It doesn't say evangelise the nations in the sense of simply make them hear the Gospel. Jesus quite specifically says, "Go and disciple the nations, baptising them and teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you."
So the task is not just one of evangelisation but it is one of discipling, and discipling is not a task that is ever finished. Britain is evangelised but it certainly isn't discipled. And every generation needs the fresh call to discipling and obedience and to live like Jesus lived. So I see the great commission not so much as a kind of ticking clock, that we can eventually say 'oh we are nearly there, the job's nearly finished, let's get the task finished'.
There are an awful lot of people who talk like that. 'What would it take to finish the job?' is some of the language we hear. Whoever said it was a job we were just going to get finished? It's not so much a ticking clock as a self-replicating mandate to go and make disciples and the making of disciples is like painting the Forth Bridge - it goes on and on and on because we are constantly needing to be disciplers and to be discipling.
A friend said at the Lausanne Theology working group, we need to remember that the New Testament was written by disciples for disciples about making disciples. And we have rather twisted it as if we only think in terms of how many people have had the opportunity to literally hear the name Jesus and respond in some sense to the Gospel.
So, I want to affirm the importance of the unreached need and that huge task. I don't want to in any sense minimise it or to say that we shouldn't be concerned about it because of course we should, but I don't want it to turn into the timetable for the second coming because I don't think that is the way it was intended to be in the New Testament. We are still called to live as Christians and to be faithful and to be disciples as well as making disciples.
Having said all that, there is no doubt that we live in a most remarkable age in the sense of the multinational nature of the people of God. There are more Christians now in the south, or the east, Africa, Asia, all over the West. These are wonderful days, the church is truly global and we should rejoice in God keeping His promise to Abraham because that is what He promised He was going to do, to bless all nations through his people and He is and He has and will continue to do so right up until people of every nation, and language, and tribe and tongue gather before the Lord.
