Crush Adidas and the Mission of God

It was clear to Phil what his company had to do. Not easy, but also not complicated. Similarly, our mission as Christians may not be easy, but it also isn't complicated.

I want to tell you the story of a young man named Phil. Phil had recently graduated from a well-regarded business school, and he had an unusual dream. He wanted to sell shoes. So after striking a deal with an overseas manufacturer of inexpensive but high-quality shoes, he started loading boxes of shoes into the trunk and back seat of his green Plymouth Valiant. The Blue Ribbon Sports company was born. Phil would drive all over the state to track meets and gatherings of sports teams to try to persuade athletes and athletic directors to buy his shoes. As he worked to build his business, he knew that his mission was clear. It seemed audacious to the point of arrogance, but that didn’t matter. Phil knew what his company had to do. He could summarize the mission of Blue Ribbon Sports in two words. Soon the company would change its name, but not its mission.

“Crush Adidas,” was the mission of Blue Ribbon Sports, now known to us as Nike, Inc.

It was clear to Phil Knight, the founder of Nike, what his company had to do. It wasn’t easy, but it also wasn’t confusing. Similarly, our mission as Christians and a church may not be easy, but it isn’t complicated or confusing. Jesus gave us our mission, and like Phil Knight and Nike, we can use just two words: “make disciples.” To add some meat to the bones of this simple mission, we can explore the purpose, power, practice, and place of our mission.

1. The Purpose of Our Mission: The Glory of God and the Good of His People

Our mission starts with God’s mission. God’s mission starts in his purpose to create the world and then to redeem the world when the world rebelled against him. As we pursue our mission, we follow God on his mission to redeem the world by sending Jesus to seek and save the lost (Luke 19:10). In God’s mission and our mission God gets glory and his people get good. Wonderfully, God’s glory and our good are not in competition. In fact, God receives glory as he displays his goodness. Psalm 119:68 says that God is good and he does good, so goodness for us is glory for him. We see this clearly in salvation: “He predestined us to be adopted as sons through Jesus Christ for himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace that he lavished on us in the Beloved One” (Eph. 1:5-6). As we make disciples, we partner with God in the purpose that he established before he created the world. We proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ, the gospel of life, and sinful people turn from their sins and trust in Jesus Christ, becoming forgiven children of God. This is an act of glorious grace, and as this happens, the glorious grace of God is praised. God gets his glory and we get his gracious, glorious goodness.

2. The Power of Our Mission: The Holy Spirit

Our mission is utterly audacious. We believe that dead people need to be raised to new, spiritual life. This intimidates us, because we can’t bring dead things to life. Have you ever had that somewhat panicked feeling of needing a phone charger and not being able to find one? Or needing to charge your electric car or fill your gas tank, yet not having a charging station or gas station nearby? We can’t bring dead phones or dead cars back to life, how much less can we bring dead people back to life? We can’t, on our own. We need access to a power source. And God has provided us not just with a power source, but with himself: “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come on you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8).

The Holy Spirit is God himself, personally present in us and with us, giving us the power we need for the impossible mission of helping people find life like God intended. We need to stay in step with the Spirit, personally relate to the Spirit. He is a person, not an instrument. He is the way Jesus keeps his promise at the end of the Great Commission, “I will be with you always.” The Spirit brings Jesus to us, as a person. So we walk with him. Talk with him. Listen to him.

3. The Practice of Our Mission: What We Say and What We Do

Our mission is a mission of both words and actions, speaking and doing. A pattern of tell and show. When Jesus sent out the disciples on a training mission, he told them to tell and to show the kingdom of God: “As you go, proclaim, ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those with leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you received, freely give” (Matthew 10:7–8).

We must tell people about life like God intended and show people about life like God intended. There are many ways to do this, but let me share just a few.

What We Say (“Proclaim”)

Prayer. The first conversation with a friend who doesn’t know Jesus should not be with that friend, but with the Lord. Who are the folks God has put around you to pray for their salvation? Talk to God about them. Ask the Lord to open their heart, to open your mouth with boldness, and to open up opportunities for conversations.

Conversation. Most likely, you’re going to have ongoing conversations with folks about Jesus and about the gospel. You’re going to drop hints and leave a trail of breadcrumbs. Sometimes, you’re going to share a twenty second testimony. Maybe the conversation leads to you handing that person an invite card and bringing them to church with you. Maybe it leads to you praying for them. Maybe it leads to another conversation, that leads to another conversation, that leads to another one, until that person becomes a Christian.

Proclamation. We must proclaim the truth of the gospel. We tell people the old and true tale: God made the world perfect, but people turned away from him. Every person who has ever lived has rejected God and God’s ways. This brought disastrous consequences, as people moved from life to death and separation from God. But God wanted to fix this problem, so God the Father sent God the Son to become a human being named Jesus. Jesus lived a perfect life, never doing anything God said not to do and always doing everything God said to do. Even though he was the only person who ever lived who didn’t deserve to die for his sin, because the Bible says that the payment for sin is death, he willingly gave his life. He was killed in an ancient method of execution called crucifixion. He died for sins. He was buried. But on the third day, he rose from the dead. We say: Jesus did all of that so that if you will turn away from your sin and trust in him, God will forgive you of your sin and give you eternal life. We call: turn from your sin and trust Christ today.

What We Do (“Heal”)

Our saying works together with our showing that we aren’t just all talk. Look again at what Jesus says to the disciples on their training mission: proclaim and heal. Talk and act. Tell and show. This is why our church has done stuff like a book drive and working to partner with foster care opportunities. Throughout the Bible, God tells us he has a special call to care for four groups of vulnerable people, what some have called “the quartet of the vulnerable”: the poor, the widow, the orphan, and the immigrant. We want to follow God’s heart: “Pure and undefiled religion before God the Father is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself unstained from the world” (James 1:27).

4. The Place of Our Mission: From Our Networks to the Nations

Your Networks: Where You Love, Live, Work, and Play

Everyone has a web of relationships, but we often fail to think about intentionally reaching the people right in front of us. Evangelism is often seen as adding ‘something additional’ to your life, but a missional lifestyle involves identifying the people in your web of relationships and seeking to engage them in a variety of ways. (Tony Merida)

Often, our best mission opportunities present themselves outside the formal ministries of the church. Think through your networks, where you love (your family), where you live (your neighbors and those you encounter in the rhythms of life at the store, etc), where you work, and where you play. On Friday, I went to our church’s bank branch, and I struck up a conversation with the tellers, saying something about it being almost the weekend. The conversation turned to what they were doing this weekend and I said, “Sunday is the best day of the week,” and gave them an invite card to church. I’ve been going into that branch and seeing those tellers once a week for weeks, and I got the opportunity to invite them to church. Who are the faces that you see over and over? The folks that God keeps putting in your pathway? Begin to see yourself as called to those networks and relationships.

The Nations

Our church is connected to the Florida Baptist Convention and the Southern Baptist Convention, through which we get to partner with the SEND Network to plant churches in North America and the International Mission Board to send missionaries all over the world. We also are starting to do things like short team international trips, like a trip to the Dominican Republic next month. There are a zillion ways to engage global mission in word and action. Pick one and join God in what he’s already doing.

Phil’s audacious mission was clear— “crush Adidas;” and so is ours—“make disciples.” So I guess we should conclude with this: just do it.