| Making DisciplesA Passion for Making Disciples
By Dr. Roger K.
Swanson
Director of Operation Evangelization
 Several
years ago at Williams College, playwright Neil Simon gave the
commencement address in which he described what best expressed the
theme of his own life. He concluded that it was best described by one
word: passion. He said: “Passion is the force that has governed and
motivated all my energies. Without it life seems to me rather bleak
and dismal.”
Neil Simon, of course, is in the arts, but the
simple truth pertains to all fields of human endeavor, including
religion and particularly the church’s mission of making disciples
of Jesus Christ. The one essential ingredient of that mission is
passion. Passion for what Christ means to you and how your life was
going before you met him. Passion for your friends and your family
that they be included in the fellowship of Christ’s disciples.
Passion for Christ himself. In short, to be in love with God!
It is such passion that makes disciples and
grows churches. It is more important than any evangelism strategy or
initiative. Passion is like a magnet; it attracts others. Passion
invites, welcomes and follows up on persons. Passion, also, in the
presence of need, becomes compassion.
I have always felt that to be a Christian
evangelist is to be passionate about Jesus and his kingdom. Whatever a
person is passionate about he or she evangelizes, whether
chrysanthemums, or music, or automobiles.
Jesus was passionate about the coming of God’s
kingdom. “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit
for the kingdom of God,” he said (Mark 9:62). For Jesus there was no
greater claim upon a person’s life than the will of God.
Of all the skills and gifts God gives to the
church for the work of mission and ministry, none is as indispensable
as a sense of passion or urgency. And passion is not taught but caught
as we personally pursue those means of grace that fuel our passion:
prayer and fasting, Scripture, the holy Eucharist, worship, and
Christian conferencing. Our continuing spiritual formation in Christ,
in other words, is central to our effectiveness as evangelists of
Christ.
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