Dearly beloved,

Thanks for starting this conversation and I hope the outcome will be enriching as others share their opinion on this all important issue revolving around re-defining the mission of the Church. You did a great job in recapturing the history of Christian missions from a EuroAmerican perspective and pointing to the all important need for a redifinition. However, it seems to me that we may not be quite in agreement especially when you think and suggest that the Age of the Great Commission Over.

If we are agreed that Christ sends us as God sent Him, and I think we agree, then a good place to start, as many are already doing may be to recapture the mission of the father. God made or re-made the earth and decided; “Let us make man in our own image, in our own likeness and let them rule…” So He made a full grown man and a full grown woman and gave them the commission to fill and dominate the earth. He starts them off in a garden that has gold under it and commands them to work it.

If, as the Bible suggests and Elison had captured in His work, Christ will physically rule (and those who had been made to look like Him with Him) from a city that has streets of Gold, which needs no light and which gates are never shut because the glory of the Lord gives it light, can you say that we are done? It is Elison’s opinion (and I agree with him) that the difference between the garden and the city is that of natural development – the gold of the garden was mined to tar the streets of the city. Can we be said to have subdued the earth or do we have dominion over God’s creation?

May be I have gone too far! Christian discipleship is to continue “until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ” and the Christ we know, in whom the ’fulness of the godhead bodily’ is found, is a full grown man; don’t you think bro., that God may be expecting us, through discipleship, to return to the creative image in Christ and begin the process of having Dominion? And are we done? Are we even in a position to start?

Let’s look at it from another angle. The great commission demands that we go “into” (Mk 16:15) all the world as opposed to go to. It takes hours today as you captured (if you have the funds) to go to anywhere in the world but it is even more difficult now to cross the last eighteen inches from your position before your respondent “into” him to share the gospel in reciever-comprehensible terms. You shared about a man who is just beginning to understand that missionaries are Christians. Do you really think we are done with his culture?

Finally (for now), The commission requires that we TEACH THEM TO OBEY EVERYTHING … and there is no way we can be done with that until we teach them to obey (observe) the last command which is the “go”. Are the converts you were used to bring to the Lord in Africa and everywhere else observing everything that Christ commanded including the “go”? If they are not, please accept my invitation to return and complete your work. Without looking at the number of unreached peoples (those who cannot hear the gospel without outside influence), I strongly believe that there is yet a great need for the proffessional expertriate missionary. Spirit filled, yes but we are far from done.