Moses passed the baton of leadership to Joshua. Jesus entrusted His mission to His disciples. Paul invested the Gospel in Timothy and instructed him to entrust it to faithful people who would teach others also (2 Timothy 2:2). Generation after generation, the baton has been handed forward.

Every generation comes to the task with unique needs, qualities, challenges, and insights. Joshua was not Moses. Timothy was not Paul. The disciples did not minister in the world of the Old Testament prophets, and we do not minister in the world of the first-century Church. Methods change. Cultures change. Languages change. The questions people ask change. But the mission remains the same.

Our responsibility is not to make the next generation look exactly like ours. It is to make sure they know the Christ we know, possess the Gospel we received, and understand the mission we were given.

That means every generation has two responsibilities. We must faithfully receive what has been handed to us, and we must faithfully hand it to those coming behind us. We are not the starting point, and we are not the finish line. We are one leg of a much longer race.

There is danger when one generation refuses to receive from those who came before it. But there is equal danger when an older generation refuses to trust, equip, and release those coming behind it. The baton was never intended to remain in anyone’s hand.

Perhaps the measure of our faithfulness is not merely what we accomplish while we are holding the baton, but what continues after we have handed it off.

Moses had his Joshua. Paul had his Timothy. Timothy was instructed to find faithful people who could teach others.

Who are we preparing to run next?

Every generation matters—because the mission is bigger than any one of them. ©

–PGR