When Jesus commissioned his disciples, he did not send them into churches. Jesus sent them out into the cities and towns, after His example.
Picture this. You’re in the greatest Bible school that has ever existed. Jesus Christ Himself is the head of the Bible school, and He is the teacher of all the subjects. When it comes time for your internship/apprenticeship, you might expect that He would set you up in some cushy position in a prominent church as an associate pastor or maybe a youth minister. Nope. Jesus sent them *out *— into the cities and towns, after His example, and then He followed them and went to those same cities and towns with His ministry (Matthew 10:1–16; Mark 3:13–15; 6:7–13; Luke 9:1–6; 10:1–17).
The importance of Jesus sending His disciples out becomes even clearer when we remember that most of the significant events in Jesus’ ministry happened outside of traditional church meetings.
The results of this approach were clearly evident:
“The seventy returned with joy, saying, Lord, even the demons are subject to us in Your name!”—Luke 10:17 (AMP)
For decades, our main evangelistic strategy in America has been to invite people to come to church. The unspoken rationale has been that, if we can just get people to venture inside the church, then they will receive the ministry that they need. The church will “fix them.”
But doing things Jesus’ way, we get marvelous results when we simply follow Jesus’ model and go out to minister — taking ministry to the people. In my experience, I’ve been blessed with opportunities to minister alongside wonderful believers who went into festivals and conventions (and almost any other gathering of people) to share God’s love with others. In those settings, we would usually set up a booth or plant ourselves in a particular location and minister to people who came our way.
When we follow Jesus’ model for ministry outside of church meetings, we often have so many people lined up for ministry that we have difficulty meeting the demand! We tend to lose count of all of the salvations, healings, and deliverances that take place in these outreach settings, but we’ve got books full of wonderful, memorable testimonies!
Instead of simply inviting people to church, Jesus commands us to take “church” to them (Matthew 28:19–20).
In a meeting at Sojourn Church in Dallas, Texas, I heard John Paul Jackson say, “I was raised in church. I’ve been going to church all my life, but I saw who God was when I went to the streets.” This is from a man who, at that time, had been in full-time ministry for twenty-eight years!
