Shortly after this discussion, I was talking to a pastor who asserted that every member of his pastoral team needs to be committed to the idea that everything in the ministry of the church revolves around outreach: the purpose of worship is evangelism; the purpose of discipleship is to create more evangelists; everything in the church is calculated to maximize evangelistic impact. The primary focus of the church, in other words, is on those who are outside; pastors are there to win unbelievers to Christ and to coach church members to become effective evangelists.
This mindset leads pastors to complain about those in the church who want to be discipled, or who want to be fed from God’s Word. “Why can’t these people learn to feed themselves?” “Why can’t they see the importance of giving up what they want, so that seekers can be comfortable in the church?” “Don’t they see that I need to be focused on winning the lost, not catering to the desires of those who are already saved?” (I've often heard these, and similar, complaints). Again, the assumption is that pastors need to be freed from the obligation of nurturing believers so that they can be more “missional.” There are so many outside the church that spending time discipling believers is sheer extravagance.
There are two serious problems with this: the willingness to use worship as a tool for evangelism, and the unwillingness to seriously follow through on the work of the Great Commission, which is to "make disciples." Those I've spoken with in this movement are unapologetic about using worship as an evangelistic tool; it works, they say; lives are being changed and the church is growing. Whether this is true, and whether it means anything, is open to discussion, but the primary concern is using the worship of God as an end for something else. In my contact with pastors of this mindset I've noticed a remarkable absense of emphasis on God and His glory. This just isn't the sort of thing that gets talked about. One hears that God cares about numberical growth, because that means more people are being saved, but one looks in vain for any discussion about whether God is being honored and glorified by the methods that are being used.
Martin Thornton, in his Pastoral Theology, has strong words about making evangelism the primary focus of the Church: “Pelagianism [an inadequate understanding of the Fall combined with an excessive confidence in human effort] arises as soon as evangelism, in the sense of recruitment, is regarded as the main work of either priesthood or corporate parish. This again is an extremely delicate position, since sanctification in and through corporate worship is the most spiritually contagious thing there is. It is in fact the method of true evangelism laid down by the pattern of our Lord’s incarnate life and followed by his Church ever since, but it follows only when a life of adoration is accepted as the one ultimate aim. In pastoral thought a very delicate twist is sufficient to reduce the most sublime common worship to a justifying work. We face a subtle kind of multitudinist-exclusion compromise when it is suggested that worship – even all we mean by Prayer – is only of value as the ascetical means of evangelism. Our motive for adoring worship of God in Christ becomes recruitment to his Church; which, like so many Pelagian ramifications, sounds wonderfully well so long as we do not listen too hard. As St. Bernard said long ago, the only motive for the adoration of God is God himself” (Pastoral Theology: A Reorientation (London: SPCK, 1961), pp. 72-73). Six years ago I attended a service that was intended to celebrate the great things God was doing. I had to tell the bishop afterward that the celebration was not about God at all; it was about what great people we are to give God the privilege of working among us.
On the second problem, the refusal to engage in serious discipleship in the interest of winning more converts leads pastors to invest the majority of their time in people who demonstrate the least interest and commitment. It’s interesting to notice that Satan’s tactic is just the opposite. He focuses his most violent attacks where they’re likely to do the most damage: on those in positions of leadership and influence and on those who are making significant progress toward spiritual maturity. No doubt he is also interested in destroying the souls of those outside the church and those on the fringes, but he’s able to accomplish far more toward this end by attacking those closer to the center. He recognizes that undermining the spiritual growth of those who are most committed will have a ripple effect. Neglecting the work of discipleship in the interest of winning more converts shows a remarkable shortsightedness, a failure to invest effort where it will have the most long-term effect (not to mention disobedience to the command of Christ to make disciples and teach them "everything that I command you").
Thornton goes on to note that Jesus focused most of His time, not on the masses (who were clearly needy) but on a bare handful of His followers. “Indeed the more we study the Gospels the more clearly we shall recognize that Christ did not cast His Gospel loose upon the world – the world which was so incapable of appreciating it; that would have been indeed to cast His pearls before swine; but He directed all His efforts to making a home for it, and that by organizing a band of men called ‘out of the world’ and consecrated into a holy unity, who were destined to draw others in time after them out of all ages and nations (see Jn. xvii). On this ‘little flock’ He fixed all His hopes. He prayed not for the world, but for those whom God had given Him out of the world” (Bishop Gore, quoted by Thornton, pp. 36-37).
What was Jesus thinking? Why was He investing so much time in those thick-headed, ungrateful disciples, when He could have been winning the whole world? Clearly His priorities are different from ours, and North American pragmatic thinking doesn't give us an adequate framework for understanding His mission. Here's Thornton one more time: “On the whole it is evident that His aim is not present success or numbers of adherents, but the preparation of a solid nucleus of men and women so absolutely committed to the service of the kingdom that they have cast all self regard and all prudence to the winds; and from these He asks an absolute faith, and a complete detachment – the attention of their whole minds and the loyalty of their whole hearts, without any regard for their traditional prejudices or their personal or family interests” (pp. 37-38). He was seeking to nurture those closest to Him, to help them become people so enamored with Him that they would leave everything behind to follow Him and carry on the work of making disciples to the ends of the earth.
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