"In sending out his trainees, Jesus set afoot a perpetual world revolution. That revolution continues today, or at least it should."

Last week, we looked at the sobering reality of the Great Dechurching…forty million people walking away from the American church in the last twenty-five years. We diagnosed the problem: (remember the cup factory?) we've been optimizing for something other than what Jesus actually commissioned us to make.

But diagnosis without prescription is just despair. How do we step forward from this point?

The Great Commission (Remember That?)

When we get lost amidst our own plans, Jesus is our north star. Let's get refreshed on what Jesus actually said his plan and mission was:

"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." (Matthew 28:18-20)

Notice what the target is?

Not converts.
Not church attendees.
Not "believers" in some abstract sense.

—> Disciples.

Disciples are the target. People who are apprentices of Jesus. Students learning his way of being human. Folks who don't only apply his sacrifice to their eternal destiny but actually take up their cross to follow him. This looks like caring about what he cares about, talking to the type of people he talked to, carrying the values he carried, proclaiming the same good news of the kingdom that he proclaimed. It means being a student, a learner, of Jesus.

This is our target and commission: that these students of Jesus would then carry on the work to multiply and train up other students of Jesus. 

As Dallas Willard put it: "In sending out his trainees, Jesus set afoot a perpetual world revolution." That revolution continues today, or at least it should, until He returns to make all things new.

It’s amazing that, until His return, Jesus chose to accomplish this redeeming work with and through us. As we carry out Jesus’ Great Commission, we get to be part of the answer to his prayer "your kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven."

But we can only do that if we're actually clear on our target. The church is only being obedient to Jesus’ Great Commission if we are making disciples of Jesus who also take up His commission to make disciples.

In the last twenty-five years, forty million people in America—roughly one in four regular churchgoers—have simply stopped attending church. They didn't all deconstruct. They didn't all have church hurt. Most of them just... drifted away. Got busy. Decided Jesus wasn't asking that much of them anyway.

Here's a thought experiment: Imagine you own a factory where only every fourteenth item off the assembly line is a cup—which is what the factory is supposed to make. Would you say that factory is good at making cups? Of course not.

Now let me ask an uncomfortable question: Are the current systems of the Western church actually good at making disciples of Jesus? Or is a Jesus-follower more of a happy accident that emerges despite our systems rather than because of them?

Because when forty million people walk out the door, that's not a marketing problem. That's a systemic problem.