Multiply

"All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore 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." (NIV)

Matthew ends his gospel with these words--Jesus' final command while on earth. As David Platt puts it, "It is the central mission that Christ gave to his church before going to heaven." All of Jesus' words are important, but this is it--the last thing he wanted his disciples to hear. So after receiving the Holy Spirit, they set out, traveling the world, sharing the gospel, making disciples of all nations.

It seems pretty clear that carrying the gospel to the world is exactly what Jesus wants us to do today. Church isn't about fancy buildings, cool music, or pot-luck dinners. It is about sharing the gospel with the world.

For so long in my life I was incredibly closed-minded. I find I still struggle with this, but through my own spiritual growth, I've come to see just how wrong I was about a lot of things. I didn't grow up going to church, so whatever ideas I had about right and wrong came primarily from a secular standpoint, and usually of my own making. The idea that sin could be separated from the sinner was a foreign concept at best. Anyone who did anything that I considered wrong was worthy of contempt.

I think this is true of a lot of people. Somewhere along the way, we forget that the people we see committing sin are just people. We forget that we, too, are just as guilty of wrong-doing as they are. We get these ideas...

A perfect example of what I'm talking about took place last summer in Ohio.  Here's what I wrote back then:

There is a strip club in this small town and there is a church there that has a serious problem with the club. The solution they've come up with is to picket in front of the club, taking pictures of the people going in the club and taking pictures of their cars and license plates. Because they believe that stripping is wrong, they want it stopped, and they think that by doing these things, they will deter people from going to this place.  Not surprisingly, faced with such condemnation, the girls at the club have not reacted favorably to the church. In fact, they set up a counter-protest at the church. So in this town you now have church people protesting in front of the strip club and strippers protesting in front of the church.

I read this morning about a ministry based in California that was started by a former stripper. The goal of this ministry is to reach those who are still in this industry and show them the transformative power of Jesus. They heard about the town in Ohio, so this past weekend a few of them trekked from San Diego to Ohio to see these girls. Their first day in the town, they went to the club and explained who they were. The church members protesting outside largely ignored them, but the girls invited them right in. They spent the next few hours sharing Jesus with these girls--not condemning, not judging--just sharing Jesus. They went back the next night with food for the protesters and the strippers. The spent hours with the strippers again, showing God's love and compassion, sharing God's willingness to forgive. Before the night was over, several of the girls had committed their lives to Christ and/or rededicated their lives to Christ.

It is so easy for us to judge.  It is so easy for us to condemn.  But whose message got through?  The ones who saw only the sin or the ones who saw the people obscured behind the sin?