If Southern Baptists want to see a “Great Commission Resurgence,” Henry Blackaby believes they need to focus on the relationship between disciples and the living Lord Jesus, not launch a new emphasis on evangelism.
“I have felt for a long time that Southern Baptists have focused on evangelism and missed discipleship,” Blackaby said May 11.
“The most important part of the Great Commission is ‘teach them to practice everything I have commanded you.’ That’s discipleship and that’s the heart of the Great Commission. If we want to have a resurgence in the Great Commission, there’s got to be a refocusing on the priorities of Christ for discipleship.”
Blackaby, a longtime pastor, college president and coauthor of the “Experiencing God” series of Bible study materials, said declining baptism and membership statistics in the Southern Baptist Convention reflect not so much a lack of passion for Christ’s command to make disciples as a lack of relationship with Jesus Christ.
“When you hear the Southern Baptist leadership being concerned about baptisms and all that, those are a byproduct of discipleship,” Blackaby said. “When you lead a person … into a relationship where Christ is Lord, everything else follows. You don’t have to convince them they need to spend time in God’s Word or prayer or in the fellowship or on mission. That’s a spontaneous response to a relationship to the living Lord.”
Issuing a call for a resurgence of commitment to the Great Commission triggers the wrong response in Christians who are focused on religious activity, rather than a relationship with Christ, Blackaby added.
“Southern Baptists are program-oriented. We are missing the relationship,” Blackaby said. “When you make a statement like [that], the first thing most pastors look for is, ‘What program’s going to come down the pike to help me do that?’ You don’t need a program to help you do that. You just need the relationship to the living Lord. The reason we are not effective is because we have moved from the relationship to a program activity.”
What would most help Southern Baptists experience renewed passion for the Great Commission is solid biblical teaching about Christ as head of the church, Blackaby contended.
“The reaching of the lost is a spontaneous response to the lordship of Christ. If you bypass the lordship of Christ and you get God’s people in a mode to take the gospel to a lost world … you’re going to have a tough time,” he said. “I have talked to many, many people in the churches. They have never had one message on the nature of the church. Not one. So they are practicing religious activity and looking for a program, but the headship of Christ, what that means and what it will look like and how we respond when Christ exercises His headship, that’s just not being taught.
“I would say the greatest single need is to return to the absolute lordship of Jesus Christ and all of the implications that come from that,” Blackaby said. “If a church is in a spiritual mess, the only thing that can get them out of that is a good, solid biblical exposition that leads them into the deepest and most profound relationship with the living Lord.” (BP)
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