Christianity is Not a Ponzi Scheme

Nor minsters making ministers; missionaries making missionaries; evangelists making evangelists. Nor is it mobilizing or sending. Christianity is not about signing up, sending out, and making more. It’s about receiving the Kingdom of God. We don’t “make Christians” to go out and “make other Christians.” We baptize sinners and make them disciples, that they may take up their crosses and be raised with Christ our Lord.

What about Matthew 28:19-20? What about 1 Peter 3:15?

I don’t feel like debating the exegesis of these passages. Let us grant 1 Peter 3. Even if we should grant Matt. 28, one questions remains: what about the rest of Scripture?

Let us give up and Evangelical reading of all Scripture which sees these two passages as the hermenuetical lens through which everything else is understood. Let us remember that salvation is not a one-time event, but that daily we are to die and rise, as Luther said, so that at the end we may speak as St. Sisoes did at the time of his death, “Indeed, I know not if I have clutched at the very beginning of repentance.”