by
Tafadzwa Mudambanuki |
Genesis 1:1-2:4
2 Corinthians 13:11-13
Matthew 28:16-20 The meaning of the Great Commission rang true to my life last summer when I got a job at United Methodist Communications. Just after my seminary graduation in May 2000, I bought myself a Timex watch. I stashed it in one of my briefcases for safe keeping for two years. When I took it out for a special occasion, it had stopped. I shook it to make it work but my efforts were in vain. I felt a keen sense of disappointment. I kept winding the stem until I noticed the second hand begin to move. There was nothing wrong with the watch. I had neglected winding it. It is that way with our spiritual life. When we fail to obey God's commandments, we become stagnant. We are like watches God created, and we should not allow ourselves to run down by shirking our responsibilities. We should obey the commandment 'Go!' There is no wiggle room in God's commandments. Our God is a mission God. With several graduate degrees, I thought the corporate world in America was beckoning for my talents. The doors I thought God would open had suddenly become curtains of steel. Was my experience with Christ all these years a mistaken dream? God had prepared me for a towering role as a global communicator for The United Methodist Church as part of the team that would shepherd the Central Conference Communication Initiative for building momentum and providing communication capabilities for the central conferences. It's like the Great Commission is in modern dress ? using media and technology to preach the gospel in 'highways and hedges.' God may be trying to lead us into a place of greater service and usefulness for him. But we stubbornly ignore God's call and gallop off in different directions. We should be God's microphones fulfilling the Great Commission by proclaiming the message and cultivating the believer. We are converted by grace, compelled by love, commanded by Christ and controlled by the Holy Spirit to be witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria. (Acts 1:8). Making disciples of all nations is doing ministry to distinct groups of people. Unbelief is rampant in the world today and we are summoned men and women to 'come over to Macedonia' and help them. The Great Commission reminds us that there is a place for those who hold mirrors by which the world may see itself. Our global culture may turn to wash itself clean if it is reminded of what it has become through its consuming interest in pleasure and violence. If we want to find Christ we should go and join him by scattering ourselves to all the four corners of the world. Christ is in the trenches doing his father's work. Should we stay in the Upper Room admiring our resumes and our impressive biographies? Shouldn't we go to the mission field and join him? Tafadzwa Mudambanuki, from Zimbabwe, is the Communications Resourcing Team Training Developer with the General Commission on Communications. He will speak at the 221th session of the Baltimore-Washington Conference later this month. | 
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