Missions: Go Deep or Go Wide? (Part 1)

The Bible shows that depth and breadth of ministry are important aspirations to have in mission work. Take the Great Commission in Matthew 28:18-20, for example. The Lord commissioned the church to “go and make disciples of all nations” (go wide), which involves “teaching them to observe all that I commanded you” (go deep).

The Need to Go Deep

On the one hand, to sacrifice depth for the sake of breadth would spell disaster. It will result in a lot of false fruit that has been generated by fleshly methods. But shouldn’t we aim for spiritual fruit produced by the power of God working through Scripture?

Any true fruit that is produced will not be fully developed. It will be stunted and sterile. Undiscipled disciples are more of a liability than an asset to the cause of Christ in their communities.

(Andy Johnson, Missions: How the Local Church Goes Global, p. 68) “I’ve personally visited several countries where well-meaning missionaries became so urgent in their desire for speed and numbers, and so careless in their methods, that new churches were declared planted and then abandoned in a manner resembling spiritual abortions more than births. Their desire for shortcuts meant that the slow work of patient biblical teaching was cast aside. Predictably, these new gatherings easily fell prey to false teaching, cults, or simply dissolution. A decade later the wounds have yet to heal. Most tragically, countless souls in these places now think they’ve seen and tried Christianity, when they haven’t. As a result, they are seemingly inoculated against the real, biblical gospel, even if someone more faithful shares it with them. God forgive us.”

The Need to Go Wide

But on the other hand, we can prioritize depth to the point that we lose the compulsion to reach far and wide for Christ. Many churches fall into this trap and become nitpicking, narrow-minded, self-satisfied, and critical toward other churches.

We should learn from the poor example of the 18th-century Particular Baptists. Despite maintaining a high standard of theological and exegetical scholarship, their growth as a denomination was impeded at this time. This becomes all the more alarming when one notes that this was the century of the Great Evangelical Revival in England. But rather than benefiting from this great outpouring of the Holy Spirit for expansion of God’passed over.  In fact, they opposed the revival!
s kingdom, the Baptists were largely

Michael Haykin (One Heart and One Soul, chapter 1) helps us understand why:

1. “High Calvinism” (a.k.a. Hyper-Calvinism) was widely held by clergy and lay people alike. This strangled evangelistic preaching.
2. Internal doctrinal disputes consumed the energy of many Baptist churches.
3. Thirdly, they stressed the autonomy of the local church so much that few Baptists learned to think beyond the sphere of their congregation, much less the denomination.

Thankfully, the Lord raised up men like William Carey, Andrew Fuller, and John Sutcliff. Through the vision and repentance of these men, the Particular Baptists became t
he leaders of the modern missionary movement.

Today, there are many churches who boast about being more biblical than other Christians, but they are actually wasting their potential for kingdom work! They’re as straight as the barrel of a gun, and just as empty. They are like a stagnant pond, full of scum and mosquitoes.

The Need for Both

Notably, these extremes of pursuing only depth or only breadth could both be prevented by cultivating a holistically biblical understanding of God, the gospel, worship, discipleship, and ministry. We need to aspire for both.

But that's not as simple as that. There is a nuanced dynamic between going deep and going wide, and we'll look more into that in the next article.