a beautiful mess

while searching for the right opportunity with a local church community, i come across a lot of strange things being requested or listed as priorities – it just makes me stop and be like, “Really!?”

one advertisement reads,

“Win-Build-Send Matt.28:18-20″

yet the text reads,

“ThenJesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 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. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

how do we go from such organic, radical, mysterious language to dry, disconnected, and vapid words not even found in the text?

win, build, send. okay – we got 1 out of the, not three, but four verbs. what gives?

not to mention this alarming context: out of the four verbs included, only one is an imperative command: to make disciples (of all nations).

it is not to go and be evangelists. it is not to baptize and become a public fast-food-lookalike. it is not even to teach people to obey everything yeshua has commanded.

it is to make-disciples. that’s our command from yeshua in this context.

we go as the wounded healers, the ones with a sordid past, yet we go with honesty and humility before us: to bring the good news, that YHWH rescues, redeems, and restores; that there is one true living god, and he will be for you whatever you are needing in your most desperate moments – he is “I AM.”

i think this somehow lets in more light than the narrow openings found in the “win-build-send” hole.

“for everything exposed by the light becomes a light” and “we will overcome by the blood of the lamb and the word of our testimony” because “he makes all things new” and his purpose is to “make one new humanity.”

so what are your thoughts? where do you see this played out?

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