More than half of US church-goers don’t know about the ‘Great Commission’ – a command of Jesus contained in the Gospel of Matthew in which tells His followers to “go and make disciples of all nations”, according to new research.
The study, conducted by the Barna Group in partnership with Seed Company, found that 51 per cent of US churchgoers didn’t know the term while just 17 per cent recognised it. One in four said the term “rang a bell” but couldn’t remember what it referred to while six per cent said they weren’t sure they’d heard it before.
When presented with five alternative verses and asked to nominate which one is the Great Commission – contained in Matthew 28:18-20, only 37 per cent could correctly identify it.
Broken down by age, about two in five people among the three oldest generations – ‘Elders’, ‘Boomers’ and ‘Gen X’ – correctly identified the Great Commission but Millennials are about as likely to misidentify the verse (36 per cent) as identify it correctly (34 per cent).
Barna said in a statement that the data “indicates that churches are using the phrase less, which may reveal a lack of prioritising or focusing on the work of the Great Commission, but may also indicate that the phrase, rather than the Scriptures or the labour, has simply fallen out of favor with some”.
The research was conducted last year.
