Developing a Great Commission Vision

II want to share a principle with you that most don’t consider when appropriating God’s wisdom. I call it “developing a Great Commission vision.” The foundational verse for this principle is found in Proverbs. 

“The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life, and he who wins souls is wise,” (Proverbs 11:30).  

As we make ourselves available to the Holy Spirit to win people to Jesus and make disciples, the innovation and creativity of the Spirit is made available to us. In the Hebrew language, the word “wins” in this verse of Proverbs means to accept, bring, buy, take from, take out, receive, marry, and carry away. This word describes the entire process of leading people to Jesus. As soul winners, we are literally taking people out of darkness and bringing them into the light.

I have discovered if you will pray over your family, your neighbors, and your community, God will give you specific wisdom strategies to reach them. It doesn’t matter where you live—this principle will work in any village, town, city, state, or country. No place or person is too hard for the power of the Gospel to reach, for the wisdom of God is greater than any deceptive plan of the enemy. And His influence in someone’s life is far more powerful than any negative or evil influence. 

God will make wise kingdom strategies available to us to reach the individuals, families, or communities He has placed on our hearts. I first discovered this principle for accessing God’s wisdom soon after I was filled with the Spirit and moved to a Spirit-filled church. I began seeking God’s plan and purpose for my life and met a man in our church who led a small group of believers that met every Friday evening to witness to people on the streets of downtown Houston. I started going to witness with this group because I wanted to make a difference in my community. Typically three to five of us joined the group each Friday night, and we always saw people saved, healed, or recommit their lives to Christ. As I remember it, the lowest number of people we saw who accepted the Lord was four, and the highest was twenty-five in one night of ministry. 

I had never done anything like that before and found it to be a powerful ministry. I also found that God’s promise of increased wisdom for those who win souls to be true. One evening I walked up to a young man and attempted to hand him a Gospel tract, but before I could speak with him, he jumped on one of the Houston city buses. I was a little disappointed and stopped to pray, “Lord, I wish I had been able to share the Gospel with that young man.” 

Immediately, the Lord answered me, “That bus can share the Gospel with him and multitudes of others.”

The moment the Lord spoke, I looked inside the windows of the bus that was pulling away and saw advertising banners all along its inside and top. I noticed one of the banners had a “Free! Take one” card people could pull down and take with them. In that moment God’s wisdom came to me. I knew how we could reach more people with the Gospel and how we could reach them every day, not just on Friday evenings. 

I met with our team and shared my idea with them. They were all excited, but our team leader wanted me to take the initiative on setting this idea in motion since God had given it to me. I prayed over it and made an appointment with the Houston Metro City bus company. I asked what it would cost to put a banner with pull-down tracts in their buses. I believe the man I spoke with was a Christian because I found great favor with him. He said that since we were a nonprofit ministry, he would give us a banner with pull down tracts in 360 Houston buses at no cost for six months! Overwhelmed at God’s goodness, I thanked the man and left. 

The next time I met with our team, we decided on a design for the banners. Our design asked the question, “Which way are you headed?” Then we wrote our own tracts, which included a “We Care” phone line, and met with a local printer. They gave us an amazing deal, and for six months, our banners shared the Gospel with travelers in 360 Houston buses! We saw hundreds of people come to the Lord through that God-idea; as a result, several new people became involved with our Friday night ministry. 

This was my first experience accessing God’s wisdom to reach people in new ways. But it came to me because I was already involved in winning souls. The point is, if we want to appropriate this dimension of God’s wisdom, we must be available and involved with reaching, touching, and ministering to people.  

When we moved to Decatur, Texas to pastor our second church, God put it in my heart to reach out to some of the pastors in the area for the purpose of fellowship, prayer, and reaching our community. I had read the words of Jesus in John 17 and been convinced of the effectiveness of unity among spiritual leaders. I believe unity in a community causes people in that community to come to the Lord in greater numbers. 

“I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word; that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me. … I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me,” (John 17:20-21, 23).

This powerful passage of Scripture quotes Jesus as saying the unity of the church, especially among church leaders, increases the world’s ability to believe. And it also causes them to believe the Father sent Jesus and to know and understand His love for them. I had never heard anyone teach this in all my years as a Christian. But it is Jesus speaking—in red letters. It is truth. And it is a prayer, I believe, Jesus will see answered. Once I saw and understood this truth, I determined to be part of that answer in whatever community I served. 

I met with a couple pastors in our community for coffee and fellowship, and I shared this truth with them. It blessed and motivated them to continue to meet and invite other pastors and leaders to join us. We met at least twice per month for fellowship and prayer, and over time, our group increased. We only had two conditions for those who wanted to be part of this pastors’ group in our community. The first was a commitment to our faith in the virgin birth; in the sinless life, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus; and that His shed blood was the only means for our salvation. The second condition was that each of us commit not to debate with one another over the gifts of the Spirit, tongues, healing, eschatology (end times), or our authority as a believers. This commitment went further than that because we determined not to argue over any doctrine. Each of us could share what we believed about a topic, but it was never to come to the point of debate or argument. This worked very well and brought many pastors together from different denominations in our county, including Baptists, Methodists, Church of Christ, Episcopalians, Catholics, Assembly of God, Pentecostals, and independent churches. Many close relationships were developed from this group, and many are still some of my best friends to this day. 

Together, we discovered we didn’t have as many differences as we had previously thought. And we found that each of us was dealing with similar challenges and problems. As we continued to meet, God started giving us wisdom about ways we could reach the community together. We started an annual, week-long revival that moved host churches every evening. Each host church pastor asked a pastor from another church in our group to speak the night the revival moved to their church. We saw the body of Christ come together during these meetings; many people were healed, and other lasting kingdom relationships were established in our community. 

Our pastors’ group also provided leadership for community- wide prayer meetings. One of those was held at the civic center in Decatur right after 9/11. Over 500 people attended. We held another prayer meeting right after our local elections. We invited all the local elected officials to this meeting and assigned a different pastor to pray for each one. Twenty-one of our civic leaders attended this prayer meeting as well as hundreds of people from different churches in our community. Two of the officials who attended this prayer meeting, our county sheriff and district attorney, had previously been openly critical of the other through the local media. They happened to sit next to each other at this meeting, and afterward we noticed how their animosity toward one another subsided. Their relationship became much more amiable, and the community benefited from it. 

As the elders and I sought the Lord about how to reach our community with the Gospel in other ways, God gave us a vision to target children and youth. We hired a children’s pastor and youth pastor to do that, and they helped us develop strategies to reach and disciple the children and youth in our area.

One year, my children’s pastor came to me with an idea I was not initially excited about. He said God spoke to him about doing a community-wide Easter egg hunt. My first response was, “We don’t believe in the Easter Bunny and don’t want to endorse something that promotes an imaginary character.” But then he explained to me the vision God had given him, and I warmed up to this idea. 

He said people in the world would come to a free Easter egg hunt just for something fun to do with their family. He planned to print out flyers and distribute them to ten elementary schools in our county and ask local merchants for donations of bicycles, video games, gift cards, skateboards, inline skates, and toys as prizes for those who came.

He said they would not say anything about an Easter Bunny, but rather present the Gospel to those who came. He knew of a ministry with a huge trailer and sound system we could borrow and planned to turn the trailer into a stage displaying some of the larger prizes. They would share the true meaning of Easter—the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus—and give an invitation for salvation to the audience before the Easter egg hunt started.

I appreciated that he came to me with such a clear, complete plan and prayed over it before sharing it with our elders. We had money in our outreach budget to fund the event, so we all agreed to allow the children’s pastor and his team to do this. Our youth pastor and his team, along with several others in our church body, volunteered to help. In the first year, 2,500 people—both children and their parents—came to our Easter egg hunt, and over 400 people responded to the invitation for salvation! Praise God!

If you remember, our primary target for outreach was to reach the children and youth in our community. The Lord impressed upon me that we needed to invest in young people when they could do nothing for us and eventually they would return that investment by committing to the Lord and His kingdom. We invested hundreds of thousands of dollars into our young people and the youth in our community over the twenty-four years I served as pastor in that church in Decatur. We spent $600,000 on a building designed, decorated, and furnished just for them. We hired a youth pastor to lead and disciple our youth. We sent hundreds of young people on short-term mission trips, and hosted Christian music concerts, special youth speakers, and youth retreats.

Several years after I left this church, while we were eating lunch at our favorite Italian restaurant, a young man in his thirties came and stood over our table. With tears in his eyes, he said, “Pastor Greg, you may not remember me, but I was a part of your youth group when I was a teenager. My parents didn’t attend your church, but I came often.” He went on to say, “I learned the Word of God while I was there and gave my life to Jesus. Now three of my friends who also came to that youth group and I are each in full-time ministry. We are serving the Lord because you invested in us when we couldn’t do anything for you. I just wanted to say thank you for your investment in us and the next generation.” 

My wife and I were overwhelmed.

The Word of God says, “Wisdom is justified by all her children” (Luke 7:35). You can see the fruit of wisdom in the next generation of your disciples. Wisdom builds generationally. It bears much fruit and makes many disciples. Brothers and sisters, let me encourage and challenge you: If your vision can be fulfilled in your lifetime, it is too small! Where are your disciples? Are you intentionally investing in someone else’s life? Are you training someone else to do what you are doing? Are you allowing them to get involved with the joy and fulfillment of your life, ministry, or career? These are not questions intended to bring you guilt or condemnation. Rather, they are intended to challenge you to use the gifts, talents, skill, experience, and influence you have to invest in others. Use the gifts and influence God has given you to win souls and make disciples. 

As you do, you will discover another dimension of God’s wisdom made available to you. 

Adapted from Greg Mohr’s Book, Walking in Wisdom