Making disciples of all nations (as long as they act like us)

And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make Presbyterian disciples of all nations, baptizing them and their infant children but only by a properly ordained Presbyterian elder in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you as well as the Westminster Confession. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age but while I am gone the Presbytery will be watching.” (Matthew 28: 18-20 , re-mix)

In a misguided attempt to figure out the very confusing world of intra-Presbyterian family feuding over the “Federal Vision” issue, I came across an unrelated post by one Wes White regarding the proper goal of mission work from a reformed and Presbyterian standpoint, Wedding Our Missiology & Reformed Ecclesiology :

Of course, we want to start the kind of church that will endure. So it is not enough to get Christian converts merely assembled into communities; they need to be discipled and they need faithful shepherds according to God’s design. They need spirit-filled shepherds who know their Bibles, submit to their Bibles and effectively apply God’s Word. Therefore we need to focus our energies on starting reformed and presbyterian churches.

The work of missions should lead to church planting and the ordination of elders in every church started. As the churches are organized and the elders shepherd the churches, then the spread of the Gospel in that nation will continue long after the missionaries are dead. That nation’s churches will themselves begin to send missionaries around the world.

The point bears repeating: Churches need to conduct missionary work in such a way that the end result is to organize reformed and presbyterian churches in the different nations and among the different language groups.

Huh.

So an overarching concern is that reformed and Presbyterian missions be focused on planting reformed and Presbyterian churches. We certainly cannot have missionaries making disciples who turn into Baptists!

On a more serious note, this is not simply an opportunity to poke fun at my Presbyterian brothers, as amusing as that is for me. This seems to be commonplace across denominations.

I fear that we often are seeking to make disciples in our own image, an image that is based on our cultural understanding of what “church” should look like. We go beyond going to the nations, teaching all men about Jesus Christ, calling them to repent and discipling those God regenerates. We seem to be more interested in spreading the Western church culture than we are in preaching the Good News to the lost and seeing the captives set free. Not just that but spreading our own particular flavor of Western Christianity seems to be of paramount importance.

What is the goal of missions? What are we seeking to accomplish? Is it to replicate American Christianity to the far reaches of the world? Or is it to proclaim Christ to the lost and get the Word of God into their hands and hearts? If a Presbyterian mission agency sends missionaries to a far away land and the Spirit moves and people are saved but end up gathering in a congregational church that only baptizes believers, is that a failure? If a Southern Baptist IMB appointed missionary sees great fruit from his labors but the believers decide to form a local church with an Episcopal church government, is that a failure?

When I was in Haiti we drank water that was purified by a reverse osmosis water purification system. I have no idea what that means, is reverse osmosis better than regular osmosis? The group that installed the system was Living Waters for the World and they are associated with the Presbyterian Church (USA), a notably liberal denomination that I have taken shots at before because of their erroneous view of human sexuality and marriage. I stand by my concerns regarding the PC (USA), if not the tone I used in addressing them. Having said that, I applaud the efforts of those in the PC (USA) who are seeking to bring fresh drinking water to Haitian orphans. Do I agree with their theology, their ecclesiology, much of anything about them? Nope. Do I think that the doctrines I take issue with are unimportant? Not at all. Does an orphan drinking water that is not going to give them cholera and kill them care if the denomination that installed their filter believes in Presbyterian church government, infant baptism and marriage between “two persons”? I would think not. A person who dies from contaminated water before hearing the Gospel is still lost.

Sometimes it might be necessary to set aside our prideful doctrinal distinctives in order to care for the least of these. I am not saying that we should be joined with unbelievers. Mission efforts with mormons are obviously not appropriate. Nor am I saying we should gloss over sin or not confront gross error in fellow believers or that holding fast to the truth is unimportant. I am saying that if our purpose in missions is to replicate ourselves in other lands, we are missing the point by a mile. I am happy to work with other believers in the effort to take the message of the Gospel to the lost and to care for widows and orphans in their affliction and provide clean water to people who otherwise would certainly become ill and die from tainted water. We can argue about theology at our local Starbucks a different day. After all, they use filtered water.