The implications of each believer needing to go, baptize, and teach in order to be obedient to the command to make disciples are enormous. (Should my wife be teaching disciples to obey Christ’s commands? Should me or my children be baptizing those we are making disciples of?)

Bottom line, if the command is personal to each believer, how can each believer be obedient to this command? (I have never been in a church where I could reserve the baptismal so I could baptize people I was discipling.)

Yes, yes and yes! Jesus spoke this to his disciples and they went out and did it. You read in the scriptures of them going out into the cities and the wild meeting people, proclaiming the good news and baptizing people. They were the church collectively and they were the church individually and they acted it out together and individually.

Yes your wife can disciple someone. Yes, she can baptize them as well. Does she have to reserve the baptismal at your church? NO! The baptism process at your church was likely developed by someone at your church. Not the scriptures. Take them down to the creek, the YMCA or the ocean and baptize them.

I work with kids and when kids come to faith, I encourage the parents to baptize their kids. They’re the ones with the greatest influence in their lives.

Be careful not to read into the text. Don’t approach the text with all your ideas of church structure, rules and traditions specific to what you’ve personally experienced.

Just my thoughts though.

Who is supposed to be making disciples?
1) Each believer under the authority of their local church
2) Each local church as a group (each person participating in some aspect of making disciples– going, baptizing, teaching)
3) The pastor(s) of each local church

The implications of each beleiver needing to go, baptize, and teach in order to be obedient to the command to make disciples are enormous. (Should my wife be teaching disciples to obey Christ’s commands? Should me or my children be baptizing those we are making disciples of?)

Bottom line, if the command is personal to each believer, how can each believer be obedient to this command? (I have never been in a church where I could reserve the baptismal so I could baptize people I was discipling.) It would seem the easiest, and most often applied, approach would be to say the command is not to the individual but to the church as a whole with the majority of the command to be performed by the pastor(s).

Part (maybe all) of the answer is in the Greek text. Can it be definitively shown that the command is to the individual (you singular) or to the group (you plural)? If to the individual, can it be shown that the command was a) only to those disciples present or 2) only to church leaders/pastors (ie- those called specifically to preach/teach/baptize?)

I look forward to hearing other people’s understanding of how this passage should be translated and applied.