Article 2017-08 -Training & Sending
Chapter 35: Training & Sending
Introduction
Jesus called and trained disciples right from His ministry’s beginning. He trained them in Christian character first, then He showed them ministry as He practiced it. After that He sent them out, two by two, on short-term outreaches, first twelve, then seventy-two.
Scripture reference
Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field” (Matt. 9:37,38)
He called his twelve disciples to him and gave them authority to drive out evil spirits and to heal every disease and sickness. These are the names of the twelve apostles … These twelve Jesus sent out …(Matt. 10:1,2,5)
The story
One day Jesus explained to His disciples how He had trained them, and what He would do next. Apart from teaching them they used to attend the synagogue together. He sat with them in the fields and taught them during long walks. He gave them rules for discipleship-living in the sermon on the mount.
After that they walked through parts of Galilee, where He showed them all He did, apart from teaching and preaching. They saw Him heal people, cast out demons, and raise someone from the dead. At first they just listened, then they watched Him minister, and now the time had come that they would go out, two by two, to minister to people.
Jesus explained how big the need is. Even if He walked the earth for another decade He would not have reached all villages of the country. There was such a need, such openness for what God had to give them, that more mouths were needed to tell people about Him and serve them in their needs. The harvest for the Kingdom is ripe but there were far too few people to collect it. That was Jesus’ biggest problem and what He asked the help of His disciples for. He urged them to pray to the Lord of the harvest, to kick out laborers into His harvest, otherwise it would be spoilt and rot on the field.
The disciples wanted to know why Jesus had used the words ‘kick out’ (that’s what the Greek word means). He explained that people will not go out from self to help Him with His work, and that they need to be kicked out of their comfortable homes. They had to learn again what is truly important in life, more so than their own, temporary businesses. This would not change from self. Hence His urgent request for prayer. Jesus wanted them to see this for themselves, so He sent them out to preach that God’s Kingdom had come near. They were also to heal the sick, cast out demons and raise the dead.
Comment
Knowing that, in the limits of His humanity, He would never be able to finish the ministry the Father had given Him, He called and trained disciples right from the beginning of His ministry, to continue after He would have left. How did He do that?
First He trained them in Christian character. We could call it Jesus’ “Sermon-on-the-mount-Bible-school”. Then He showed them how He ministered to people, in teaching and performing miracles. Only after that did He send them out on their first short-term outreach. First He sent the Twelve in teams of two; later He sent out seventy-two disciples. They received, so to speak ‘theoretical’ or ‘class-room’ teaching, followed by a ‘practicum’ of looking at what their Master did. Then came their first missionary briefing, followed by an outreach phase and a debriefing, where the disciples exclaimed ‘Lord, even the demons submit to us!’ Jesus appreciated their enthusiasm, but also put it into the right perspective: ‘Rather rejoice in the fact that your names are written in My Father’s book!’ So He put the relationship with God above the work for God.
Scripture reference
These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: “Do not go among the Gentiles or enter any town of the Samaritans. Go rather to the lost sheep of Israel. As you go, preach this message: ‘The kingdom of heaven is near.’ Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons … (Matt. 10:5-8)
“However, do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven” (Luke 10:20)
Comment, continued
Jesus sent His disciples, now suddenly called ‘apostles’ (‘sent ones’), to the ‘lost sheep of the house of Israel’ only. This shows His principle that we must learn ministry skills in our own culture and language before we can perform them cross-culturally. In other words: what we cannot do at home, we can certainly not do abroad. Whoever has learned to play the piano well at home may succeed in a concert hall. But who will perform in a concert hall, who cannot play his instrument at home?
The prayer for laborers because the harvest is white, is a very neglected missionary responsibility. Missionaries evangelize, plant churches, do many other things and yes, they pray. But most fail to combine this recruitment-prayer with training new workers from among their converts. Many countries in the Developing World see cross-cultural missions as the white man’s job. Why? Because the latter were convinced for too long that only they could do the job well. So they failed to train their converts, who only saw white missionaries, and never even thought they could do missions themselves. The great commission was never worded like ‘All ye whites, go into the world and make disciples among the non-whites’. Yet, this is how church practice has been for centuries, and now is the time to change that and engage church members of all colors in world missions.
A frequent answer, when asked what the biggest problem in world missions is, Christians from developing countries answer ‘money’. Had that been true, the Lord would have told us to ‘Pray to the Lord of the Bank to send more money’. But He didn’t say that because He didn’t consider money the biggest problem. He told us to pray for laborers. The real problem lies in unwilling human hearts!
Discussion & dialogue
- Discuss why training in Christian character has to precede performing evangelistic ministry
- Discuss the advantages of a ministerial ‘practicum phase’ both in the sense of the senior performing while the juniors watch, and in the sense of short-term mono-cultural evangelism as exercise for long-term cross-cultural missions
- What happens when the work for the Lord becomes more important than the relationship with Him?
- How does theme 7 feature in the outreach-assignment Jesus gives His disciples? Links to related content
