A professor of mine talked with my class the other day about the Great Commission. He asked, "are we to fulfill the Great Commission?" After discussion, his answer was that we must be careful of language that makes the Great Commission central to the church's mission beacuse when we do use it that way it often leads to pragmatism - we do whatever it takes to reach people/grow/evangelize, etc. He said that we ought to embrace a "benign neglect" of the Great Commission. Instead we ought to focus on living holy/loving lives and move into our world in ways that witness to Christ and catalyze questioning on the part of folks we interact in the world.

Benign neglect. I buy it. But, I think we need to wrestle with what it means to be intenional in being witnesses. I could use this ratoinale to just ignore folks who don't know Christ and live my nice little merry life without any concern that they know Christ. Well anyway - that's the question out there now: How do we focus on being compelling witnesses in an intetional manner?

Pax