If you have been in the church for any length of time you have heard the admonition to “go out and get them.”  They are all based on Jesus saying, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.”  Preachers through the church age have been pushing us out the door to “GO”.   We must be prepared with good shoes and running shorts to encounter the world and capture them.  The great commission becomes a message of coercion.

We are told to compel, capture, lasso, coerce, pressure, force others to come to church is the basis of their plea. Preachers for centuries have spent most of their time challenging and motivating the flock in the giant going. It reached a point that the action of movement was more important than the making of the commission. “You have to go before you can make,” it has been said.  So, with visions of a great posse of cowboys astride galloping horses, we go.  All without rhyme or reason to the direction, as long as we were moving.

At issue is the going has been the emphasis. Our calling is not a random movement.  The going proclaimed in the words of Jesus is not an order to go.  It is a plan of action for those individuals who are already going.  Going is an internal unction that comes with salvation. The Great Commission is for the followers already empowered.  The mandate is predicated on conversion.  Not great preaching, not great training, not motivational books; if you live within the grace of God you will already be going.

It is with this natural and spontaneously inspired unction we have a plan: make disciples.

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