Dimensions of Outreach
We are born reaching out. Our first outreaching is to get what we need—food and attention. All through life we reach for what we need: human contact, assurance, understanding. When we feel our deepest need, we reach out for God. And when we touch Him, He tells us to reach out to others.
Because Christ's last command to the church was to reach out to all nations, usually we think of outreach as ministry outside the church. It includes activities designed to contact the unchurched, evangelism, and missionary work. Jesus said, "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" (Matthew 28:19,20*).
At the end of His earthly ministry, as at the beginning, Jesus was a teacher with a small class, talking, eating, asking and answering questions, and giving instructions and assignments. What we call the Great Commission could be called the Great Assignment: Reach out.
I see in Jesus' words two dimensions of outreach: to the ends of the earth, and to the end of the age. In teaching about our outreach responsibilities, we think of Jerusalem figuratively. We talk about reaching our own Jerusalem nearby. Then we go to Judea and Samaria (the inner city, for example, and the traditional home missions ministries) and then to foreign missions—the ends of the earth. The words, however, were meant literally, and the command was literally followed.
Here is where I get excited about the second dimension of outreach. It is the perpetuation of gospel truth through time—reaching into the future, to the end of the age—that there might be faith on earth when Jesus comes again.
We know from church history how the apostles went forth in obedience to the Lord. We mark Paul's missionary journeys on the map and read how the church developed and spread. It is reasonable to suppose that for each of us there is a specific human line, over land and water (to "all nations") and through the generations ("to the end of the age"). We are Christians today because others obeyed the Great Assignment.
I am connected to a living line of witness that reaches back to Christ. Have you ever thought about who might be in your line? Godly parents, a friend, or a minister may have connected you with the good news. I heard it first from a Sunday school teacher. Who was she? How did she happen to be in a small white church beside a wide river in Middle America? I like to think it was like this:
Jesus told His disciples to teach in Jerusalem. One who heard His voice taught someone, who taught someone, who went out into Judea teaching. And someone who learned of Christ in Judea taught someone in Samaria, who taught someone, who carried the message out until in a living line of witness it went into Italy, Germany, and England. Then some disciple boarded a ship for what they called the New World and taught someone who built a log church in New England, and taught someone who started out west in a covered wagon, and taught someone who built a sod church in the prairie, and taught someone, until finally, way out here, in "the uttermost part of the earth" from Jerusalem, in a time and society far removed, a Sunday school teacher told me.
I believe this dimension of outreach, what we could call continuity, or perpetuation, is the major biblical subject most neglected in evangelical Christianity. Today we know that outreach means more than traditional missions programs. Every day we hear of new methods geared to changing social values and conditions. We need vigorous evangelism and immediate attention to different and diversified populations and problems. The danger is that we will overlook the dimension of outreach that depends almost entirely on Christian education.
God's Plan for Life Is That It Reproduce Itself.
"God said, 'Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land, that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.' And it was so. The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed in it according to their kinds, and trees bearing fruit with seed according to their kinds. Then He created living creatures and told them, 'Be fruitful and increase in number. I give you every tree that has fruit with seed in it'" (see Genesis 1:11,12,28,29).
Note how God repeated, with each mention of a living thing, the power within it to perpetuate itself. The first wish of God and the first commandment is: Reproduce. Perpetuate. Bring forth new life.
God's plan for perpetuation of spiritual life is based on the same principles as His plan for the perpetuation of nature and human life. The seed of spiritual life is the Word. The method of perpetuation is learning and teaching.
Learning and Teaching Are the Essential Processes by Which God's Work on Earth Is Accomplished.
God's first relationship with Adam and Eve was a teacher/student relationship. He gave them instructions. He asked them to interact with Him and respond to Him, as in the naming of animals. The principle of perpetuation, reaching out to the future, is evident from the beginning. The consummation of God's plan would depend on choosing a people and establishing a genealogy through which the Word would come. The Word came in the form of spoken and written revelation that requires what we now call natural human processes—teaching and learning.
God directed His people in clear terms that their first responsibility was to keep His Word and His power alive among their own children through the generations, and then extend the teaching to others. God ordained teaching priests to give instructions and guidance in worship and godly living. Jesus made disciples, spent most of His earthly life teaching them, commissioned them to teach, and sent the Holy Spirit to guide them into greater understanding and more powerful teaching. Paul was an exemplary teacher. He reminded Timothy of his foundational learning; then taught him to teach others who would be able to teach others.
Today we put tremendous emphasis on religious activity compatible with the electronic media and modern tastes for the instant and the forceful. The explosive, miraculous, charismatic qualities, super churches, and super personalities have a powerful influence over the way Christian ministry is perceived. Sometimes this makes people think Sunday school is obsolete. But the truth is that Sunday School as an agency raised up by God to fulfill the function He initiated—to remind us of the intergenerational nature of His plan.
Lasting revival and continuous harvest require mature Christians whose hope transcends immediate experience. Remembering how we fit into a living line of witnesses, let us preserve and perpetuate the truth. Let us plant, water, and gently nourish attitudes and expectations in the young, keeping the line of witness unbroken and making branches that can reach to the ends of the earth and the end of the age.
