Crew Notes from Captain Roy
 For
many years I have cherished the words of Matthew 28:18-20 which is the
Great Commission. It represents our standing orders from our Lord until He
returns. It is our greatest responsibility as the Church--to go and make
disciples of all nations. Elsewhere in Scripture it is indicated that the
end will not come until this mandate has been fully completed. I believe
that when a person, group, or church begins accepting the Great Commission
as their responsibility, it shows that they have matured to an important
stage in their walk with Christ. I truly believe that Going is one of the
last big steps we take in our Christian training.
Recently, however, The Lord has been revealing to us at Maritime
Ministries another even greater stage of development that He desires
Christians to achieve. Once again, it is outlined in the words of the
Great Commission. The first part of the command says that we are to Go and
make disciples. The second half says that we are to teach them to obey all
the things that I (Jesus) have commanded you. We are not fully obeying the
Great Commission until we have taught our mission field to become the
missionaries! This may seem elementary, but stop and consider what we as
western missionaries often do. We pour our lives into our mission field.
We give our last ounce of energy to win a certain people group or nation
to Christ (and well we should), but do we often seek to make those
believers understand that they too are able to be missionaries to some
other people group or nation? Is it possible that in some ways we have
prevented third- world nations from graduating to spiritual maturity by
only seeing them as "our" mission field?
I am sure that there is even a deeper level of spiritual maturity for
those who have Gone into missions, and that is to teach our mission field
to Go! It is difficult because it means that, like John the Baptist, we
must decrease that they may increase. It means that we intentionally
recede into the background as our spiritual "children" take
center stage. We in a sense turn the spotlight on them, and in doing so,
they mature to that important stage in their walk with Christ. Ironically,
as we do this, we also achieve an even deeper understanding of His nature
as we lay down our lives for our friends. The key to achieving this new
level of maturity is to let go of being an important spiritual
"leader" and choose rather to humble ourselves and take on the
role of a servant to the people we are going to. In fact, this is exactly
the example that Jesus gave us. "Your attitude should be the same as
that of Christ Jesus: who, being in very nature God...made himself
nothing, taking on the very nature of a servant..." Philipians 2:5-7
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