Focus 2020 – The Great Commission: Perspectives from LeadersSample

A True Kingdom Burden 

Bible passage: 

And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come. (Matthew 24:14) 

Devotional: 

When I came to faith from atheism as a philosophy student at the University of Michigan in my twenties, I immediately became deeply burdened for souls. My heart burned within me to see people saved, mostly from hell and God’s holy wrath. As I grew as a Christian, my burden for souls grew but I so wanted people to know God’s love, not only to be warned of His wrath and the consequences of their sin.   

Later in my journey with Christ, my burden grew to include world systems and structures, peoples and their ethnic cultures. I became burdened for the conversion of what I believe the Bible refers to as ‘kingdoms,’ self-perpetuating and interconnected engines that create, sustain, and perpetuate culture. At each phase of my burden, there was a small sense of guilt, feeling as if I’d left the simpler, purer burden I had first received from Christ.  

After 30 years of evangelism, preaching, and deep Scripture engagement, however, I’m convinced that our Great Commission activity is to be fueled by all three of these burdens. Matthew 24:14 says, “This good news of the kingdom will be proclaimed in all the world as a testimony to all nations. And then the end will come.” I believe this verse will actually be fulfilled, not by the Church, but by God’s holy angel, flying in mid-air, as John sees in Revelation 14:6–7, “Then I saw another angel flying high overhead, having the eternal gospel to announce to the inhabitants of the earth—to every nation, tribe, language, and people. He spoke with a loud voice: ‘Fear God and give Him glory, because the hour of His judgment has come. Worship the Maker of heaven and earth, the sea and springs of water.’” In both the Great Commission prophecy and the Great Commission fulfillment, the burden of God includes all three of these emphases: salvation from God’s eschatological wrath, salvation to worship and intimacy with God, and the conversion of the kingdoms of this world, the sociocultural realities that comprise ethnicities, tribal realities, languages, and peoples.   

Our task in the Great Commission is to proclaim and accompany that proclamation with acts of power and justice in light of this reality. Stanley Hauerwas rightly says of the Church that we are an anomaly, a harbinger out of space and time that manifests the actualization of the future, certain reign of Jesus Christ. The proclamation of the gospel and the practices of the Kingdom collectively embody these burdens; they are how we perpetuate the outposts of the eschaton that we call the Church.   

Quote: “The Church is an anomaly, a harbinger out of space and time that manifests the actualization of the future, certain reign of Jesus Christ.” —Stanley Hauerwas 

Question: How, then, are you and/or your organization expressing these burdens in your missional practices? 

R. York Moore 

Executive Director, Catalytic Partnerships, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship