Go make disciples
For the next ten years, the UPCSA will focus, inter alia, on the programme, "Going for Growth: Sowing, Growing, Reaping", which is aligned with the strategic goal of the UPCSA being a missional church. Those who succeed in ventures of sowing, growing, and reaping, will sacrifice and leave their comfort zones and go to places and people they are not comfortable with, as in the case of Abraham. They deny themselves and put forward the interest of the gospel -- the good news of salvation.
Our Lord, Jesus Christ, entrusted his disciples with an arduous task of making disciples, which is central to the ideals of the reign of God. God wants God's people back to the discipline of serving and worshiping God and of serving and respecting humanity. Jesus declared his mission in Luke 19:10 "For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost" and in Joh 10:10, "The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life and have it to the full." Jesus moved from position to position to accomplish that great task -- from divine nature to human nature, from heaven to earth to dwell among us, and while on earth, from place to place making disciples, performing miracles and teaching.
Jesus commissioned his disciples to GO to all nations. That task has been extended to the church. The UPCSA should be a GOING church for us to sow, grow and reap. Going to the nations involves an exposure to people that do not live, speak, and do like us. It takes us to people of other races, nationalities, ethnicity, cultures, ideologies, sexual orientations, and spiritualties. It takes us to different socio-economic environments of the rich, the poor, and the marginalised.
The UPCSA, being a reconciled community of Christians, is called to model the way. Our diversity is a challenge to us to reflect the gospel of reconciliation internally and externally. We must GO to other brothers and sisters, other congregations, other Presbyteries, and other countries and make disciples. Our congregations should reach out to others and make disciples. Some of our congregations have not, in the recent years, witnessed services with the celebration of the sacrament of baptism and the confirmation of new members, as they do not get new and young members joining the church. We sell church building because we are losing members. The churches that buy our buildings manage to get members. We can do things differently. Let us break the tents and GO. The Lord is with us until the end of the world.
| Then Jesus came to them and said, "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." (Matthew28:18-20) |
Lungile Mpetsheni is the General Secretary of the UPCSA. He is married to Thandiswa.
