Our Great Commission

0:00Welcome and a wake-up call

We’re so glad to have you joining us for today’s message. I’m Jason Mayfield. I’m the pastor here at Saraland Church. We’ve got some boxes back here from—these are signs for signage we’re putting up in the building. And I just wanted to welcome you to today’s message. Listen, I wanted to share this with you. We appreciate you watching online. And I wanted to let you know that over the next several weeks, we’re going to be working on making our weekly video upload of the message much better. We’ve got some cameras that just arrived that we’re going to be putting in, and we’re going to be training volunteers to work our cameras so we can provide you with a better online viewing experience of the weekly message, sharing with you what God is saying to us right here at Saraland Church.

Hey, if you’re in the Mobile County area, I just wanted to invite you to join us in person right here at Saraland Church at 907 Shelton Beach Road in Saraland, Alabama. It’s 907 Shelton Beach Road. We’ve got plenty of room for you. We’ve got plenty of parking for you. We’ve got ministry for your kids, and we would love to meet you. Come join us Sunday at 10:30 AM. Today, I’m talking about the Great Commission, and why don’t we stop waiting and just jump right into it right now. Amen. So again, I just want to prepare you. This is going to be a slightly heavy message this morning.

I am going to be a little bit heavier than I normally am. I will let you go ahead and start turning to Mark chapter 16. I am going to be a little bit heavier. Have y’all ever seen a movie where the dad is having trouble getting the teenagers to wake up, and then he goes in and he dumps like a bucket of water on them in the bed, and they wake up? Okay, I just need y’all to know, I’m about to preach a Holy Ghost water bucket in here this morning, and I am going to pour it out. This is a wake-up call. But as I was telling them Wednesday night in our team night meeting—by the way, if you haven’t been to Wednesday nights, I’m telling you, they are super fun.

I was telling them Wednesday night that I will get more and more fun as the rest of the year progresses. Okay? I get more inspirational. I get more informational, and by the time we get to the end of the year, I’m handing out candy canes when I’m preaching. Amen. So it’s going to be good. Hallelujah. So here we go. This is a wake-up call.

2:35Mark 16:14-18

Mark chapter 16, starting in verse 14. Here I am telling y’all to flip there, and I haven’t even flipped there yet. Here we go. Mark chapter 16, verse 14. “Afterward he appeared to the eleven themselves as they were reclining at table, and he rebuked them for their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they had not believed those who saw him after he had risen.

And he said to them, ‘Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. And these signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons, they will speak in new tongues, they will pick up serpents with their hands, and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them. They will lay their hands on the sick, and they shall recover.’” Lee, I’m going to have you go ahead and bring out the snakes and the poison. We’re spirit-filled.

We’re not that spirit-filled. Amen.

3:38Relentlessly driven: disrupting the soil

This morning, I want to talk to you on the subject of the Great Commission. That’s the title of my message today, the Great Commission. For the next four weeks, we are going to be in a series, which is one of the values that we’re introducing to the church, and the value is this. We are relentlessly driven by the mission. We are relentlessly driven by the mission. If you get around me for a little while, you will notice that when I get my eyes on the Great Commission, the mission of seeing lost people saved, my eyes turn red.

I am intensely focused on this. This is an anointing on my life that I’m hoping drips off of me onto you. It should bother us greatly when people are not saved. Not because they aren’t like us, but because it’s not good for them. People need the gospel. And so we are relentlessly driven by the mission. I don’t know about you, but my story personally is the local church changed my life. It changed my life. I came from a dysfunctional home and an unsafe environment, and I ended up in the church around 12 years old, and my life was formed. My life was changed.

My life was bettered. My life was increased and improved, and it prospered because I was rooted and grounded in the local church. I was rooted and grounded in the local church. But here’s what I need you to know. People only get rooted when the soil is moved around. There has to be a little disruption if you want to make disciples. You have to disrupt the soil a little bit. How many of you have seen the movie Jesus Revolution? I’m going to tell you, now, I’m not a big Christian movie goer because they ain’t all that great, but this movie’s fantastic. This Jesus Revolution movie, it’s incredible, and it’s about a man named Greg Laurie.

I’m going to just kind of give you the synopsis of what happened in Greg Laurie’s life. In the late 1960s, Chuck Smith—who some of you probably have commentaries from Chuck Smith. I know y’all look at Chuck Smith’s stuff all the time. But in the late 1960s, Chuck Smith, pastor of Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa, California, was watching the hippie movement explode around him. I think I’ve got some former hippies in here right now, in Jesus’ name. And kids with long hair, barefoot, strung out on drugs, and searching for meaning. Most churches at the time were pushing them away, but Chuck made a radical decision.

“We’re not going to lock the doors on these people. We’re going to change the way we do ministry so they know they’re welcome.” He let them come in barefoot. He welcomed the rock music and guitars, and he built a church that was less about tradition and more about transformation. One of those young hippies was Greg Laurie. At 17 years old, he was lost in the drug culture, addicted, empty, and searching. When he wandered into that movement, he encountered the gospel and the love of a church that made space for him. Greg gave his life to Christ and experienced a complete transformation.

Today, Greg Laurie pastors Harvest Christian Fellowship, one of the largest churches in America, and he leads the Harvest Crusades, where over six million people have heard the gospel in person, and more than 500,000 have made decisions for Christ. He’s preached in stadiums, written books, and even made films, and it all traces back to a local church that dared to change so people could be reached. The Great Commission doesn’t happen by accident. It happens when people like Chuck Smith say, “I’m going to introduce a little disruption to the soil of our church so that we can make disciples get rooted into this place.”

And I just want you to know it’s easy to point to the results that happen in preachers’ lives. It’s easy to point to a Greg Laurie or for me to tell you my testimony, but let me tell you, we’ve heard story after story after story over 21 years of ministry of people whose lives have been radically transformed because they got into a local church that cared about them. We have to disrupt the soil a little bit. So this morning, I’m going to disrupt that soil. That’s what the rest of this message is going to be. I’ve got a rake. It’s called a Holy Ghost rake, and I’m about to get in here and do a little work.

8:15The gospel is for all people

So you start writing these down. Number one, the gospel is for all people. The gospel is for all people. Mark 16, verse 15, we just read it, says, “And he said to them, ‘Go into all the world.’” Acts chapter 1, verse 8—any good Pentecostal could quote this out of the King James, mind you: “And after that the Holy Ghost has come upon thee, ye shall receive power. And you’ll be my witnesses in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the—“ We’re talking about all people. Not just the people here, not just the people here. All people. Everybody say all people.

So when I talk about all people, I’m talking about every age. Every age. We have another value that I’m going to preach on at the end of the year. I’m going to do a short series on this, but at the end of the year, I’m going to preach on us being a generationally intentional church. We are generationally intentional. And I’m going to talk about it a lot right now—well, we’ll talk about it at the end of the year. But I just want you to know, I want this to be a church that works for everybody from the nursery to the nursing home. This is for everybody.

Secondly, I also mean that we are for all people. We’re a church for all people, people in every class, every class of person. Another one of the values I’m going to teach you on next year is we are honoring of all people. We’re honoring of all people. And so we’re going to be a church for people in every class. I want everybody in this church that lives all the way from the trailer park to Park Avenue. I want to see everybody. In fact, Proverbs chapter 22 says that the rich and the poor come together, for the Lord is maker of them all. Somebody say amen.

So we’re honoring of all people, and we’re going to teach people in every class that you can still have class. Amen.

10:17Every race

And then the third thing, when I’m talking about all people, I’m talking about every race. Every race. Every race. This is a major Bible issue. And this is actually a major issue in this area. And I want you to know that just walking into the Mobile area, I can feel something in the air that I’m uncomfortable with. There’s a spiritual thing here around race and division. It’s not good. We’re going to have to deal with it. And I’m going to be the preacher that’s going to do it. Amen.

I do want to let y’all know that I just moved from what is possibly, if not the—it is definitely in the top 20 most integrated churches in Alabama. Like, we had everybody. Everybody. And let me tell you, church is more fun with everybody. Church is better with everybody. You might as well praise the Lord right there. That’s a good place. So I’ve made some comments in some different meetings leading up to this about how we’re going to have people in the church at some point who don’t look like us and don’t look like you.

And I’ve heard some rumblings—nothing egregious that I felt like I had to deal with, but I’ve heard a couple of things. A handful of people have gave me the secondhand information. It’s funny on this stuff. Nobody going to give you the firsthand information, but I got some secondhand information on, “Well, what does he mean by that?” Well, let me just explain it to you as clearly as I can. When I go to Publix, I see white folks, black folks, Indian folks, and Hispanic folks. When I go to Walmart, I see white folks, black folks, Indian folks, Hispanic folks.

When I go pick Jocelyn up from marching band practice, I see white kids, black kids, Indian kids, Hispanic kids. We were at the football game the other night and I had white folks and black folks and Hispanic folks and Indian folks all around me cheering for this team on the field. One lady had a cowbell. She was having a good time. I think her baby was on the field. We have all these different people, but folks, look around you. When I come in here, I don’t see it right now. I don’t see it right now. But we’re building a Jesus-centered, spirit-filled church for all people.

Somebody ought to praise him right there. That’s a good spot. I just think if we shop together and we go to school together, then we ought to go to church together. James Baldwin said—and this was 60 years ago—he said that America is the most segregated on Sunday at high noon. And in 60 years, we’ve come a long way, but that has not changed. That is still the same. And we’re going to see that change right here. [worship]. And so I think we ought to all be worshiping together. Amen. Now let me encourage those of you who are struggling with this.

I just want to let you know, you need to get comfortable with this idea, because it’s not just going to show up in your church. One of your grandbabies is going to bring this into your kitchen. Get mad at your pastor. You don’t want to have a screaming match with your granddaughter in the kitchen. So go ahead and take it out on me. I’ll be fine with that. But I do want to let you know this: this is right, and this is where we are. Numbers chapter 12 says this: “Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman whom he had married, for he had married a Cushite woman.”

By the way, Cushite—a modern area you could attach it to is, she’s a Nubian woman. She was—let me tell you about Nubian people. They aren’t just black. They are very black. They are Wesley Snipes black. You know what I’m saying? They are black. Okay. They are dark, and they had a problem with her because of that. And verse two says, “And they said, ‘Has the Lord indeed spoken only through Moses? Has he not spoken through us also?’” And I’m going to tell you what worries me here: “And the Lord heard it.” God does not look favorably on any type of racism.

He does not look favorably on othering. I’m just telling you right now, the Lord looked at Miriam—and the only reason they didn’t do it with Aaron is because Aaron had a job that had to be done—but he looked at Miriam and he put leprosy on her right there. This is not something that the Lord deals favorably with. So let me be clear, because I know some of y’all are asking this question and you’re wondering. And so let me just assure you that I am not trying—let me just talk to the Southerners in the room here for a moment, by the way, of which I am one.

Someone told me I sounded like a Yankee the other day, but I’m from Birmingham, Alabama. I grew up going to lunch in Hueytown. Okay? I’m one of you folks. Okay. And, but I need you to hear me. I know some of y’all are going, “Is he going to try to build a black church?” And let me just assure you, I’m not trying to build a black church, but I sure as heck am not trying to build a white church. That’s a good place to give him praise. And I will let you know a little vision moving forward, something that I am eyeballing, because I’m always looking at the people the Lord’s giving me. I’m always looking and saying, who’s on my property?

And I’m going to tell you, I’ve got nights where I’ve got nothing but Hispanic folks back behind my building playing soccer. And I want you to know I’m eyeballing doing a Spanish translation for our services so we can open up our church to people who do not speak English as the first language. It’s easy. It’s cheap. It’s missional. And I’m probably going to do it in 2026. So you got a couple of months to work up on your Spanish, y’all. Amen. Here we go.

16:17We're in it for the long haul

Number two, we’re in it for the long haul. We’re in it for the long haul. Mark chapter 16, verses 16 through 18 says, “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.

And these signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they’ll cast out demons, they’ll speak in new tongues, they will pick up serpents with their hands, if they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them, they’ll lay their hands on the sick and they will recover.” What I see when I read this right here is that people get saved and then they go through a process. People get saved and they go through a process. Now, on one hand, we are talking about a tangible process. If you’ve been around me for any length of time, you know that I’m kind of a systems-oriented individual.

I think about all of the steps that people need to walk through. And so we are going to have a tangible process here that when someone gets saved, we’re going to send them on a journey to know the Lord fully. So that is a priority for me. Outside of that though, there’s also like an existential process that people have to go through. People are dealing with their own stuff. If you’re dealing with your own stuff, just raise your hand this morning. And yeah, that’s me. I’ve got some stuff I’m dealing with. And so everybody’s got their own process that they’re going through.

And let me just tell this Pentecostal church something this morning: instant transformation is rare. Now, we throw instant transformation on the stage. We shoot videos about it. We tell everyone about it. Praise the Lord for his work. I’m grateful for it. I’m grateful when somebody comes to the altar and they get down on their face and they get up, and they came in a drug addict, and when they stood up there, they have no more temptation to do drugs. I’m so grateful for the power of God in that way. But let me tell you this. I’m also grateful for the guy who goes to the altar a drug addict, stands up a drug addict, but the Holy Ghost has started to work on it.

And if we’ll just give him some time, he’s going to carry out his purpose in that person. Hallelujah. So there are going to be people that give their lives to Jesus and then they will not improve at the rate that you want them to. In James chapter two, this is where we get the phrase “faith without works is dead.” And James says this, and then he gives an illustration involving Abraham. And he talks about Abraham believing God, being counted righteous, and then offering his son Isaac, being willing to offer him as a sacrifice. He does not—praise the Lord—but he’s willing to offer Isaac as a sacrifice.

And that was his works that completed his faith. And then it goes on and it says that he was called a friend of God. And we read that and we think, okay, this is Abraham. He believed God, but he also had to work it out. Well, I got to looking at this one day and I realized that Abraham believes God, is counted righteous. It’s another 40 years until Abraham offers Isaac. He was righteous the entire time. He wasn’t waiting for this moment to be righteous. He’s been righteous the entire time. Here’s what’s even better. He was called a friend of God.

That’s in Isaiah. That didn’t even happen in his lifetime. That was hindsight. So here’s what I’ve committed to do. If you’ll put your faith in Jesus Christ, and you’re trying to work through some problems and work through some issues, I’ll give you 40 years before I make a huge deal out of it. I think it’s important in a Holy Ghost church that we remember that the Holy Ghost has to do the work and we are not the Holy Ghost. Amen. Look at your neighbor and say, “He’s talking to you right now. Ain’t talking to you.”

20:15The consequences are massive

Number three. Number three, the consequences are massive.

The consequences are massive. We’re talking about heaven or hell, life or death. Mark chapter 16, verse 16 says, “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.” Jude verse 20 says, “But you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life. And have mercy on those who doubt. Save others by snatching them out of the fire.” That’s the mission we’re on. We’re snatching people out of the fire.

Hallelujah. If we believe what Jesus said, that you must be born again to inherit the kingdom of God, then we can’t ignore this. And this is a statistic that blew my mind. Within 20 miles of this church, within 20 miles of this building—if you took a 20-mile string and you just wrapped it all the way around, 20 miles in every direction—there are approximately 312,000 people who are spiritually lost. I’m not talking about the total population. I’m talking about statistics tell us that in that zone, in our gospel zone, there’s 312,000 people that if they were to die today, or if the eastern sky were to part, they would bust a devil’s hell wide open.

This is serious, serious stuff.

22:21Moving the piano one inch

For years, preachers have told a story. I think John Maxwell used it in one of his books. It’s kind of a folklore kind of story amongst pastors, but we tell a story of the pastor who moved the piano, and the story goes kind of like this. There was a pastor who went to a church in North Georgia and he had a piano right in the middle of the room that was in the way of everything. And so he moved the piano over to the side of the room, in the place that it ought to be. And the church drove him out of town. Drove him out. Got rid of the preacher because he moved the piano.

A couple of years later, he’s driving through that town and he thinks, let me go see how the new pastor’s doing. He goes in to see the new pastor. And as he’s walking to the pastor’s office, he sees in the sanctuary that the piano is in the right spot where he had left it. And he thought, there’s no way they didn’t move it back. And so he goes to the pastor’s office and he says, “Brother pastor, what happened with this piano? Did they not move it back to the center of the room?” And he goes, “Oh no, I heard about what happened with you. As soon as you left, that piano was back in the center of the room.”

And he goes, “Well, how did you move it?” He goes, “Oh, I’d come in here every night and I’d move it one inch. Come in every night and I’d move it one inch. And by the time it got to the place it needed to be, nobody had ever noticed that it got moved. It took a long time, but I didn’t have any trouble. I didn’t have any problems. And I’m still here pastoring the church.” Now, we tell this story like this is the gold standard of church leadership. We’ve taught this like it’s the job of the pastor to come into a church and not disrupt the soil, not create a little discomfort.

It’s the job of the pastor to come in, keep everybody happy, everybody comfortable, everybody just keep the train chugging along. And there’s some good wisdom to that. There is some good wisdom to that, because I’ll tell you what, incrementalism—doing it real slow, making changes real slow, confronting things real slow—I’ll just tell you, it’s good for attendance and it’s good for income. But how many people go to hell every inch? Every inch. “I’m going to wait to do it. I’ll just do an inch.” Six people die in this area every day. Statistically, six people in Mobile County die every day.

Six, 12, 18, 24, 32. I got to stop before my math messes up on me here. Suffice it to say, I was right. I knew I was, right? How many inches is a soul worth? How many inches? Where the apostle said “snatching some from the fire,” we’re upset over the song selection, or the chairs have gotten moved, or the lights have changed. I’ll start talking about stuff I’ve actually done just in case it’s rubbing you the wrong way. How many people? Nurse Emily Carson was in the break room, barely halfway through her coffee. Her shift had ended 20 minutes earlier, but she liked to wait, unwind, talk to the next team that was coming in, kind of ease out of the chaos.

That morning though, she felt an internal push: check on room 418. The problem was, this was not her patient. This was not her floor. This was not her responsibility. She almost shrugged it off, almost waited until her coffee was finished, almost played it safe. But instead she stood up, a little uncomfortable, a little too early for her and out of her normal rhythm. She moved. As she turned the corner into 418, she found Mr. Robert Hale in the middle of a seizure, alone in his hospital bed. No nurse in the room, no monitors alerting yet. She hit the call button, cleared the area, and began to stabilize him with basic intervention while calling for a crash cart.

The team arrived within seconds and they were able to bring him back from the brink. Later, the attending physician pulled her aside and said, “If no one had been in that room in those exact seconds, we would have lost him. He did not have minutes. He had seconds.” She wasn’t the assigned nurse. She wasn’t ready, but she was willing to set down her cup of coffee and go to room 418. And because of that, Robert Hale is still alive today. When people set their preferences aside, when people set their comfort aside, it changes lives. And I want y’all to know, I’m not unaware of this.

I know I can sound very direct and kind of no-nonsense on these issues. And I want you to know, I’m not trying to sound ugly. I’m not trying to sound rude. I’m not trying to sound unfeeling or uncaring. But folks, this is urgent. This is not a wait and see. This isn’t a “we’ll just give it a little while longer.” This isn’t “well, we’ll just wait until, but we’ll do something later.” This is urgent. Earlier this year, we were living in Huntsville, Alabama. We were living in Madison, and our church was on the interstate that we lived off of.

So the church is on the interstate. We’re on the interstate. It’s about 15 minutes down the road west. And we have hurricanes—or, living in Florida and back in Sierra Leone, it’s hurricanes and not tornadoes. We have tornadoes hit the ground over on the west side of Alabama and they start heading toward the church. Well, I’m trying to see, you know, if we’re going to have church Sunday or not. And so I’m watching the news and these tornadoes are coming right down 565 and they pass the church. There’s no issue with the church.

And I guess it was about two or three minutes, I realized, those are coming for us. Forget the church—that thing’s about to hit me. And so I go over and start ripping stuff out of a closet and I’m telling the kids, I’m like, “Get in the closet, sit down. Here’s a pillow, take your iPad, watch a thing. If something happened—“ I’m one of them dads. It’s like, if something happens, you be quiet and you do what you’re— I’m getting intense. And I came off a little strong and aggressive and a little intense in that moment. But I’m going to tell you: everybody was safe.

Everybody was safe. Why? Because it was life or death. This wasn’t a trip to the zoo. This wasn’t swinging on a swing set. This was life or death. Mark two, verse 17 says, “And when Jesus heard it, he said to them, ‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came to call not the righteous, but sinners.’” This is life or death.

29:28A gospel church between people and hell

We have to put our feelings aside, our preferences aside. We have to put our history aside. And I just want you to know that over the next several weeks, I am going to be putting my foot on the accelerator to see us grow this church, to reach this city, because we need to see people saved and set free.

Amen. But not only am I going to do that this month, I’m going to be giving you some resources and some tools that are going to help you to fulfill your part in our Great Commission. And I want you to know this: in the next two weeks, I am going to announce something to you me and Ashleigh are working on. I’m going to announce a great opportunity that you can be a part of to see a great harvest in this area. But I’m not going to tell you about it right now. You have to come back to church if you want some stuff. Amen. But let me just say this. If we don’t put a gospel church between people in this area and hell, they have no hope.

And I want you to hear something, and this may be unhealthy. I’m off the notes, by the way, so we’ll be here another three hours. This may be a little unhealthy, but I need y’all to hear me. I love churches. I love pastors. In fact, it’s weird to say it on a microphone, but there is an apostolic thing on my life. Pastors are my primary ministry—talking and encouraging and guiding, leading. I love pastors. I love people in the ministry. I really do. I love other churches. But the way that I believe we have to lead when we pastor a church in the community is as if we are the only hope.

I love other pastors. I love other churches. I don’t know what that guy does with his schedule. I don’t know what he does with his time. I don’t know how serious he’s taking stuff. I don’t know how serious other churches—I don’t know what other churches believe. I don’t have time to figure out what doctrine every church holds. So what I know is that if somebody’s going to do it—I don’t know if they’re going to do it, but I’m going to do it. I’m going to step up and I’m going to put a gospel church between people and a devil’s hell. Hallelujah.