with us, we can send them out ready to serve the church they arrive at. I can't tell you what a gift it is for a pastor to receive into the church people who have been well - trained in the past , and who come ready and able to serve faithfully — people you know you can count on, to love others, to live in obedience to Christ , and to teach others to do the same .

This is what we want to do with every Christian here . And the reason is simple: because all power in heaven and on earth has been given to Christ . Our neighborhoods, our city, our country, the whole world, have long lived in active rebellion against our King Jesus . If he were a dictator, a cruel ruler, this rebellion would make sense. But our King is not a cruel ruler.

The prophet Isaiah praises the Lord in Isaiah 64 : 3, saying: 

Never has anyone heard or learned of such a thing, never has any eye seen another god than you act in this way for the good of those who rely on him.

All our efforts to proclaim the gospel , to embody the gospel , to train one another in the gospel , to send out Christians to serve the gospel … All these efforts are not simply so that people can one day go to heaven. These efforts are driven by our love for the people around us, so that they may know this God who loves his people , that they may know God our Father , Jesus Christ our Brother , and the Spirit our Comforter.

And because all power has been given to Christ, and because he is always with us, we can do it. Our efforts are not in vain. We can accomplish the mission he has entrusted to us , for our joy and for his glory.