Unlike most ministers, I was ordained on 10 October 1970 as a missionary rather than a pastor. At the heart of my ordination vows was the Great Commission: ‘God and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded’ (Matthew 28.19,20).
After two years serving as mission in the so-called Democratic Public of Congo, I returned to England and within a matters of months I was called to be the minister of Altrincham Baptist Church. Altrincham lies to the southwest of Manchester and is the last built-up area before Mancunians encounter the countryside. There I introduced to the church a new mission statement for the church, combining both the Matthean and Johannine forms of the Great Commission: ‘Our mission is to go Christ’s way and make disciples’.
- To ‘go Jesus way’ is to model our mission on the mission of Jesus. Inevitably this means that our mission must be holistic, reflecting God’s love and concern for every aspect of their lives.
- To ‘make disciples’ means that our mission includes winning people to Christ and to his church. However, evangelism goes far beyond calling men and women to decide for Christ. Discipleship is in view. As Jesus himself made clear (e.g. Mark 8.34) discipleship is costly and involves an ongoing commitment to follow Jesus. Inevitably this means going against the stream of world opinion – it means making Jesus Lord of every area of our lives.
When I became the minister of Altrincham Baptist Church the church was in decline with less that 70 members and with only some five young people. In a way I could never have dreamt of, the church began to grow almost immediately. Baptisms were frequent – sometimes with as many as twelve candidates at a time. Very soon we had one hundred teenagers at the evening service, all of them on fire for God. When I left thirteen years later, the church had over 300 members and had quadrupled in size.
I then went to spend six years as principal of Spurgeon’s College in London. There along with the basic pattern of training full-time students to be pastors and a part-time church-based students to be pastors, I introduced a mission-based course to help ministers to be evangelists within the context of local churches and in this way to enable to fulfil the Great Commission of Matthew 28.19, 20).
Then in March 1993 I became the senior minister of Central Baptist Church, Chelmsford, the county town (now a city) of Essex. As in Altrincham, so in Chelmsford, it was a declining church. At one point there were only 200 members, but by the time I left in March 2014 there were four hundred church members and another six hundred who regarded Central Baptist Church as their church. As in Altrincham, so in my first year at Chelmsford I encouraged the church to adopt a simple mission statement: ‘our mission is to go Christ’s way and make disciples’. Winning people to Jesus Christ and his church is vital; in that respect I identified fully with the Apostle Paul when he declared ‘Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel’ (1 Corinthians 9.16); as also when he wrote: ‘We are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreaty you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God’ (2 Corinthians 5.20).
The good news is that although most churches are declining, many are growing significantly as a result of their desire to ‘make disciples’ for Jesus Christ.