For example, many of us are familiar with what has traditionally been termed the Pauline approach to missions: Go out and plant churches. It’s derived from the life of Paul, building upon Acts 1:8, Jesus’ command to be witnesses in “Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and to the ends of the earth.”
But it is also closely related to Matthew 28 and Jesus’ command to “Go and make disciples of all nations.” In a sense, Paul personified the Great Commission in his ministry, so we often call such approaches a Pauline approach to missions.
Jesus’ original hearers understood that, in giving the Great Commission, Jesus was making a paradigm shift in regard to missions.
The Old Testament details a clear God-given mission to the Jewish people that they were to go out and bring people up to Jerusalem where they would worship with the one, True God. It was a very centripetal mission—from the edges (the nations) to the center (the Temple in Jerusalem). Jesus is redefining that, explaining that now they need to simply go out and He would go with them there.
They understood that the Great Commission meant more than simply telling their neighbor about Christ, because they went far beyond next door. The Great Commission includes your neighbor, but the context was much more than your neighbor.
Acts 1:8 is literally lived out in the book of Acts. It points out that something has changed—the mission is no longer centripetal, but now it is centrifugal. So, rather than bringing the nations UP to Jerusalem, the people went out FROM Jerusalem.
They went out from Jerusalem to Judea, Samaria and the ends of their earth.
The Great Commission is the backbone of the missions movement and expresses God’s desire to be praised in all kinds of people—what we call ethnolinguistic people groups today.
Thus, the Great Commission is about reaching your neighbor, but in the flow of redemptive history, it lays out a new plan for mission. And, since it involves reaching the nations, it involves missions.
When the church’s focus is solely on international missions, it becomes easy to think of ways to reach remote tribes in Africa and not engage our neighbor down the street.
