Churches Must Cooperate to Fulfill Christ's Great Commission, GPN Founder Says
by Allie Martin
March 14, 2006
(AgapePress) - - Planting five million churches and winning one billion people to Christ over the next decade -- those are the primary goals of a new initiative by the Global Pastors Network (GPN). Recently, the GPN held a conference in Florida where more than 2,000 pastors from around the world were challenged to step up efforts to fulfill the Great Commission. Christ commanded his followers to "go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you ..." (Matthew 28:16-20), and GPN co-founder James Davis believes that goal is well within the Church's reach.
At the conference in Florida, Davis told congregational leaders that the church in America definitely has the resources to spread the gospel throughout the Earth. However, he noted, for that to happen the nation's churches must first have a vision and a burden for those in other nations.
"We need to rededicate our lives to Christ as well as to His commission," Davis urged, "lest we be guilty of high treason in Heaven's court before Heaven's King. And that's what my challenge would be to every Christian and every church leader here in North America."
But a key component of that challenge, the GPN president pointed out, is cooperation. "The vision is that we can network, train, and focus together so that we can finish the Great Commission," he observed. "By sharing key resources that others have with others who don't have it, we can strategically work in the areas where the Church is not so we can get closer to the finish line with the Great Commission."
Davis insists that it is possible for pastors from different evangelical denominations to work in partnership without losing their distinctiveness and "without losing one's identity in Christ." The ministry leader co-founded the Global Pastors Network with Campus Crusade for Christ founder, Dr. Bill Bright, who passed away in 2003.
Davis says GPN is one of many legacies left by Dr. Bright. His Four Spiritual Laws booklet -- a four-point outline on how to establish a personal relationship with Jesus -- has been printed in some 200 languages and is considered to be the most widely-disseminated religious booklet in history, with more than 2.5 billion booklets distributed to date.
Also, the JESUS film, a feature-length documentary on the life of Christ that Bright and Campus Crusade for Christ introduced in 1979, has now been seen by more than 5.1 billion people in 234 countries. The JESUS film has become the most widely viewed and most widely translated film in history.
Allie Martin, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
