Matthew 28:19-20, which we Christian like to call the Great Commission, begins thus “Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them . . . ” The words teach and baptize lead many Christians to believe that the Great Commission is fulfilled by making and baptizing converts. And we often wonder why these converts seem to be on such shaky ground and often struggle to trust and work with each other.

I worked in the Quality Assurance field for a number of years. One of the first things I learned was that the Quality Assurance department does not produce quality products, that must be the responsibility of the individual production worker. The title of this post is a quote from Joseph Juran, one of the most highly respected teachers in the QA field. The tools he meant were not physical tools like wrenches or hammers, but tools such as information and understanding. A principle stressed by both Joseph Juran and W. Edwards Deming is that 80-90% of quality problems are the responsibility of management.

The Engineering manager of the company where I worked had a poster on his wall that said:

Tell me – I’ll forget
Show me – I’ll remember
Work with me – I’ll understand

This applies in so many areas of life. How easy it is for parents to think that if they tell a child what to do they have a right to be upset when the job isn’t done as they expected. But did that parent take time to work with the child until he understood?

Going back to the Great Commission, verse 19 has the word teach and verse 20 has teaching, but these are two different words in the original Greek text. The meaning is clearer if verse 19 is translated as “Go, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them . . . ” A disciple is someone who is taught, has become rooted and grounded in the faith through the influence of the Holy Spirit, and is able to see the same Spirit at work in his fellow believers, giving him confidence in them and enabling him to work together with them in unity.

Our goal is to see the establishment of a group of Spirit-filled disciples in a new location, who are able to both live as Christians and to show the way to others. Achieving this will entail coming down from our pedestal as teachers and working with people as one of them. The gospel does not change from age to age, or culture to culture. Yet we must trust that these new disciples will see better than we how to apply the gospel, in its full integrity, in a new place and a new culture that we do not fully understand. After all, this is how the gospel that was born in Judea has made its way to us.